Two short stories I love

Baseball is way more fun than violin lessons. As a child, he was supposed to go to violin lessons but would skip them, stick his violin in a tree, and play baseball. He got in trouble when the violin teacher would call his father.

If you shoot a spitball at the fan in study hall at the right angle, you will land it in the curls of the girl in front of you. You will have detention........from the nuns.

"Barefootin'"

Grandpa doesn't care much for wearing shoes these days. I couldnt quite understand where this insistence came from the first time it popped up. It comes and goes like may things with dementia come and go. So, Mom or I turned to Grandma. She explained that when they were children, shoes were expensive and fancy things meant to be well cared for. In those days, you didnt wear shoes unless you were going to school or church and if it wasnt one of those places, you went barefoot. There is little need for shoes when most of your hometown is sand and your backyard the ocean.

Mail Trucks and Baseballs

In March, we went to visit mom and dad in spring training. During one of the games we noticed that the bus driver for the opposing team had opening the emergency hatch of the bus and was sitting on the roof watching the game. It was just about when we noticed that Dad texted me from the dugout and told us to look out there. He then shared that Pa would do the same during his games as a kid and high schooler, sitting on the top of the mail truck during the games so he could see a few innings before going back to delivering mail.

The new key west post office:

Hemingway's House

Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. Maybe its because The Old Man and The Sea reminds me of Pa or maybe its because Pa tells so many stories about Hemingway. When Pa was a child, Hemingway lived in Key West and had the only pool on the island. So when we went to Key WEst last fall, I felt the need to see Hemingway's home and the pool.

Grandpa and his buddies would scale the fence at the back of the property to swim in the pool. At that time, the butler lived in the small house (now a gift shop) on the property and would lean out the window to yell at the boys before chasing them from the property.

The grocery store, deliveries, and the mail

Monday questions and friday questions, always the same even before the dementia. "Did you get the groceries?," "Is the laundry done?," "Is the trash out?," and of course my favorite, "Do you have enough gas money?" These days the questions always come on the right days and the answers are always yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even then he often insists I take gas money, which I do from a nonexistent account we created in order to convince him he doesn't need actual cash. It amazes me that through the haze of dementia these questions are asked on the right days and in the same order. Oh, cant forget "did you go to the bank?"cause on fridays he would pick up his check and we'd go to the bank to deposit it, get his allowance and hit the grocery store.

The other things that keep coming back are the mail and his pharmacy deliveries. Grandpa delivered mail in key west for 33 years to the likes of Hemingway and Truman. So from time to time he gets concerned about who took over his route and if the mail was delivered. Beyond the mail route Pa also would deliver pharmacy orders to the older folks on the island on friday. He often asks, on friday, "Who is doing the deliveries?" or "have the deliveries been done?" This is where my cousins, dad's friends, and anyone else I can name from Key West comes in handy. "Oh, Timmy is doing it now" or "Dont worry, Jimmy said he'd do it."

He can still tell me the whole route he delivered to and of course, the firemen he played dominoes with at the fire station at the end of his route.