Summering in the Country

I’ll admit it, I used to “summer” in the country. Contrary to the social hot spots of today, Cape Cod, Malibu, or the Hamptons…I’d while away a couple weeks with my white Grandparents in Atascadero, translated from Spanish meaning “mud hole.”

I’d spend evenings on the porch, staring into the back yard and into the back 40 (slang for backyard, but for our purposes, the half acre outside the backyard down to the creek), listening to my Grandpa’s stories about how when his dad came home with his first car, he pulled on the steering wheel like reigns and said “woah” - crashing through the garage. Or how, when my Grandma grew up, you only had a couple new pieces of clothing and pork chops were of course, a nickel. Everything was organic.

My grandparents grew up during the depression, my grandpa tried to register for the army to fight in WWII, but was turned away from being too young (if I recall, he was 16). Later, he left Oklahoma to come out West, to operate a drop hammer at Northrop. He taught me how to fish, how to cut wood, how to wash your Oldsmobile and to take care of your stuff. My grandma, from the Ozarks in Missouri, taught me how to cook, to spell, and to knit (which, after seeing that, my grandpa made me cut wood).

I think, besides the various skills they taught me, I think the greatest lessons I learned were the intangibles. They taught me depression era-sensibility, integrity, and the mid-west idea of measuring a person by their worth and not their possessions. On these warm summer nights, when I flip through my 100 or so channels on TV, navigate through the various levels of conspicuous consumption at the mall, or sit around thinking about the complexities of life today, I think back to that porch with those faded gliders, and I’m glad, above all things, that my Grandparents made me good and grounded.