What's your most vivid childhood memory?

After a lifetime of farming he retired to our town, bought a house on 11th, a white two-story kiddy-corner across the street from one of my classmates (the only other lefthander), though not really a friend of mine, shy girl that I was, talented boy that he was. Years later I would be blown away by his rendering of honky-tonk on an old piano on Main Street outside his dad’s grocery store, the street closed off for Old Time Value Days. I remember we had the Harmonicats that year too. They weren’t from our town and they were really good, but I thought Billy was right up there with them. I don’t think he knew I existed.

11th street was ‘miles’ away from where we lived on 6th Street South---seems far when you’re nine and seven---and going there was like entering a different world.

The garage cum workshop had cool tools like a saw and a vise, and grandpa’d show us how they work and let us try, under careful supervision of course. And there was a wheelbarrow, red paint weathered, sides rotting, it had definitely seen better days. But we revelled in wheeling each other down the street in it, to a chorus of “Can I?”s from neighbourhood children stuck with tricycles, small bicycles with training wheels, sparkling red wagons or plain shank’s mare.

Grandpa’s house had the tallest swings around, they challenged us to fly. “I’m higher than you-u, na-na-na-na-na-na!” “No, you-re no-ot, I a-a-a-a-m!” And the trees we climbed, bravado-ing each other onto the flimsiest branches. But somehow we always knew when to head back to the trunk and sturdier branches. At grandpa’s house we were allowed to crawl down the stairs headfirst. Well, mom says we weren’t and if she had known that and about the trees she would have had a thing or two to say, if you know what I mean.

It was different when grandma died---no more sleepovers, no one to snug us to bed, lullaby us to sleep or tape up our knees when we fell.

But grandpa would come to our house and plant himself on a chair just there inside the livingroom so he could talk to mom, who was always busy with something, in the kitchen preparing a meal or maybe just passing through to tend to some child’s needs. And where he sat was an open invite for us kids to climb on him, show him our treasures and tell him all about our latest adventures.

“And then, grandpa, grandpa, you know what…?” tugging at his arm, feathering our fingers over his bristly chin, anything to draw his attention back from mom or sister or whatever else had grabbed it for a moment.

Plus, he was always good for a hug.

Sometimes he’d take us places, just us kids in the car, like when we went to the cemetery to help him weed and water a flower bed he’d planted on grandma’s grave, marked with ‘Helena’ on a small wooden homemade cross because the earth hadn’t settled enough yet for a headstone.