Eric was lucky enough to have 30 years with his grandpa Vake; and Brook, 27. While Brook attended the University of Oregon, he spent relaxing weekends on the coast with Milly and Vake, and he lived with them summers while he worked out of the Mapleton Ranger Station. Vake lived long enough for Eric to be of age to bring him a bottle of Scotch, and he played games of cribbage with both boys. He made each one a cribbage board, and Brook commented “Great! Now I can have a home court advantage.” When Vake was in his mid-70s his arthritis had slowed him down considerably. When he mentioned his plans to climb onto the roof to clean moss off the shingles, his son Dr. Mark absolutely vetoed it. Not only do our joints get stiff with age, our reflexes slow down, and we can’t maintain our balances on ladders, Mark explained. Mark kept him off the ladder; but then, Vake retreated to his woodworking tools in the basement, and proceeded to use a vicious, wicked, unguarded table saw, moving slabs of wood into the spinning blade with his slow movements and his big, thick workman’s hands. It was terrifying to watch, but he never cut anything but the wood.
Brook laughed out loud at his grandfather’s colorful commentary and profanity, and collected these:
Whenever he visited, Vake and Milly loaded Brook up on comfort foods. That meant bacon, fried eggs, and pork sausage for breakfast. Brook was taking a few courses in nutrition at the time, and tried to resist some of the fat. “It’s good for you!” Vake proclaimed. “Lubricates the bowels.” (He used to horrify his daughters by saying that good food put hair on your chest.)
Brook admits that when he started at the forest service and filled up on Grandma’s cooking, he stepped on the scale one day and saw that he had jumped up 15 pounds, up to 185. He jumped off the scale. His first reaction was to wonder whether he had some kind of tumor.
Vake tripped and fell while he was clearing brush from the back yard. Brook asked if he were okay. “Hell yes, I’m an old bush whacker from way back,” he said.
“Brook! Brook!” Brook heard Vake yell, and came rushing downstairs, fearing the worst. “Brook, change it to channel 13!” Vake commanded. He couldn’t find the TV remote.
Milly like to watch “Murder She Wrote,” featuring Angela Lansbury. When it came on TV, Vake would call out, “Here comes your old busy-body again.” He had a similar comment for the “Mary Worth” soap-opera style comic strip. (But he wouldn’t have known about it if he hadn’t read it, if only secretly.) Similarly, when “Wheel of Fortune” came on, he announced “Here comes your goddamned spinning wheel!”
That’s reminiscent of our sitting around the dinner table in radio days before we got television in 1961. We listened to country and western music out of KUGN from Eugene, Oregon until it was time for Garner Ted Armstrong, “With the GOOD news about the WORLD tomorrow. “ At that point, one of the kids was ordered to get up and turn off the radio, and while you are up, pour some more coffee.
To Vake, almost every drama was a “Real stinker,” and Frank Sinatra “Sounds like sour owl piss.” On Wednesday night, he and Milly would load all four kids, and sometimes Patty, into the car to go watch a double-header of westerns at the Florence drive- in theater. While we munched on a grocery bag full of popcorn from home, he complained, “Randolph Scott is so old, he grunts when he gets on a horse.”
Somebody (Brook?) switched Vake’s glass of beer with a glass of cola. "Worst goddamn thing that I ever tasted" he said.
Before he and Johnnie retired, and all of Vake’s appliances came from Johnnie’s Western Auto store. Milly had a problem with her oven. Vake and Johnnie were down on their knees, peering into the oven, when it emitted an electric blue flash. From out of the kitchen came the simultaneous cry: “BULL. SHIT.” It turned out that Milly had been cleaning the oven and found a wire that got in the way. She got out wire cutters and removed it. It was the thermostat. “Please, the next time you want to cut anything, call me first,” pleaded Uncle John’s employee, Blair Sneddon.
As for the language, Milly admonished Vake for swearing in front of Eric and Brook. He disagreed. “I don’t want my grandsons growing up to say, ‘Oh my goodness gracious,’” he explained.
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