It’s my maternal grandfather’s birthday today. It’s been a long time since he died- February 5, 1985. I was wishing I had a picture of him but all the old pictures burned when my mother’s house burned down. I don’t know why but I went to crying about him this evening. He never got an obituary or anything- not that I can find. But I remember him. I remember his scraggly whiskers and the smell of tobacco and coffee in his hugs. I remember his stories, his laughter and how he always knew even from another room that my granny was about to “start belly-achin’ “ about something. How I would tell him my troubles and he would listen carefully and say tenderly “Well now- doggone it all.”
I remember the old pictures of him when he was young, too. My favorite was of him in a pin striped suit, long-ish well groomed finger nails, cigarette between his fingers, slicked back hair of the period and those cool round glasses. He was a bit of a dandy in that picture.
Grandaddy was born Richard West Wallace August 3, 1911 in Cross Tracks, Texas, a town that doesn’t exist anymore. It had been near Lubbock, he said.
His father had been an oil field worker who was killed on the job when Grandaddy was twelve years old. He had three younger siblings, Edith, Jewel and Dudley. His mom’s name was Myrtle. Grandaddy had to quit school and go to work to support his family.
He had been a professional gambler when he was a young man. He played mostly a game called “Kelly Dice.” He had a hardened leather bottle with the dice in it. You shook it and threw the dice out a certain way. I never understood the game. He played card games like poker of course and could do the fancy shuffling. He played Dominoes and nobody could beat him. He had a scar from his ear down his neck where an angry opponent had cut him with a broken beer bottle.
. He is not my grandfather, we found out many years later but actually my great uncle. His brother had an affair with my granny and she got pregnant. What a mess. So my granddaddy stepped in to marry my granny to “give the baby a name.” An “illegitimate” child was a very big deal back then and they didn’t want that to happen.
He spent most of his adult life at 1518 Dewitt Street im Flour Bluff (Corpus Christi) where he raised my mom and had a seemingly stormy marriage with my granny. Their song, though, was “Walz Across Texas,” so they must have been at least a little romantic at some point. He once told me he still “held a candle for my granny.” She laughed when I told her that.
When he married my granny (Ruth Grady) he seems to have become a painter – not an artist but the kind that paints buildings. I remember his white jumpers he wore, splattered with paint of all colors. He fell off a water tower he was painting once and broke his feet to pieces. So he always hobbled. He was one of those people who could whistle a symphony if he wanted. I was always amazed at this as a child. Every morning he would come shuffling out of his room on his broken feet whistling like sunshine. When I was born he was still bed bound with his injuries. My mom used to put me in a cardboard box next to his bed and I would hold his finger for hours.
He was a good companion when I was a kid. Like my granny he drank coffee all day and rolled his own cigarettes. He had this fascinating cigarette roller. I loved sitting with him and listening to him as he rolled cigarettes with it and stacked them for himself and Granny to smoke later. He was an excellent story teller. He had pithy observations about life and people, and often drifted into philosophical speculation I thought was interesting. Memorably he was talking to me about the idea of hell. He told me he believed God was his daddy. He lit a match and asked me if he would ever burn me with that. Of course he wouldn’t. So he didn’t believe God would burn him either.
He taught my brother, Mark, and me how to play dominoes and Go Fish. We liked hanging out. He took me fishing once out in the ocean. I caught a huge crab and he was all excited. But I felt sorry for it and I cried so much he had to let it go. He wasn’t too happy with me and he complained loudly about it to Granny when we got home.
He read all the time and had a stack of ten or fifteen books next to his bed and others next to his chair. He liked westerns and detective stories. He loved my brother, Mark and me. He laughed while we talked to him. He made us “flapjacks” and and asked how much butter we wanted. (Put a lot Grandaddy so I can lick it off!”) He let us drink coffee. He used to say”bah” like a goat when we pulled his short white beard. He was a kindly and eccentric presence to us. He had a glass eye – a reminder of a suicide attempt when he was younger. He used to take it out and set it on the table and laugh at our reaction. He had a coffee can full of change in his room that my brother never got tired of counting for him. Granddaddy had an alcohol problem that affected my mom a lot but as kids we weren’t as aware of that. To us he was funny and told a good story. He was always trying to convince me that “the same thing happened to me when I was a little girl” I was indignant every time. “Granddaddy you were never a little girl!”
In some ways he was a lonely stranger and there is so much I will never know that went on inside him. He walked around quietly, deep in his own thoughts. He spent a lot of time in the hot garage outside but we were always welcome to go out and talk to him. He would sit down on a bucket, light a cigarette and talk to us.
He had a sepia silhouette on the wall in his room of a cowboy looking tired and droopy in his saddle, bowing his head. Grandaddy wasn’t religious at all though I know he believed in God. I wasn’t religious either but I always thought the cowboy was praying. I think Grandaddy felt like that cowboy; “rode hard and put up wet” as they say. The image I think of when I think of him is of a man with a tired body and a tired heart who read westerns in a cloud of cigarette smoke and coffee steam. I loved him.
By the time I was a teen he had developed what they called “wet brain” He thought he was late to work. He would yell about it. He thought there was an old man trapped in the mirror and he had to get him out. “I have to go to Whitney!” He would yell, thinking he had work out there and everyone was waiting, or that his friends left without him. He was sure my brother was stealing the change from his coffee can. One time he banged on the door for twelve hours. I ran out of patience at one point and yelled at him, “WHY?!?! Why are you doing that?!” He stopped and looked at me and then said, “”Cuz I’m crazy *** damnit!” I couldn’t help it. I started laughing and he did too.
He couldn’t remember my name by the end of his life but he trusted me. He would ask for me: “Where did that little brown-eyed girl go?” I would go to him and he would look at me earnestly with wild eyes. He whispered conspiratorially “Get me out of here!” I would say “I’m trying, Grandaddy.”
There was a lot of pain for my mom about their relationship. Her mother had been physically abusive but to her he had been the kind and tender one. As his drinking progressed she had felt betrayed and abandoned by him. There were a lot of resentments and deep hurt there for my mom as much as she loved him.
I’m always going to be grateful for the moment my mother had with him before he died. He didn’t know who she was while she was taking care of him. She said, “Oh Daddy don’t you remember me?” He said,” I’m sorry darlin” I don’t.” She said, “I’m Dinky” (her family nickname) and his eyes lit up. He said, “Well that’s my baby!”
To me that sums up his life even with all of its contrasts- that my mom was his baby.
Richard West Wallace 8/3/1911 – 2/5/1985
Now he has an obituary of sorts. And someday I will write down his stories.
Bethany Hang Out 