My grandfather, Thomas Russell Schuck would have been 100
years old last October. When that fact
was first brought to my attention it didn’t sound right to me. But after some figuring I did in my brain I
had to accept the fact that I had a close relative that was over a century
old. That doesn’t really bode too well
for my own mortality but I am no worse off now than I was before I found out so
I won’t dwell on it. I think that anyone
that was born 100 years ago deserves some
recognition, weather deceased or living.
So, though I may not have known him as well as others of his friends and
family, I’m going to write some of the things that I do remember about
him. Some of these things may only be my
own interpretation of him seen through the eyes of a child. Others may have seen him completely
differently. If that’s the case then
they can write their own personal tribute to him and maybe we can compare
notes. If enough people were to write
their perspectives on his life, maybe we could compile them together and write
a book. That would be the ultimate
tribute.
When I think of my grandfather I think of a loud man who
liked to watch TV while drinking wine with his shirt off. It’s too bad I couldn’t just leave it at “he
liked to drink wine”. That might make
him seem refined. However, I do think
that his missing shirt and over audible orator skills add an interesting twist
to his story. Throw in a belly that looked like it was about 9 months pregnant
and hair that was slicked back with baby oil and then I really think we’ve got
something started. No doubt there was a
lot more to him than these attributes but these are the first things that pop
into my head when I think about him. I
believe this memory comes post retirement and carries the message that he had
worked hard his whole life and by that time was done caring about what other
people thought. Of course he wore a
shirt and quieted down when he went out.
But in his castle, cultural etiquette was not going to stand in his way
of doing exactly as he pleased. You go
grandpa! I mentioned he was loud. To me, back then, he was yelling. But now I really think he was just loud. He wore a hearing aid, and now that I’m an
adult I can put two and two together and figure out that his yelling was
probably less that he was yelling and more that he was trying to hear himself
talk. I’m not saying that he was never
yelling. Just that he probably wasn’t
yelling as much as I thought. I spent many days at his house quietly
observing him while drawing on the scrap pieces of paper my grandmother would
pass out to entertain my brother and me.
I could sit at their house and draw for what seemed like hours. My brother and I would send countless picture
messages back and forth to each other.
I don’t know why this trick worked so well at my grandparents’
house. If my mom had handed me a paper
and pencil to entertain myself at home I would have looked at her like she was
crazy. Grandparents get away with stuff
that parents can’t get away with. Anyway,
as I said before, while I was over there I would mostly just draw and watch him
from afar until it was time to go home.
At this point he would call my brother and I over and plant a sloppy
kiss on each of us right on the mouth. I
never looked forward to leaving for this reason. However, he loved his grand kids and those
kisses were the tools he used to express it.
Since I want to be as accurate as I can I need to mention
that he could be benignly cantankerous.
I say benignly because it seemed like most of his outbursts were
directed at the television. Not all of
them, but most of them. I don’t blame him for being angry at the TV
either. This is before you had the
option of TiVo. Since television was
usually his past time of choice, that meant he had to sit through a lot of
stupid commercials. They irritate me too
– must be genetic- but I choose to handle them differently. I turn the radio/TV off and find something different
to busy myself with. Like most men, turning
it off was not a viable option for him so he released his frustrations by
yelling back at them. If they told him
he should buy a power tool, he might respond by telling them where they could
stick that power tool. If they wanted
him to start a weight loss program he might tell them to go to hell. He always had the perfect come back. Interestingly, if you could tear him away
from that little square box you could potentially turn that lion’s roar into a
kitten’s meow. I remember as a kid I had
been going through one of those sicknesses that it seems like kids are destined
to acquire. I guess it’s all part of
building up that old immune system. Anyway, I had a temperature of 104°. My head ached ferociously and I wasn’t
eating. I got up only to use the restroom,
which was not something I looked forward to doing. My parents, having been doctoring me for days
were out by the pool, coming in to check on me intermittently. My grandma and grandpa came over for a visit
in the middle of this scenario and while the adults were out by the pool, my
grandfather came in, kneeled by my side, took an icepack and started massaging
my head with it while he spoke soothing words to me. He stayed for a long time and as long as he
was there, I felt better. I didn’t want him
to leave.
While we had a typical California style back yard equipped
with a pool, my grandparents had a large back yard equipped with
adventure. It was quite large and the
view to any back neighbors they had was completely obstructed by a hedge of thick
oleanders that my cousins, brother and I used to like to play in. To us, it was like a jungle and we would
never tire of exploring in the oleanders.
We once heard a catfight somewhere in the hedges and we ran inside and
told our parents that there was an angry mountain lion creeping around back
there. We really thought that. Besides the oleanders, there was a b-b-q
grill that my grandmother had converted to a planter. At the right time of year you could wander
back there, open up the grill and pick fresh strawberries. Does life get better? They also had some interesting pets at
times. I remember they had a dog for a
while. A very short while. Presently, I’m really interested in what
happened to that dog. It just kind of
disappeared and I guess as a kid I just rolled with it and didn’t ask
questions. Not asking questions doesn’t
really sound like me as a kid though so more likely I’ve just forgotten. That sounds a lot like me. I remember teaching the dog the trick of
jumping up on me. I proudly showed my
grandmother my accomplishment and she just looked at my mom and rolled her
eyes. Too proud for words, I guess. The dog was short lived so I’ll move on to
the duck. I remember going to my
grandparents house one day and my grandmother rather nonchalantly informed my
father that they had a duck. We ran to
the back yard and sure enough, there was a duck. He was waddling around the back yard like he
owned the place. He wasn’t fenced in so
I know that the back yard was chosen by him because there was nothing binding
him to it. I’m not sure what drew him to
that yard but since he chose it, my grandmother was hospitable to it and fed
him. That lasted maybe a few weeks until
the neighbor’s dog got out. That’s when
the duck ended up becoming the benefactor rather than the beneficiary.
All said and done about the dog and the duck, we move on to
my grandpa’s cat, “Meow”. My brother and
I liked animals. We still do. And when we were taken to my grandparents’
house, besides sitting and drawing, we often busied ourselves with trying to
catch, touch or even take a glimpse of my grandpa’s cat. It did everything in its power to avoid
us. It was elusive. I remember one day I actually cornered it in
a bedroom. It was trapped between the
bed and the dresser and nothing was going to stand between me and snatching up
that cat. That’s when it hissed at me
with glowing eyes like the devil’s spawn to let me know that if I so much as
touched him he would shoot darts out of his eyes and turn me into a garden
gnome. Gradually I backed away, realizing
that any future attempts at catching him would be futile. I gave up on my game of “catch the cat”. It would drive me crazy when I saw my
grandfather sitting with it curled up in his lap. All he had to do was pat the chair and it
would jump up in his lap, do a few circles and lay down contentedly for as long
as my grandfather allowed. What did my
grandfather have to offer that I didn’t?
As I mentioned earlier, he secretly spoke kitten.
He often used to tell me in his “kittenese” that he only
cared to live long enough to see his grandkids graduate from high school. I guess he felt like once that happened, he
could rest knowing that he wouldn’t need to worry about us anymore. He was fortunate to be around for the
graduations of two of his 4 grand kids.
And I’m sure that by the time he passed away he was comforted knowing
that the other two were trending in the same direction.
By the time he reached his 70’s, he rarely left the
house. I read something recently that
talked about how introverts have to spend energy to be social while extroverts
have the advantage of gaining energy when they are social. Having acquired emphysema caused by too many
years of smoking cigarettes, I doubt he had a lot of energy to expend.
I wish I could expand on his life outside the home and
preretirement, but I only knew him for 20 years and I was a child for most of
it. I didn’t pay a whole lot of
attention to things that mattered. I
really don’t know a whole lot about his childhood or education. I know that he was adopted as an only
child. I know almost nothing about his
parents or how he was raised. I have a
feeling that life wasn’t easy for him but that’s all I can really say about
it. I know that he met my grandmother
through a friend (Chuck Abbott) who was married to my grandmother’s sister
(Mary) and that he worked as a butcher until he retired. (I do need to mention that being a butcher had it's benefits. I've never tasted beef jerky anywhere near as yummy as the jerky he used to make by laying out meat on the roof of his house in the hot Bakersfield sun. Soooo good.) Any more information anyone wants to share on
these matters will happily be inserted here on a future date.
What I do know, is that as of today he has 13 direct
descendants who are bustling about making their marks on the world and every
time they make a mark, so is he. His
surname, Schuck, connected to him, has been snuffed out but his posterity will
continue to flourish. He lived a humble
life but he did what needed to be done.
He got up and went to work every day to provide for his family. He fulfilled all of the basic duties of a
good husband and father and if it weren’t for him, I would not be here. So as rough around the edges as he might have
been, I owe him a debt of gratitude for doing the best that he could amid all
of the unspoken trials that life threw at him.
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