Tank Man

I love my extended family.  I grew up with some of the best cousins a guy could ask for.  Coop, Corey, Jared, Dusty, Trent…..Mike and Ashley were younger but me and Mike get to spend a lot of time together in adulthood.  I’ve come close to ending Ashley’s life a couple of times but she is the only girl so what can I say?  I grew up idolizing my uncle Greg and still do in a lot of ways.  My Untee Ann and I have always had a lot in common, including our sense of humor.  Nancy and I have always loved the same movies.  Speedy was the best pony league baseball coach in Camilla Rec Ball history.  He wore the shortest shorts too.  Had a lot of great times with Bean and Sla too.  But the two men responsible for this whole crazy thing have always been at the top of my list.  My papa, Charles and my granddaddy, Grover.  For now, I’m going to focus on Grover.  Charles will get his own story too soon.

Grover Shiver was a one of a kind man.  I’m sure everyone’s grandfather is but this man was unlike anybody I’ve ever met.  First, I don’t recall meeting many people that didn’t like him.  I’m sure there were some because he didn’t mind telling it like it was.  He was stubborn, kind, tough, loving, funny, serious, all wrapped into one.  He kinda had to be with the kids he had around him.  I’m lucky to have ever met him at all based on the wild stories we heard about how our parents drove him nuts.  I think he got his revenge on them quite often though.

I may get some details of this one wrong but the meat is what it’s all about.  My dad and uncle speedy had bicycles that apparantly had no handlebar cushions.  Not a rarity in those days I understand.  They were no doubt just like most brothers who liked to antagonize each other.  One of them was riding the bike while the other decided it would be a good idea to chase the bike rider with a snake (could’ve been a dead chicken, I don’t remember).  One key part of the story is that Grover had a nice vehicle.  Nice.  Let’s just say the game got out of hand and the metal handle bars did not mesh well with the side of that car.  Not a recipe for a good time.  I think my dad said that’s the worst whoopin he’d ever gotten.  It was either that event or the time he and Speedy flooded the house.  Yeah.

Granddaddy had an awesome but rather twisted sense of humor.  He was always looking to prank somebody.  In his older days, it was hiding behind doors and in closets scaring the grandkids.  If I ever walked in and he wasn’t in his chair, I was on red alert.  My sonar was pinging like crazy.  It didn’t matter though because the hiding spot was always different.  He would even move his vehicle to the back of the house to make you think he wasn’t home if he knew you were coming.  He pulled out all of the stops.  I can still hear his deep bellows from some dark part of the house, inviting you to try to find him.  It was too much to resist and it always turned out scaring you even though you knew what was happening.  That was tame compared to some of the pranks he pulled on others.  Dad told me about 4 am water gun soakings as granddaddy would get ready to go to work.  He’d bust in the room and soak them down in their beds. The way Dewey likes to sleep, I would think that made them even for the car damage.

Another classic was the stuffed rattlesnake.  He drove a gas truck for a living and would carry this rattlesnake with him to scare people.  He would set the snake up in the floorboard of the truck and ask some attendant or tank worker to go get something out of the truck.  It was someone handpicked that was afraid of snakes I’m sure. The door would open and that rattlesnake would be staring eye to eye with them in a strike pose.  He’s lucky no one ever had a heart attack.  Others fell victim to his hot coins.  Most people know that it gets smoldering hot in our neck of the woods.  Cars are even hotter.  He would get out at the store he was hanging out at and place coins on the hood of his car.  Then he would go inside and wait for someone to see the coins and decide they wanted them.  It was always hot potato and he would be seen laughing.  That is one thing about all of his pranks.  He could not hide who was responsible.  The laugh always gave it away.

Even though he would give himself away with the pranks, he had an excellent poker face when it came to fibs.  He could have you believe almost anything.  Of course, a lot of times that would lead you to trying to do something you had no business doing and that would lead to the laugh.  His go to when we would be fishing was the monster catch.  His favorite fishing was bream fishing.  Everybody knows they don’t grow very big.  They are just small panfish.  Now there are big bream but the species is not large.  The big ones he called “titty bream” because you’d have to hold them against your chest to take them off of the hook.  It didn’t matter what size he would catch though, you would think he had a Marlin and it would take him about that long to pull it in.  He used bream busters well after rod and reels became popular and he would play with the same ole small fish on the pole while you caught three fish.  “Get the net” he would say.  I’m pretty sure Aesop had him in mind when he wrote “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

One of the coolest things for me was when he would let me shave him for a dollar.  He’d give me the electric razor and lean back in his chair and get me to shave him.  Looking back, he was quite the crude businessman.  One dollar saved him quite a bit over the years in comparison to a barber shop.  But to me at the time, I would have done it for free.  He would let us do a lot of what we thought were grown up things.  I remember him letting us drive around the neighborhood when we could barely reach the pedals.  I had a little bit of an advantage over the others because I lived right down the street.  I was off to his house almost daily.  I spent as much time there as I did my own house for many years.  We’d sit in that living room and watch the Braves, NASCAR, drag racing and fishing shows.  

He taught me a lot about life too.  They weren’t things that I picked up on immediately but there are things I do today that make me think of him and something he would do.  He did right.  He worked hard, took care of his family, loved his grandkids and kept his name in good standing.  He was a man of his word and people knew that.  He had friends across multiple generations and races.  He was a man’s man in every sense of the word.  He would work his tail off and would still have fun when it was over.  He owned a room with his laughter and jokes.  He was what I want to be everyday.

My dad is very similar to how my granddaddy was so I had double exposure.  I am thankful for that though because my girls never got the chance to meet my granddaddy.  But he lives on through Dewdah.  In June of 1997, grandaddy passed away after a brutal fight with Leukemia. He had some tough health issues later in life and it took a toll on him.  I watched that disease take away the prankster.  It wore him out.  I remember when he was in his bed the last few days.  The family was all gathered and spent time with him.  He had friends come and see him and he would light up and reminisce.  When they were gone, he would be spent.  I’m pretty sure he got to see everyone he wanted to see before it was time for him to go.  All of his kids stayed in his house the last night he was alive.  The grandkids stayed at mine.  We got the phone call in the middle of the night and went down to his house to say goodbye.  That is still the saddest time in my life I can remember.  He was such a strong man to me.  To all of us.  None of us were ready but he was.  The night after his funeral, I spent the night at his house and stayed up sitting in his chair and watching tv.  I guess that was my way of saying goodbye even though I didn’t realize it then.  I miss him a lot.  I think about him often.  When I go back to his house I imagine he is off in some dark room planning to scare me.  I loved that man!  My girls would have loved him.  And I know he would have loved them too.  

Joey