Printing Legends
Now Playing: Frank Sinatra--"I've Got You Under My Skin"
My grandfather passed away Sunday at the age of seventy-eight. He died, strangely enough, right as I was watching a BBC John Ford documentary (hosted by the late great Lindsay Anderson, of all people) that was on the DVD set of Young Mr. Lincoln. Grandpa was a huge Ford fan, and I think he would have liked to know that. It honestly didn't come as a great shock; he'd been in ill-health for some while with a variety of ailments. Of all my relatives, Grandpa Jack was probably the one I most enjoyed visiting out of the blue, which I occasionally did when I still lived in Baton Rouge. All the lame pop sociology about "blue states" and "red states" meant little when talking to my grandfather, much more conservative than myself (or his eldest son, or his youngest daughter, or his second-oldest grandson, or, as we recently discovered, one of his granddaughters) but probably a lot more liberal than the rest of the family. hanging out with he and Slater or Dad in his garage, amusingly described by Slater at the funeral as a "Fortress of Manliness," was something of an experience, with college football on TV, beer cold enough to disguise its identity of Coors or Michelob, a complex setup of weightlifting equipment, and what I'm fairly certain was just about every action, or adventure, or Western flick broadcast on TBS during the VCR's twenty-year reign over home video technology, stored and meticulously filed in some of my favorite wood-paneled drawers ever. At least one of those took with me. Those were priceless Saturday afternoons, and will continue forever in my memory. Thanks, Grandpa, and RIP.