A Few Memories

Dad's/Grandpa's Birthday is coming up and I've been wanting to get these on here for his birthday.

After mom/Grandma died, it left me at home alone with Grandpa. He was a busy man, building new schools and the courthouse and the Sheriff's office and remodeling the courthouse. This took him out of town often, talking to architects, touring other new schools in the state, meetings and well, you get the idea. Well, many times I went with on these excursions and many of them were over night trips where we got a hotel room.

One summer, Grandpa, Linda and I went on a vacation to San Fransisco and up the coast to Bandon, OR where Grandpa Ware and Aunt Maree went on their mission. And when I was a Senior, Grandpa and I went to Alaska.

So . . . there were lots of stays in hotels. Sometimes, in some hotel bathrooms, there is a strip of paper over the toilet seat which the guest removes and throws away. Well, Grandpa always thought it was funny to carefully remove the strip of paper and set it somewhere and then when we were ready to check out he would carefully put it back across the toilet. He always thought it would be funny to see the maid as she realized someone had used the room but never used the toilet.

Also, the little triangles folded on the end of the toilet paper . . . he would refold those little triangles too. Every time I see the pointed end of toilet paper in a hotel bathroom or see the strip of paper across the toilet I think of Grandpa. And what is weird, I never think of it again until the next time I check into a hotel room.

Since Grandpa has died, I've been in several hotel rooms and each time I think of him and tell myself that I've got to write that down. So there it is . . . Grandpa was a little quirky.

Another memory . . . he polished his shoes often. He had his shoe polish down in the junk room and he would go out in the hole and put his foot up on the stump and polish. He always had shiny shoes.

When I was in high school, there was a store in Utah called "Castletons." It was a really nice store, kind of like ZCMI. There was a commercial shown on TV advertising Castletons and Grandpa did not like it. It showed a man in a dentist chair with wide eyes looking like he was in pain and very scared and the dentist drilling on him with this devilish look on his face.

Well, you all know Grandpa. Yup, he wrote them a letter, telling them that as an adult man, who has not been to the dentist for many years because of a traumatic experience as a child, they should not have a commercial like that. They are scaring children and making them afraid of the dentist. Castletons sent Grandpa a letter and thanked him for his and wanted him to know that they would be pulling that commercial off the air.

Grandpa stood by his convictions. He had a strong of opinion of what was right and what was wrong and he didn't let people make that determination for him.

And also, when he was a little boy he wore an undershirt all winter long. On his birthday which is always near the first day of spring, he was able to take his undershirt off. He looked forward to taking that undershirt off more than he looked forward to his birthday.

Happy Birthday Dad.