The other day, I was sitting with Marc, Jordan, and Joel in a booth at the Waffle House on Floyd Baker Blvd. We saw an old man sitting at the bar, drinking coffee and carrying on a one-sided conversation with a couple who sat near the window in a 2-seater booth. The couple nodded politely as the old man talked in cliches and well worn truths, but they weren't really listening, and that didn't matter to the old man, who obviously just wanted someone to talk to. I watched for a minute, then I mentioned casually, "My grandpa used to spend hours at the Waffle House near Waccamaw, right above his house. He would just sit there and drink coffee and talk to whoever came in."
"Not uhh," Jordan replied. "Why?"
"I don't know," I answered. "I think he was just lonely and wanted to talk to people. Helped him pass the time. We were going shopping at Waccamaw one afternoon, and we saw his truck at the Waffle House, and my sister and I told my mom to drop us off at the Waffle House while she went to Waccamaw. We went in and sat with him for a while at the bar and just sat and talked until my mom got through."
I started telling them a little more about my grandpa, and Jordan and Joel howled with laughter at the stories I was sure I had told them before.
"Haven't I told you that story?" I asked.
"No," they both exclaimed through their laughter.
"I need to tell you all about it. I need to write it down." I said.
So I am. Writing it down for Jordan and Joel and for their families one day, so they will know about my childhood and where I came from, so they will know where they came from.
I have a few clear images of my grandparents' house where I spent most of my childhood. I technically lived across the street from them in a small house on High Drive that directly faced my grandma's house, but I spent most of my time with my Grandma Silvey. My dad was a long-distance truck driver for Atlas Van Lines; he was gone at least three weeks out of every month, and when he was home, he parked his truck in the long, open back/side yard that rested behind the circular driveway in my grandma's yard. He learned to drive a truck from my Grandpa Silvey and from being in transportation in Vietnam when he was drafted in 1970. When he returned from Vietnam, my grandpa helped him get a job at Atlas Van Lines, even though my grandpa didn't hold a driver's job there for long. He never stayed with one company for very long - maybe a year or two - and then on to another company, but always driving a big rig throughout my childhood. When he would leave one company, my sister and I would play office with his left-over log books and travel forms from his old company.
Since my grandpa moved people around the country, he met hundreds of different and interesting people, drove into cities and towns all over the country, and brought back a yard full of junk those people had discarded. Specifically, I remember a dark tan leather pocketbook shaped to look like a horse's saddle, a pair of tin serving plates with dirty cartoons on them, an old, cast-iron lawn mower with blades that ran on pure human strength, not gas, and rusty tools, most of which I had no idea what he ever used them for or why he wanted them or kept them. But he kept them, kept them all. So many random items of junk that he built crazy little outbuildings from random pieces of tin roofing and a few wooden poles or beams to hold all the junk.
