\u201cI do believe if a man could go back in time, he\u2019d fight to stay there.\u201d Grandpa Jones rarely opined on anything except the weather, so when he finished watching yet another John Wayne movie \u2e3aone of the fifty old timey movie collections that Walmart sold in tin cans \u2e3awe all exchanged surprised, self-congratulatory grins. Happiness for less than twenty bucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d Harrison asked before we could make a hasty exit. He was the youngest of us at seventeen. Jackson was twenty, and me, Monroe, I was twenty-one. Grandpa was old enough to remember dial phones and forty-five records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe that Kentucky was once considered the \u2018west\u2019 but it\u2019s true. People didn\u2019t know they\u2019d have to hack their way through five hundred miles of thick forest to get to the real west, and another two hundred miles across the prairie to the desert. Imagine seeing that open space! Not parks or endangered animal preserves, but real open, empty space. To see America like the Garden of Eden. It sure didn\u2019t take long for it to fill up with folks intent on making it a breadbasket. Then Eisenhower decided we should have highways like he\u2019d seen in Germany, and we got car culture. People could move so quickly. Away from family, friends, and communities. All in the name of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We regretted \u201cMr. Polite\u201d Harrison\u2019s question. Grandpa was going to give us one of his long, long, long answers if we didn\u2019t cut him short, so when Harrison gave me his \u2018rescue me\u2019 signal, I interrupted. \u201cSure must have been something alright. Hey, what say we take advantage of the break in the snowfall, Harry, and go to Mickey Dee\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m game!\u201d Harrison scrambled to his feet, pulling on his hoodie as he headed for the door. \u201cC\u2019mon, Jack, don\u2019t you want to go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had my keys in hand, and was reaching for the wool coat Mom got me for Christmas. Jack didn\u2019t stir. \u201cNaw, you guys go on.\u201d He looked to me like he was content to stay on the floor, leaning against the sofa in front of the T.V. Harry went to the car, but I had to find my wallet, so I was within ear shot when Jackson said, \u201cI sort of went back in time, Grandpa. I think you might be right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hadn\u2019t noticed it, but Jackson\u2019s voice had deepened since he finished boot camp at Great Lakes. We were all so anxious to open presents last night, nobody said much of anything but wow! and thanks! I wanted him to come to Mickey Dee\u2019s partly to catch up since he\u2019d decided to join the Navy instead of following me to UK. I felt a little betrayed that he\u2019d gone his own way and here he was doing it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I heard Harry honk the horn. \u201cYou bring back enough for everybody,\u201d I told him as I handed him two twenties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019re you gonna do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJack\u2019s fixin\u2019 to tell one of his salty sea ditties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to hear\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went to the back door and busied myself in the kitchen so I could listen in. \u201cI got two weeks leave after graduation, but northern Illinois looks so much like Kentucky, I decided I\u2019d take my time getting to corpsman training school in San Diego,\u201d I heard Jackson say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh, your pilot must have flown low\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo, I took the train. Caught the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles and then the Starlight down to San Diego. Just like you did, Grandpa. Man, what trip!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d forgotten Grandpa was in the Navy, too. And the day Jack and I found that old duffle bag in the garage that had all of Grandpa\u2019s crap in it. Bell bottoms, a pea-coat, snake guards \u2e3aas if there were snakes aboard ship \u2e3afor his boots, and his sailor\u2019s hat. Dixie cup, he called it. Everything smelled of moth balls, but Jack didn\u2019t care. He put on the hat and coat, and said it must have been quite an adventure to go to sea. What did I expect from a guy who actually read Moby Dick<\/em>? I called him Ishmael until he punched me in the arm so hard I almost cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve got another Christmas present for you, Grandpa\u201d Jackson said. He came towards the kitchen and I yanked open Mom\u2019s china cabinet and took out four of her everyday white plates. \u201cBack so soon?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo, I sent Harry on an errand. You know how he wanted to drive my Bel Aire. This way I don\u2019t have to cringe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He reached up to the top of the cabinet and brought down a box wrapped in silver paper and a red ribbon. \u201cGot this special for Gramps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat is it?\u201d I whispered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA model.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He took the box to the living room, and I heard Grandpa say, \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to do that, Jack, but I\u2019m glad you did. Lookie here, Monroe. It\u2019s a replica of the Southwest Chief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no sense pretending I wasn\u2019t there, so I came out and admired the tin engine. \u201cYeah, that\u2019s cool.\u201d Grandpa shoved it into my hand. For my money, it had \u2018MADE IN CHINA\u2019 look, but the tag read Souvenir of New Mexico, twenty-five dollars. I handed the trinket back to Jack and resisted the temptation to tell hi he got ripped off. What do I know about trains? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRode the Chief in 1965.Could have spent my whole life going back and forth across the country in it. Then my baby-girl marries a Bluegrass fella and twenty-five years and six hours later here I am.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ingrate, I thought. Because of him, I had to give up my room and move in with Harry, which meant I had to get an apartment that screwed my college budget to hell. Jack didn\u2019t take it that way, though. He gave Grandpa a pat on the shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In any case, he and Jack were sharing something I wasn\u2019t a part of. It was silly, but I was jealous. No, I felt cramped inside a small Kentucky box. I got to see great basketball games, and once I went to the Kentucky Derby, but it was as though my whole life could be summed up in one phrase: Go Big Blue! Their big blue was the Pacific Ocean. And the fifty-one years between them was crossed in a choo-choo train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou know,\u201d Jack said, \u201cI think that must be what heaven is like. Like riding through endless emptiness, but safe because you\u2019re not alone. Like that Mohave night sky when it\u2019s just you and God looking at the stars.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Grandpa put on one of those faces I\u2019d seen on my English Lit teacher when she read poetry. \u201cMy father said much the same thing about his trip west. He and my Uncle Leland left on top of a train, not in one, though. Times was so hard in the Depression, lots of folks had to leave big families. They sure did hate leavin\u2019 home. It\u2019s a hard thing, leavin\u2019 home. Some can do it, and some can\u2019t and still be happy. Green trees and pastures sure ain\u2019t my favorite color. I\u2019m partial to red and rust, yellow and sand. God, how I wish I could have seen the buffalo roam. What a sight that must have been!\u201d I knew I wasn\u2019t a part of the conversation then. I half expected them to burst into a chorus of Home of the Range<\/em>, and decided to wait for Harry in the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t wait long. The three of us piled into Jack\u2019s Toyota, and met Mom and Dad at the hospital. It was too late for good-byes by the time we got there. Harry must have thought he didn\u2019t need a seat-belt in that big boat of a car. A rear-end collision sent his head through the windshield. Jack told me it was merciful they\u2019d bandaged his face too. He\u2019s a medic, so he\u2019d know, I guessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We all went to the chapel and cried, except Grandpa. He just sat there with his arm around Mom\u2019s shoulder, staring at the altar. And beyond it into space. Strange that the whoops! baby was the first to go. A joyful accidental birth had ended in a tragic accidental death. We\u2019d never have another merry Christmas, I remember thinking. I suppose I was crying for the future, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then again, people think about all kinds of weird stuff in a crisis. I believe it protects them from reality. Like the reality of seeing dried blood on white leather upholstery. Like the reality of hearing an insurance adjustor saying I was lucky I carried comprehensive on a vintage Chevy. I almost slugged the guy but my arms weighed a thousand pounds. \u201cYou were smart to itemize every customization,\u201d he said. Yeah. Smart. The twenty-four-grand from the General Insurance Company paid for Harry\u2019s funeral and a used Ford pick-up to get me to school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I gave up my apartment and moved back home. It was closer to my job at Hitachi, and my paying rent helped my parents with the hospital bill. \u201cI\u2019ll be next,\u201d Grandpa announced on Valentine\u2019s Day, and told us Jack had invited him to San Diego. Jack worked at the Naval Hospital and there was adult center on base. \u201cJack says I can work on the vet\u2019s registry with the other guys. They\u2019re trying to reconnect people who served on the decommissioned ships, especially us \u2018Nam guys,\u201d Grandpa explained. It sounded to me more like senior day-care, but there was excitement in his newscast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought my parents would object, but they seemed relieved when Jack mailed his air-fare. I thought about Grandpa\u2019s Dad and his Uncle Leland leaving home during the Depression. Grandpa was one less wound to care for while they tended their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for me, as the days wore on, I felt less and less like a UK Wildcat and more and more like a caged cat. I stopped going to keggers on the week-ends and worked overtime instead. Jack was Jack, but Harry had been my biggest fan. Come to think of it, I\u2019d been Harry\u2019s biggest fan. I\u2019d promised we\u2019d rent a two-bedroom as soon as he turned eighteen. What could be better than to have a roommate I\u2019d known all his life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What would have been his high-school senior year passed quickly. As usual, my parents fed the needy at St. James\u2019 Church on Christmas Day, but by May they couldn\u2019t bear the graduation hoopla at the high school. They maxed out their credit cards and booked a cruise to Aruba \u2e3ato salvage their sanity, they said. \u201cWill you be okay by yourself for a week?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSure, I\u2019ve saved enough to get my truck painted. And my friend, Chewy? His brother owns a body shop in Lexington. We\u2019re going to put a primer on it, and Chewy\u2019s brother gonna paint it amber orange. I got big plans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a lot of memories. I\u2019d already started a box to put them in. Like the March Madness ticket stubs Harry and I kept, and the Algebra for Dummies<\/em> book we ignored. I was supposed to tutor him. Then there was Grandpa\u2019s tin train engine he forgot. Jack reminded me to send it at least a dozen times, but I never got around to it. Too busy with summer school so I could graduate mid-term. Too this. Too that. The paint job could wait. Maybe Grandpa couldn\u2019t. I don\u2019t know why, but by the time I dropped the parents off at the airport, getting that little tin toy to him became the only thing that mattered. It was time to saddle up, Pilgrim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I loaded the box in my truck, along with my clothes, and put the engine on the dash, drove Hwy 65 South, and turned right onto Hwy 40. \u201cYou don\u2019t even need a map,\u201d Jack had told me about his driving the Toyota back to San Diego. \u201cYou just keep on going West until you run out of road.\u201d Yep, now it was just me and ol\u2019 Duke Wayne lookin\u2019 for God in a place called Nostalgia where never is heard a discouraging word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do believe if a man could go back in time, he\u2019d fight to stay there.\u201d Grandpa Jones rarely opined on anything except the weather, so when he finished watching yet another John Wayne movie \u2e3aone of the fifty old timey movie collections that Walmart sold in tin cans \u2e3awe all exchanged surprised, self-congratulatory grins. … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ryan-redcay-XdxgVzNnU4U-unsplash.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, and taught Sociology and Political Science for over twenty-five years. Favorite song? My Heroes Have Always Been Mathmeticians, thus her dream studying engineering. She lives in Kentucky and writes full time. Her works are available at Lulu.com<\/a> and Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"