My grandad told me a lot of lies when I was a child because he thought it was hilarious and I don't know how many of them are true or not. I know he was a boxer for a while in the pubs and that we has in the navy during the war but he told me that he could swim under a ship and look for limpet mines on the underneath of said ship.
Is this true?!?! I don't know.
My Grandad on my Mom's side was the same way. He told me all sorts of crazy stories about fighting in the war, meeting Siamese twins, and how he fell in love with Sandra Templeton - he filled the common area outside of her dorm with her favorite flowers and proclaimed that he loved her and that he would marry her.
Also he worked for a werewolf.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
My granddad on my mother's side spoke fluent Czech and my great-granddad on my father's side spoke fluent Russian. Everything else is rather tragic. My granddad lost all of his siblings during World War II and he wasn't able to return to his homeland. As I was told the story, he walked on foot from a French PoW camp to the border to find it closed - he had been told about this, but hadn't believed it to be true. Unfortunately, he was never able to let it go.
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BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
My grandad told me a lot of lies when I was a child because he thought it was hilarious and I don't know how many of them are true or not. I know he was a boxer for a while in the pubs and that we has in the navy during the war but he told me that he could swim under a ship and look for limpet mines on the underneath of said ship.
My great-granddad's knowledge of Russian once saved his life while fighting on the Eastern Front. Soviet soldiers approached where he had taken cover and he shouted at them that there were only Russians at his position, so they ignored him.
My grandad told me a lot of lies when I was a child because he thought it was hilarious and I don't know how many of them are true or not. I know he was a boxer for a while in the pubs and that we has in the navy during the war but he told me that he could swim under a ship and look for limpet mines on the underneath of said ship.
My grandad told me a lot of lies when I was a child because he thought it was hilarious and I don't know how many of them are true or not. I know he was a boxer for a while in the pubs and that we has in the navy during the war but he told me that he could swim under a ship and look for limpet mines on the underneath of said ship.
Is this true?!?! I don't know.
do
do we have the same grandad????
Holy moly imagine if we did!!! We... we DO have a similar hair colour too!
Not many highlights to talk about regarding my grandparents. Well, aside from my maternal grandfather being at one time involved with the Order of the Solar Temple, even through and after the mass suicide (according to my mother, he was in denial about the whole thing for a while afterwards).
However, my girlfriend's grandfather is this guy (the one at 40 seconds):
My grandfather Simon avoided conscript labor in WW2 by getting a job at the National Railways which were deemed vital. This was used to create as many fake positions and overestimate labourtime etcet. so half the village ended up being employed there. He did some minor resistance work spreading around illegal newspapers but nothing big. Due to being called Simon, a last name that sounds jewish, and having the family big nose he did end up arrested twice while they sorted out his background.
After the war he basically worked his way up in the real estate world, moving from a clerk position to managing the maintenance and construction of a group of apartment buildings. His pride used to be that he was instrumental in building the biggest church in the village (heading the council to construct it and using his connections to get a better deal on loans and construction cost), but a few years ago it was torn down to make place for housing. He's a decent chessplayer, tennised until he was 82 years old, has the biggest sweet tooth known to man.
His wife, my grandmother Riet was born in Malang, Dutch Indies, the daughter of a colonial banker. Her fathers story is pretty impressive, son of a Russian captain who visited Amsterdam, got a local pregnant, and on the next voyage paid a lump sum of money to legally void any further responsibility, which the mother then used to get an education for her son well above her station. He married a catholic girl (a minor scandal in the Netherlands in the 1910s as a protestant), he was able to quickly rise within the bank and accepted the colonial assignment, which ended him up with a daughter, 4 sons, a large colonial villa with about 8 staff, and the 13th car ever seen in the province. (The one remaining photo of this Studebaker has a '13' as the license plate)
My grandmother was placed in a concentration camp in 1942 by the Japanese, the family was broken up into males and females in 1943 and placed 10 miles apart, and in 1945 both her parents died in short succession. She was 17 at the time. Soon after the Japanese surrendered, and while they were reunited, they had to wait a long time before the government before they were repatriated. By that time the Indonisian revolution was gaining momentum, and they were finally shipped to the Netherlands, where the siblings were spread out over distant relatives, and through the country. My grandmother happened to end up in the village where my grandfather lived.
They themselves had 5 children, and they both still live, 85 & 88, and their home is still the anchor for any family festivities. Though age has slowed them down considerably and medical issues are numerous (including problems resulting from the malnourishment my grandmother suffered), they are still sound of mind and interested in world affairs. They played scrabble against each other each afternoon for decades. Both of them can truely be held as examples of how to live your life, to be good, honest and caring.
My other grandparents are from Rotterdam, a city that suffered horrendous bombings during WW2, including the neighbourhood my grandfather lived in. He was sent to eastern Germany for conscript labour, but he has never divulged much to anyone about what went on there, though he took a long time getting home after the war ended, not until late fall 1945. And he did came home with an avid hatred of the Germans that never went away. My grandmother was the son of riverboat owners on the Rhine, and spent WW2 on this boat that was amazingly not commandeered. They met in Rotterdam in 1946, my grandfather worked in the harbour for a time as a crane-machinist, and in the 1960s they moved to become sacristan of a church in the village I grew up on. They did this until they retired, and then took on a part-time position in the church my other grandfather helped build.
Unfortunately my grandfather developed Alzheimer from about 70 years old, when I was 10, so my memories of him are a mix of hazy good times and increasing issues until he died at the age of 78. My grandmother managed to enjoy the final years left to her after that, though she passed away from a sudden heart attack at the age of 84.
My fathers dad was a pilot. When he was a young man he was told the government would teach you to fly a plane, for FREE, and give you planes to fly. Sure, there would be other planes trying to shoot you down, and you dropped a lot of bombs, but fuck that, Grandpa was gonna FLY. And so he did. He joined the Army Air Corps and flew a bomber in WW2. After the war was over, he stayed in as one of the pilots of Berlin Air Lift because, well, there was flying to do. After that ended he signed on with Norways first airline and made their very first trans-atlantic flight. Or maybe it was Sweden.... didn't matter. There was flying to do and he was gonna do it. Then he got a job with American Airlines, and flew for them for many years. After he retired he wasn't given free planes to fly anymore... so he built his own plane in his garage and flew that. In between all the flying he managed to have 4 children, 11 grandchildren, and two wives (after my grandmother died he got remarried to his high school sweetheart, he was in his 80s at the time) all of which he took into the air with him any time they wanted to go. He survived his first wife, married a second, and died at home.
My dads mother was a homebody mother of four married to a pilot. She was a sweet loving woman who sadly got parkinsons disease and died. However, she was sharp as a tact until the last, merely her body failed her.
My mothers parents were Texans. You know all those threads where people talk shit about Texas? My grandparents are part of why. They were sterotypical Texans, from boots to hats to racism. My mothers father was also in the army and retired as a Major, moving his family around the world wherever he was stationed before finally retiring in Texas. He got Alzheimers late in life, and completely forgot there were words starting with N that you weren't allowed to say anymore.
My mothers mother is still alive and kicking. She is a very mean lady, in that very proper, polite, nasty way that only elderly southern women can master.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Well my dad's dad was a minister in Africa and used to beat the duck out of my dad when my dad was a kid, so fuck that guy. My dad's mum was a pretty timid, beaten housewife that I never had much to do with since she was in New Zealand. It's sad that I never really knew her that well, but it's just one of those things
My mum's dad was an absolute champion. He fought as a rifleman in the pacific during WWII and he never really talked about his experiences but I could tell it had left him pretty disturbed. He wasn't a drinker, but every now and again he would get up in the middle of the night and drink the better part of a bottle of run. I remember when I was about 7 I went out and sat with him and ended up just sitting in his lap while he cried and it's probably my most powerful memory of him. He was a farmer so he was a hard man who worked long hours, doing hard work his entire life.
My grandad told me a lot of lies when I was a child because he thought it was hilarious and I don't know how many of them are true or not. I know he was a boxer for a while in the pubs and that we has in the navy during the war but he told me that he could swim under a ship and look for limpet mines on the underneath of said ship.
Is this true?!?! I don't know.
My Grandad on my Mom's side was the same way. He told me all sorts of crazy stories about fighting in the war, meeting Siamese twins, and how he fell in love with Sandra Templeton - he filled the common area outside of her dorm with her favorite flowers and proclaimed that he loved her and that he would marry her.
Also he worked for a werewolf.
I have that DVD.
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
My Dutch Grandparents
Opa was sentenced to death as a teenager by the German occupation force twice. He was a larrikin practical joker, small and nimble, and worked as a courier for the Dutch resistance. But that's not why he was sentenced to death. No, he was stubborn, obstinate, and proud (Dutch, right?), so would often take opportunities to insult Hitler, mock German officers, and generally make a nuisance of himself. One time he and a mate were doing something stupid - I forget what, but probably had to do with calling the Fuhrer an idiot or something - when the Germans caught them, and locked them up in a nearby chapel to get shot in the morning.
He wasn't about to have a bar of that, so he loosened a window, snuck out the back and then helped his mate out from the outside. Seeing as the Germans weren't exactly sure who they had caught, he got away with it, but he was sent to live with cousins for a few months and the local German force got rotated.
The second time I think he and his mate (different one) set up a manure catapult and managed to hit the car of a ranking German General. They both scarpered as the car stopped and the guards came out, firing in the bushes they were hiding in. Despite a search, and Wehrmacht soldiers standing not 5 paces away, they didn't find him, although a warrant was issued for his arrest. Of course, no one was ever actually going to turn him in, and by then the Allies were in France, so Germany had bigger fish to fry.
He eventually was the resistance member sent to make contact with the advancing American forces when they started moving East from the coast to guide them through the city and towards the German border (this was well after Market Garden, which took place to the west).
He ended up in the Dutch armed forces, and being practically at enlistment age as the war ended, was promptly put on a boat and shipped to the East Indies, where his spry reflexes and ability to narrowly avoid death served him well as a forward convoy scout, driving through jungle paths in a Jeep just far enough in front of military trucks full of ammo and supplies so that he would get ambushed instead of them.
Eventually that war ended, and he went back to Holland for just long enough to pick up his bride (they got married while he was posted overseas) and move her and half the family to New Zealand, where he hoped he could grow Tea. Unfortunately, tea isn't really suited to the climate, so he ended up becoming a successful businessman instead, both here and in Australia.
Oma, on the other hand, had a much more sedate war. Her father died before she was even old enough to know him, so she was raised by her mother and uncle. A few months into the German occupation, the Dutch resistance blew something up and her uncle was 'taken in' for 'questioning'. He had nothing to do with it, but they beat him so bad that he never recovered, and though technically the cause of death was 'bronchitis' shortly after his release, realistically that was just a complication of the Germans choosing to make an example of random healthy civilian males of working age.
Anyway, that left just my Oma, her mother, and her mother's mother in the house. So they did what any three-woman family under occupation would do. They hid Jews.
Two Jewish girls, roughly of an age with my Oma, who spent most of the war stuck in what was technically her bedroom, although she didn't sleep there. The two girls slept in her bed, and she slept with her mother, although when the searches came the girls would run into a secret crawlspace trapdoor between the floors, and Oma would get into her bed to explain why it looked slept in and more importantly who was sleeping there, because the Germans would check beds for body heat. Anyway, near the end of the war the heat became too much and the girls had to move on, so they left for Allied lines before the Germans withdrawl; after the war my Oma got a thank you letter, so they are known to have survived, but contact was not kept.
Anyway, Oma and Opa met during the war when Opa was raiding a work kitchen for scraps for hidden resistance members and she was working the kitchen for scraps for her extra girls. They started going out and even half a planet couldn't stop them writing to each other, so they figured they might as well go all the way.
One day back in the eighties my Grandmother had a ring at the door. It was a police officer. The officer asked if a Robert Smith was there.
She replied yes, that was her husband.
"We're here to give him this plaque. He didn't tell you? On the way home from work a month ago he saw a fire and heard screaming. He stopped, went inside and pulled a lady out and stayed with her till the fire dept arrived.
When my grandmother asked about this, and why he never told her he just said, 'Aww honey, I was on the way home and heard hollerin'. Anyone would have done the same thing, and I didn't see any reason to tell you bout it cuz it'd just make you mad."
I feel bad because he never told me this story while he was alive. I only got it second hand from my grandmother when I noticed the plaque.
tl;dr: My Grandpa in his fifties saved a woman from a burning building, then didn't tell anybody about it
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
My Grandfather
hoo boy
He was a naval officer and torpedo bomber pilot during WW2 and the Korean War, but saw action in neither - in both cases the war ended while his ship was en route to the conflict. After his military career he worked as a charter pilot, crop duster, and later on flying instructor, and walked away from two crashes. He kept the joystick from the second one he walked away from, which meant I had an actual Grumman Avenger joystick to play with when I visited which was basically the coolest thing ever. Well, that and his officer's saber, which he told me was his sword from when he was a pirate.
When my parents were kids, he tried to build his own sailing ship. Unfortunately, he was still in the Navy at the time, so he'd work on with them it while his ship was in port, and then it would sit there until he returned. Additionally unfortunate was his decision to build it in the living room of their house (my grandfather was a very smart man who often failed to think things through). After a few years of this my Grandmother had enough and made him scrap it.
My mother was a working single mom through most of my childhood, so from when I was 3 years old until my early teen years, my Grandfather was my biggest male role model, something he took very seriously. He taught me to ride a bike, how to catch and throw a ball, and how to always be on the alert. We lived next to him for most of elementary school, and water gun ambushes were a regular part of my life in the summer months. I remember quite vividly when Super Soakers were first introduced, as it marked a dramatic escalation in our endless war.
For my 16th birthday he let me fly an airplane (he was still working as a flying instructor.) That was pretty amazing. Takeoff, flying around town, everything except the landing. which he handled because there were other people waiting to use the runway.
He also had the greatest retirement plan for retirement I've ever heard of. He and his brother bought a boat (catamaran with 3 bunks and a galley) and proceeded to go wherever the fuck they wanted. Usually the Caribbean because it was warm and the rum was cheap and good, but they crossed the Atlantic with it a couple times as well.
My grandpa was a champion boxer in the navy during WW2, looking at old pictures of him looking like a ripped badass. Which was so weird because I was born when he was in his 70's, so I grew up with him being a sweet old man that would never hurt a fly.
I think I've told this story before, but he apparently had a pretty bad temper. One day he was out driving with my grandma, and a bus driver spit out the window in front of them. My gramps pulled in front of the bus to stop it, yanked the guy out, and proceeded to beat the ever living shit out of him for daring to spit in front of his lady. That was disrespectful apparently?
He also used to make up stories about my dog tubby following me to school in a yellow rain jacket, and how he couldn't believe I never noticed the dog get on the bus with me.
Oh oh! Literally one of my earliest memories ever is when I was maybe 5 or 6, and he farted then blamed me for it and no one believed it wasn't me. Thanks grandad.
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My Grandad on my Mom's side was the same way. He told me all sorts of crazy stories about fighting in the war, meeting Siamese twins, and how he fell in love with Sandra Templeton - he filled the common area outside of her dorm with her favorite flowers and proclaimed that he loved her and that he would marry her.
Also he worked for a werewolf.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
do
do we have the same grandad????
That revelation would be the shiiiiiiiiit
Holy moly imagine if we did!!! We... we DO have a similar hair colour too!
However, my girlfriend's grandfather is this guy (the one at 40 seconds):
After the war he basically worked his way up in the real estate world, moving from a clerk position to managing the maintenance and construction of a group of apartment buildings. His pride used to be that he was instrumental in building the biggest church in the village (heading the council to construct it and using his connections to get a better deal on loans and construction cost), but a few years ago it was torn down to make place for housing. He's a decent chessplayer, tennised until he was 82 years old, has the biggest sweet tooth known to man.
His wife, my grandmother Riet was born in Malang, Dutch Indies, the daughter of a colonial banker. Her fathers story is pretty impressive, son of a Russian captain who visited Amsterdam, got a local pregnant, and on the next voyage paid a lump sum of money to legally void any further responsibility, which the mother then used to get an education for her son well above her station. He married a catholic girl (a minor scandal in the Netherlands in the 1910s as a protestant), he was able to quickly rise within the bank and accepted the colonial assignment, which ended him up with a daughter, 4 sons, a large colonial villa with about 8 staff, and the 13th car ever seen in the province. (The one remaining photo of this Studebaker has a '13' as the license plate)
My grandmother was placed in a concentration camp in 1942 by the Japanese, the family was broken up into males and females in 1943 and placed 10 miles apart, and in 1945 both her parents died in short succession. She was 17 at the time. Soon after the Japanese surrendered, and while they were reunited, they had to wait a long time before the government before they were repatriated. By that time the Indonisian revolution was gaining momentum, and they were finally shipped to the Netherlands, where the siblings were spread out over distant relatives, and through the country. My grandmother happened to end up in the village where my grandfather lived.
They themselves had 5 children, and they both still live, 85 & 88, and their home is still the anchor for any family festivities. Though age has slowed them down considerably and medical issues are numerous (including problems resulting from the malnourishment my grandmother suffered), they are still sound of mind and interested in world affairs. They played scrabble against each other each afternoon for decades. Both of them can truely be held as examples of how to live your life, to be good, honest and caring.
My other grandparents are from Rotterdam, a city that suffered horrendous bombings during WW2, including the neighbourhood my grandfather lived in. He was sent to eastern Germany for conscript labour, but he has never divulged much to anyone about what went on there, though he took a long time getting home after the war ended, not until late fall 1945. And he did came home with an avid hatred of the Germans that never went away. My grandmother was the son of riverboat owners on the Rhine, and spent WW2 on this boat that was amazingly not commandeered. They met in Rotterdam in 1946, my grandfather worked in the harbour for a time as a crane-machinist, and in the 1960s they moved to become sacristan of a church in the village I grew up on. They did this until they retired, and then took on a part-time position in the church my other grandfather helped build.
Unfortunately my grandfather developed Alzheimer from about 70 years old, when I was 10, so my memories of him are a mix of hazy good times and increasing issues until he died at the age of 78. My grandmother managed to enjoy the final years left to her after that, though she passed away from a sudden heart attack at the age of 84.
My dads mother was a homebody mother of four married to a pilot. She was a sweet loving woman who sadly got parkinsons disease and died. However, she was sharp as a tact until the last, merely her body failed her.
My mothers parents were Texans. You know all those threads where people talk shit about Texas? My grandparents are part of why. They were sterotypical Texans, from boots to hats to racism. My mothers father was also in the army and retired as a Major, moving his family around the world wherever he was stationed before finally retiring in Texas. He got Alzheimers late in life, and completely forgot there were words starting with N that you weren't allowed to say anymore.
My mothers mother is still alive and kicking. She is a very mean lady, in that very proper, polite, nasty way that only elderly southern women can master.
My mum's dad was an absolute champion. He fought as a rifleman in the pacific during WWII and he never really talked about his experiences but I could tell it had left him pretty disturbed. He wasn't a drinker, but every now and again he would get up in the middle of the night and drink the better part of a bottle of run. I remember when I was about 7 I went out and sat with him and ended up just sitting in his lap while he cried and it's probably my most powerful memory of him. He was a farmer so he was a hard man who worked long hours, doing hard work his entire life.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
went on to do some amateur boxing and joined the navy when he was 16
he married my gran when they were like 19 and they stayed married for 60+ years (holy fuck)
he went on to work for the railways and was a security guard before he retired
always worked with his hands, always active
he had his hips, knees and shoulders replaced and was still gardening (his one true passion) right up til he had major heart failure
my earliest memory was my grandad rocking me on his knee singing a song about taking a horse to the fair
god i miss him
I have that DVD.
Opa was sentenced to death as a teenager by the German occupation force twice. He was a larrikin practical joker, small and nimble, and worked as a courier for the Dutch resistance. But that's not why he was sentenced to death. No, he was stubborn, obstinate, and proud (Dutch, right?), so would often take opportunities to insult Hitler, mock German officers, and generally make a nuisance of himself. One time he and a mate were doing something stupid - I forget what, but probably had to do with calling the Fuhrer an idiot or something - when the Germans caught them, and locked them up in a nearby chapel to get shot in the morning.
He wasn't about to have a bar of that, so he loosened a window, snuck out the back and then helped his mate out from the outside. Seeing as the Germans weren't exactly sure who they had caught, he got away with it, but he was sent to live with cousins for a few months and the local German force got rotated.
The second time I think he and his mate (different one) set up a manure catapult and managed to hit the car of a ranking German General. They both scarpered as the car stopped and the guards came out, firing in the bushes they were hiding in. Despite a search, and Wehrmacht soldiers standing not 5 paces away, they didn't find him, although a warrant was issued for his arrest. Of course, no one was ever actually going to turn him in, and by then the Allies were in France, so Germany had bigger fish to fry.
He eventually was the resistance member sent to make contact with the advancing American forces when they started moving East from the coast to guide them through the city and towards the German border (this was well after Market Garden, which took place to the west).
He ended up in the Dutch armed forces, and being practically at enlistment age as the war ended, was promptly put on a boat and shipped to the East Indies, where his spry reflexes and ability to narrowly avoid death served him well as a forward convoy scout, driving through jungle paths in a Jeep just far enough in front of military trucks full of ammo and supplies so that he would get ambushed instead of them.
Eventually that war ended, and he went back to Holland for just long enough to pick up his bride (they got married while he was posted overseas) and move her and half the family to New Zealand, where he hoped he could grow Tea. Unfortunately, tea isn't really suited to the climate, so he ended up becoming a successful businessman instead, both here and in Australia.
Oma, on the other hand, had a much more sedate war. Her father died before she was even old enough to know him, so she was raised by her mother and uncle. A few months into the German occupation, the Dutch resistance blew something up and her uncle was 'taken in' for 'questioning'. He had nothing to do with it, but they beat him so bad that he never recovered, and though technically the cause of death was 'bronchitis' shortly after his release, realistically that was just a complication of the Germans choosing to make an example of random healthy civilian males of working age.
Anyway, that left just my Oma, her mother, and her mother's mother in the house. So they did what any three-woman family under occupation would do. They hid Jews.
Two Jewish girls, roughly of an age with my Oma, who spent most of the war stuck in what was technically her bedroom, although she didn't sleep there. The two girls slept in her bed, and she slept with her mother, although when the searches came the girls would run into a secret crawlspace trapdoor between the floors, and Oma would get into her bed to explain why it looked slept in and more importantly who was sleeping there, because the Germans would check beds for body heat. Anyway, near the end of the war the heat became too much and the girls had to move on, so they left for Allied lines before the Germans withdrawl; after the war my Oma got a thank you letter, so they are known to have survived, but contact was not kept.
Anyway, Oma and Opa met during the war when Opa was raiding a work kitchen for scraps for hidden resistance members and she was working the kitchen for scraps for her extra girls. They started going out and even half a planet couldn't stop them writing to each other, so they figured they might as well go all the way.
She replied yes, that was her husband.
"We're here to give him this plaque. He didn't tell you? On the way home from work a month ago he saw a fire and heard screaming. He stopped, went inside and pulled a lady out and stayed with her till the fire dept arrived.
When my grandmother asked about this, and why he never told her he just said, 'Aww honey, I was on the way home and heard hollerin'. Anyone would have done the same thing, and I didn't see any reason to tell you bout it cuz it'd just make you mad."
I feel bad because he never told me this story while he was alive. I only got it second hand from my grandmother when I noticed the plaque.
tl;dr: My Grandpa in his fifties saved a woman from a burning building, then didn't tell anybody about it
hoo boy
He was a naval officer and torpedo bomber pilot during WW2 and the Korean War, but saw action in neither - in both cases the war ended while his ship was en route to the conflict. After his military career he worked as a charter pilot, crop duster, and later on flying instructor, and walked away from two crashes. He kept the joystick from the second one he walked away from, which meant I had an actual Grumman Avenger joystick to play with when I visited which was basically the coolest thing ever. Well, that and his officer's saber, which he told me was his sword from when he was a pirate.
When my parents were kids, he tried to build his own sailing ship. Unfortunately, he was still in the Navy at the time, so he'd work on with them it while his ship was in port, and then it would sit there until he returned. Additionally unfortunate was his decision to build it in the living room of their house (my grandfather was a very smart man who often failed to think things through). After a few years of this my Grandmother had enough and made him scrap it.
My mother was a working single mom through most of my childhood, so from when I was 3 years old until my early teen years, my Grandfather was my biggest male role model, something he took very seriously. He taught me to ride a bike, how to catch and throw a ball, and how to always be on the alert. We lived next to him for most of elementary school, and water gun ambushes were a regular part of my life in the summer months. I remember quite vividly when Super Soakers were first introduced, as it marked a dramatic escalation in our endless war.
For my 16th birthday he let me fly an airplane (he was still working as a flying instructor.) That was pretty amazing. Takeoff, flying around town, everything except the landing. which he handled because there were other people waiting to use the runway.
He also had the greatest retirement plan for retirement I've ever heard of. He and his brother bought a boat (catamaran with 3 bunks and a galley) and proceeded to go wherever the fuck they wanted. Usually the Caribbean because it was warm and the rum was cheap and good, but they crossed the Atlantic with it a couple times as well.
I think I've told this story before, but he apparently had a pretty bad temper. One day he was out driving with my grandma, and a bus driver spit out the window in front of them. My gramps pulled in front of the bus to stop it, yanked the guy out, and proceeded to beat the ever living shit out of him for daring to spit in front of his lady. That was disrespectful apparently?
He also used to make up stories about my dog tubby following me to school in a yellow rain jacket, and how he couldn't believe I never noticed the dog get on the bus with me.
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