MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE

I wrote this in memory of my grandfather.

When I think of my grandfather I always picture the old house in Tarzana. That's where I spent my first years. It was kind of a crazy house. The bedrooms started out as a garage, and the kitchen was an uphill climb from the entry. Yet, I remember how so many things there reflected my grandfather; "Pampa" I called him.

I remember how he once offered me a medal if I could open the false-drawer front under the kitchen sink. I remember cowboy boots, and the huge paper-littered desk in the entry hall, and the driveway that seemed a mile long to my boyhood eyes. Room additions, horses, and a real-live corral in the backyard are indelibly etched in my mind.

I remember Christmases, summer vacations, and walnuts--green, brown, and black--littering the lawn. And the smells... Cigar smoke, polish, leather, fresh plaster, horses and tack. Hay, oats, straw, coffee and harsh, astringent, liniment.

I remember my grandfather himself; stern and often impatient with eight noisy grandsons, yet often holding me on his knee, tickling until I begged for mercy. A hard man to adequately describe in this age of sensitive males, he would not have been ashamed to be called a "man's man." He was tough and crusty, with little patience for fools. Yet there wasn't much he wouldn't do for you at need.

I guess the picture that typifies my grandfather is him, sitting at the breakfast table before dawn, coffee cup in hand, solving the problems of a weary world.

I remember my grandfather, Edgar G. Resh.