My hands are dirty, covered in grease, my foot hurts because I just tripped over something in my too small garage with too many bikes, I am annoyed at my kids for how much stuff is in every part of our townhouse and that is when I think of my paternal grandfather.
That the economics professor Gerry helped build the house he raised his family in, that in itself is a long story. But I am not thinking of him just because his family of 8 lived in maybe 1373 square feet and saw themselves as among the lucky ones. I am thinking about him as I knew him, an old man.
After Grandpa sold my father their little post-WWII house he and Grandma moved into a small apartment in a large building that to my delight looked out at working train tracks (I loved to count the train cars). I only ever knew them as apartment dwellers. Theirs was a place of calm and mostly quiet. It was a modest one bedroom plus den with a little kitchen and a bunch of old furniture and a couch so hard I remember preferring the floor to it. They each had their own chair, his a recliner, hers came with a pretty footstool. The whole place had a bit of a funny smell, like many places lived in by the elderly, probably from an ointment to relieve joint pain, clean but distinct. It had a rotary phone on the wall in the kitchen, with a tall chair beside it.
In the evenings, they would often watch a television channel that had the news moving across it in teletype, green screen, white words, if memory serves, no pictures or videos, no voice over, just classical music—come to think of it, maybe the tv was always on mute and the music was from their music cabinet.
That cabinet, a gift from their 6 children on one of their 50+ wedding anniversaries, took up the length of a wall and was waist high. I remember it as a beautiful piece of cabinetry containing built-in speakers on either end. In the middle you lifted a top and there was a record player, and a tape deck, a radio, and possibly an 8 track.
My grandparents, like many people of their time, loved music and dancing. One of their favourite stories was of their first meeting at a dance put on by a friend whose family owned a funeral parlour and let the kids host dances sometimes since they had the space and the sound system. For years after they could tell stories about times and places they had danced, who was there, what the occasion was, how much it all cost.
Near the cabinet there was a smaller piece of furniture, I can’t really see it in my memory, but I remember that is held a series of plastic briefcases. These were not the sort of briefcase my grandpa took to work as an economics professor supporting a large family, these were specially made for people like him, music lovers in the era of cassette tapes. They had special ridges in them to hold the tape cases in place.
Grandpa was meticulous about this. Each tape had a case with handwriting listing all the songs and their running times, each case had a place in the order. There was a master binder or two containing lists of tapes and the songs on them, both as the albums had come but also another list, his mind on paper, a thematic list of songs. He was, in many ways, obsessive about the music.
And this was one of the greatest joys of his grandchildren because he could not only sing to us and with us, not only play all sorts of music for us, teaching us about Elvis and how theme songs secretly tricked us into liking classical music, like the The Lone Ranger did with the William Tell Overture to generations of little boys, but he turned theory into practice by making us tapes.
I am sure these were not given as often as I think they were, they weren’t as often as the obligatory cookie plate grandma made sure we left with, however often he gave them they were always present in our house and in our cars. They were specially made just for us and contained the music he taught us to love, the Chipmunks and the Smurfs were particular highlights.
Today I think even more fondly of him as I recognize the depression era influence on his hobby: his need to know exact running times so as to use every second on every side of every tape. Waste not, want not, and all that.
We are all influenced by when and where we were raised. It shows up in the strangest of ways in our adult lives.
Today in my small one car garage I have been spending time fixing bikes of a variety of types and for a variety of reasons. My bikes get worked on because I am too cheap to pay someone else to unless I really don’t know how to fix a problem (which is still pretty often), waste not want not. But other bikes are thrown onto the blue Park Tools Repair stand as an act of love, keeping my wife’s bikes safe on the road because she smiles more when she commutes by bike; my kids bikes must be ready to jump curbs and race around, and, it turns out, my neighbours’ kids bikes too so that they have a better chance of falling in love with cycling, as well.
Some people look at our garage in the summer and think I might run a bike shop, they have no idea how mediocre my skills are. It’s just a passion brimming over the way my grandpa’s did, he hunched over the tape player starting and stopping recordings at just the right moment, I hunch over bike chains turning barrel adjusters just so.
As a time-stressed father I am learning first hand about how grandpa took joy in maintaining that collection; in showering his wife with the occasional gift of the perfectly bespoke tape for her to enjoy in her car, and in playing with the kids music for us grandkids.
Grandpa was a quiet man, I remember very few actual conversations with him though we spent many hours together and his music filled my childhood. He was a World War Two vet and like many of them he was not really one to share emotions, at least with grandkids. He was a generally quiet but powerful, calming, and loving presence in my life, I wish more people could have grandpas like him.
He’s gone now, he left me before I could truly appreciate him, as grandparents tend to do. I took him for granted as a benevolent kindly family member who could be trusted in all things, knew lots of stuff, and fostered a loving family environment, as children often do.
As I fix bikes preparing for spring riding though, I give thanks for him, because he taught me how to use a hobby to quietly love on others through action, and that’s a legacy I hope he would be proud of.
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