Dinner with Grandpa

Dinner with Grandpa      January, 2011  Gary Hyde

When my brother Bob and I were both just a couple of young kids, less than ten years old, we would occasionally go to visit with our grandma and grandpa Hyde for Sunday dinner.  Mom would load us in the car and drive the 1 ½ miles from our house at 79 R St. in Salt Lake City, downtown to their little apartment at 320 East 1^st South.  We entered into the red brick apartment building through two large glass front doors which took us into a small lobby with a bank of mailboxes mounted on the entire right hand side of the wall.  Bob used to tell me that there were tiny little men in there that would hand the mail out to you when you opened the mailbox door.  After passing through the lobby there were several stairs which lead us down to the lower level where grandma and grandpa lived.  The long hallway was dimly lit and had the smell of stale cigarette and cigar smoke. Grandpa was a pipe smoker, so I guess he contributed his share of smoke to the place, although the pipe smoke is a sweeter smell and much more pleasing than the old stale cigarette smoke.

We walked down the hallway to the third door on the right, knocked, and as soon as the door opened we would be swept into the open arms of our grandma Ruby and grandpa Frank, not to be released until an ample supply of warm hugs and kiss were bestowed upon us.  After our greetings and hellos, mom would start helping grandma set the table and then they would both disappear into the kitchen to start preparing the meal.  Grandpa would sit back in his well worn, overstuffed, brown leather chair and start fiddling with his pipe.  The chair had big round arms on it; the kind that would invite two young boys to climb up onto it and snuggle back into grandpa’s lap.  This was our favorite time of the visit, and it was here, in that overstuffed leather chair, that I formed the very best memories that I have of my grandfather.  Grandpa would settle back, wrap his arms around both of us and look at us through half closed eyes and ask us if we had ever heard the story about …….....;  then he would then start to spin us a tale.  Grandpa was a master story teller.  He told the kind of stories that would immediately grab our attention and then keep us motionless, glued to the arms of that wonderful big overstuffed chair, wrapped up in grandpa’s great big loving arms, with our eyes and attention sharply focused on his every word.

The first thing that had to happen, before any serious kind of story telling could begin, was to light up his pipe.  I guess it made him think better; and when he told a story he would blow those perfectly round smoke rings that would float upwards towards the ceiling, drawing our eyes and attentions right up with them.  Just as those smoke rings would draw us in, so would his stories.  He would describe in detail how everything looked, felt and tasted, tricking our imaginations into believing that these stories were about us, and that we were right there in the story.

He would often talk about the place where he worked; down in the boiler rooms of the old Judge Building in Salt Lake City.  Grandpa was a self employed mechanic and had worked maintenance on the boilers in that building for years.  Some of his favorite stories he had to tell were about that boiler room and his faithful dog Boots.  Boots was about the most intelligent dog ever known to man.  He would fetch grandpa’s slippers, the newspapers, he would feed himself, pick up after himself, and even light grandpa’s pipe for him.   We could listen to those stories that grandpa would tell of his dog Boots for hours. 

Boots would go to work with grandpa down in the boiler room every day; they were inseparable.  Grandpa told us that he had even taught Boots how to take over the boilers for him in case he ever got sick.  One of grandpa’s friends was a metal worker and had made grandpa a small metal casting of Boots, which to this day I still proudly display as a doorstop for my office door.

Grandpa would tell us a few mild stories about his work, his dog Boots, or any other subject that would pop into his mind, and then he would settle back and get down to the serious business of telling the real stories; the scary kind of ghost stories that make you wish you could run away, but had you so engrossed that you could barely breath.  The kind of tales where witches would eat little children and ugly, warty trolls would hide under their beds. As he talked, his voice would get low and very intense.  His eyes would narrow and before we knew it we were sucked right into the story as an active participant.  As the suspense of the story increased, so would the size of our eyes.  As the witch started to cackle, as the wolf would let loose his blood curdling howl , or as the bear started to raise up on his hind legs and let out his deafening roar, our mouths would hang open and our fingers would dig deep into grandpa‘s arms out of sheer terror.

Just as the punch line was about to be delivered, grandpa would talk ever so softly, lean his head slightly forward, and then he would let out a blood curdling scream, “Arrrgh”; he would pop his false teeth out and grab the both of us in his big arms and draw us in close to him; then we would all laugh and scream with delight.

Those wonderful stories came to an end when my grandpa Hyde died at 76 years of age; I was just 17 years old.  I still remember the funeral; the family was all seated together in the front row of the chapel with the casket right in front of us.  I can still see the sorrow on my dad’s face as they wheeled the casket out from the room.  In one last bid of farewell and affection he lurched forward from his chair with tears in his eyes to hold on to the casket, longing for just one last time to be wrapped in those great big loving arms of my grandpa Hyde.