Aug. 23, 2007 - 21:13 MDT

GRANDPA

The only grandpa I ever knew was a "step-grandpa" the woman I knew as my Grandmother (my Mom's mother) was a single woman in my early life. She went to work at a high falutin hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico about the time I was getting a hold on life. While there she met an old prospector, hard rock miner who wooed her and married her and somewhere along the line he became the assayer of a moly mine in Red River, New Mexico and also ran the commissary there.

I never could figure out how such a hardbitten man, one who had spent so many lonely hours out prospecting and deep underground hard rock mining could be such a gentle, kind man and one who could relate to such a young man as I.

He gave me a rod and reel, bought me flies to fish with, shells for his 410 shotgun and after a short familiarization with said items turned me loose. Never did figure out how I gained his trust, but was very happy that he did have confidence in me, helped me to have some in myself.

On weekends I went with him, here and there, often to look at a mine he was thinking of buying. He never bought one and thinking back a bit about how old he was I came to the conclusion that looking at mines was a hobby of his. One thing I learned while on those expeditions was that water was always present in a mine, I had many a wet shoed episode learning that lesson.

He and Grandma had property, around the bend from Questa, New Mexico on the Taos road. The front of it faced that road and their adobe house was at the low end of a little valley between foothills. He had a well drilled at the higher end of his property and succeeded in getting a nice flow. He put in two dams and stocked the ponds with Trout. Occasionally he would sell Trout to the hotel in Red River, and when I was there in the summers I could fish at will. It was also my duty to feed the fish as well.

And the fish food came about like this. Sometimes in the evening after supper he and I would get in his Ford V8 Coupe and head out to a town that had never really been built. One that had roads and streets but little else. He gave me a little history on "Sunshine" town about our government planning on settling refugees from the Dust Bowl there, he also told me he wasn't sure why the town never came into being. I do know that it was on flat, dry land east of the Rio Grande which ran nearby (only too deep to provide irrigation to the town of Sunshine). We would hit there as the sun was on its downward trip and our recreation would begin. His car was a model that the windshield could be raised from the bottom outward. Just right for me to poke the 410 out the window, he would cruise and I would pot jack rabbits. About the time it was getting too dark to do much we would head back home.

Next day he would take the carcasses up to the commissary and in his spare time would grind the meat up, mix it up with some form of meal and bring it home to use as fish food.

He stirred my interest in many ways, in his assaying lab he had an Ainsworth scale (Ainsworths were manufactured in Denver), one of those fine precision scales that could weigh minute amounts of ore and such. I guess I have talked about this before, but one day he took a cigarette paper, weighed it and then put a fine pencil dot on the paper and proceeded to weigh the dot.

In our peregrinations he would buy us pop and sometimes lunch. But when traveling around with Grandma and my folks he never passed a Budweiser sign without a quick stop. The last time I was there I had grown old enough that he included me on a run to a local man's house who made fine home brew. Sure beat the brewery products it did.

I treasure the times we had together, the riding around the countryside, looking at mines and conversing with him about many things. I regret that things like World War Two came around, I was working a job and never got back down to see him and Grandma. During the war he got sick and died and Grandma came back to Denver to live, of course it was a lonesome thing for her, her husband gone and her daughter long dead, but she took Heather and I under her wing and helped us out immeasurably. She was a gruff lady and she and I would be at swords points often, yet I knew she loved me deeply as I did her.

We had her at our house during her last days, she finally was diagnosed with metastasized colon cancer, died not too long after the surgeon opened her, sewed her up without doing anything and told Heather and I that it had progressed too far for anyone to help her. She died several days later. Thus leaving another empty hole in my heart.

To the end of my days I will remember and treasure the memory of my Grandfather Steve The step relative that I knew as GRANDPA . . . . . . . . . . .

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