One Life

Tomorrow is my grandfather’s birth day. If he was alive, he would be 137 years old tomorrow. Now, you might think, why in heaven’s name would anyone remember a birthday for someone who has been dead for over 40 years?
Normally, I don’t do a very good job remembering birthdays. I know a few of them, my own included. But I don’t know all the nieces, nephews, etc. Besides, birthdays normally aren’t a big deal for me. But this one somehow is a little different.
Grandpa Sol was one of those larger than life people in my young life. Although an old man when I was but a youngster (he died at the age of 96…I was 16), he was one of the most genuine and kind people I knew. His mind was sharp until the end. He told stories of times long ago and far away. He lived with his daughter for many years, but was independent regarding caring for himself until the last few weeks of his life. My time with him was all too short, and in some cases my young mind didn’t fully appreciate his presence in my life.
I remember his birthday primarily because I remember his 88th birthday celebration. We traveled to LaCrosse, Kansas on August 8, 1958 to celebrate his 88th birthday. Think about it…88 on 8/8/58. Sol’s granddaughter lived there with her new hubby, and they put on the party.
As a young boy, I don’t remember much except it was hotter than Hades and our ’56 Ford wagon (with a Thunderbird engine) didn’t have air conditioning. (Or did we take our ’54 Ford sedan??? I can’t remember.) At the time, LaCrosse had a public water supply that had high concentrations of minerals, and the water didn’t taste or smell at all good. But the celebration in the park was great, and we enjoyed the day.
In his last year or two of life, he and I talked about television. He had a set, one of the first to get one in the community. He marveled that we had figured out a way to send pictures and sound in the air from a great distance, and have those pictures and sounds hit a conglomeration of tubes up in the air on a pole (antenna), come down a little wire, and appear on the box in his living room.
He’s right, of course. Those who know how television works would truly understand what a marvelous invention it is, and that we far too much take it for granted. This was a man who saw the spread of the railroad across the prairie, the establishments of counties, towns, and states, the taming of the west, the demise of the buffalo, and the harnessing of electricity, the patenting of the telephone, the internal combustion engine, and other monumental events. He also saw manned space flight, the harnessing of the atom, the conquering of polio, the invention of the computer mouse, and was dead only two years before the first flight by Apollo to the moon. He was fascinated by all of it.
What about you? What have you seen in your lifetime? What will you yet see? Only time will tell.