I was fortunate to have two of the greatest granddads a boy could have. This is a story about each of them.

Gran

My grandfather, Frank Swope Montgomery, whom we called Gran, was a living treasure. Gran, always had a twinkle in his blue eyes as though he was always ready to play some trick on you.

When my father was in Korea for a year during the early 50's, we lived in Florida in a small house in Pompano Beach where I attended the fifth and sixth grades. My grandparents lived off the intra coastal a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean so needless to say we saw them often.

Gran would take me to his office in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. After he got done there he would buy me a big frosty mug of A&W root beer. Sometimes he would drive me to one of his clients and I would wait in the car while he visited. There was no air-conditioning in cars in those days. We would drive around Pompano with the windows down, breeze blowing in our faces. The temperature was never unbearable...never too cold and never too hot. That was one of the nice things about living in Florida.

My grandfather had a bright mind and had discovered a couple of techniques for mental stimulation and relaxation. One method involved working crossword puzzles. When he got done, he would hand the puzzle to me with words like, "Now check it over and see if I got it right." Of course it was always right and even if it was wrong he knew I would never find which word was wrong.

His other way to relax was playing solitaire. He always played four types of solitaire. He would run through all four types in succession as though he were competing in a mythical grand slam. If he won a game he would say, "Yes, I would have won a lot of money in Las Vegas on that one."

Gran always had a unique way of slicing oranges. After peeling he would slice the orange in oblique angles which he felt brought out the maximum flavor. There was nothing sweeter than Indian River Navel oranges in those days. He introduced me to Mangoes for the first time. He sliced it similar to the way he sliced oranges and presented it to me with the simple statement, "Try a mango. Some people think it is the best fruit in the world." I soon had to agree with those people although I must admit my first impression was that it tasted like a cross between a peach and shoe polish.

My grandfather was a moral man but had a quick temper. Once in my youth, I was playing a game of solitaire at his feet while he read over some business papers. I decided for a joke that I would stack the deck so that the aces came out on top. I proceeded to win the game. I then admitted to my grandfather that I had stacked the deck. His reaction was short and curt. He spit the words out between clenched teeth and almost shook with anger as he spoke, "Don't ever cheat, Randy! Never cheat!"

That's all he had to say. For a person that meant more to me than just about anyone in the world to have that violent a reaction over something that I had trivialized stung like a knife being thrust into my chest. Sometimes it is the brevity of words, delivered with conviction, that carries the weight of a thousand lectures.

Grandpop

My "grandpop", Charles Edward Hughes, was the youngest of eight children of Elisha Woodfin Hughes and Indiana Smith. Grandpop had a quiet demeanor. However, underneath that exterior was a man of great courage.

A time comes to mind when my grandparents drove us to their old farm near North Vernon, Indiana. Friends who had purchased my grandparents farm always welcomed them back. They raised a large herd of sheep, some cattle, and a few hogs. One sheep, named Henry, had been orphaned as a lamb, and bottle-fed by my grandparents. When they appeared, Henry came running. One summer day, Grandpop had walked us down to the spring for a drink. The spring was clear, potable water that flowed out of a small cave and down to a pond where the hogs drank. I was about eight and my sister, seven.

A group of hogs lay at the top of the hill above the pond. All of a sudden, a large sow of about four hundred pounds tore down the hill toward us. What prompted her to initiate an attack upon us on this day I will never know. Had she succeeded there is no doubt that we would have been upended like bowling pins.

My grandfather quietly picked up a small log, waited until the hog was about 30 feet away and sent the log flying. What miracle guided his hand I do not know. No professional baseball player who had thrown ten thousand pitches could have delivered a more accurate blow. It hit the sow in her only vulnerable spot, her snout. She wheeled with a squeal and bolted in another direction. My grandfather never said a word about that act but to me he was an instant hero.

Grandpop had spent most of his life in Madison, Indiana. Except for a short period of time during the twenties when he, my grandmother, and my father lived in California. They ran the tourist shop in La Jolla, California above Sunny Jim's cave. This was a cave, carved by the Pacific, that resembled the profile of a cartoon character of the time called Sunny Jim.

Grandpop did accounting work for various firms along the coast while Granma Nee tended the tourist shop. But times got hard during the depression and they moved back to Madison. The tobacco business was good even during the depression years and since Grandpop's brothers ran the Hughes Tobacco Warehouse in Madison, some family member coaxed them back.

When I would visit my grandparents in Madison during the summer, Grandpop would normally drive me to the tobacco warehouse at least once. There was very little activity there during the summer. It was just a large dusty warehouse that smelled of aged tobacco. While Grandpop did some paper work, he let me use the adding machine. This was an amazing instrument for a young boy. I could key in 2 times 2 and it would hum and gears would turn and out would come the answer printed on paper.

But the time I would enjoy most with my grandfather began each evening about dusk. I would join him as he walked his black cocker the two blocks from their apartment down to the Ohio River. We would walk through the gardens of the Lanier Mansion, a large, white home, built about 1840 in the Greek revival tradition. It had a lawn, surrounded by bushes, that sloped down toward the Ohio River for fifty yards. As the curtain of darkness descended, fireflies would blink amid a chorus of crickets.

We would sit on a bench beside the river for maybe thirty minutes watching the barges inch along. He never had to say a word at those times. As I look back I think he had found a certain peace of mind that comes with living near a great river. When it is time for me to go, I would be content if my epitaph read simply, "He enjoyed, each evening, walking his dog down to the river 'midst the fireflies and crickets."