by Bill Dodds
My Great-grandfather
Turns 12 Today
Bill Dodds
Copyright © 2010 by Bill Dodds
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9840908-1-5
[email protected]
BillDodds.com
A Note from the Author, Bill Dodds
Hello, Young Reader.
Imagine going back in time and meeting your great-grandparent when he or she was your age. (No, not your parent or grandparent. Your great-grandparent!)
That’s what happens to the main character in this book.
Do you have some questions for that book report that’s due tomorrow? (Tomorrow!) Would you like to know more about writing books and poems? Send me an e-mail at [email protected]
You can find out more about me at the back of this book and at BillDodds.com.
Happy reading.
Bill
For Andy,
born ninety-nine years
after his great-grandfather Charlie
Chapters
1. My Brother, the Gift Guesser
2. Feet on the Hump, Chump
3. A LOUD Welcome
4. Escaping the Hug of Death
5. Into Great-grandpa’s Room
6. Figuring Out Who’s Who
7. Caught!
8. “Stretchers” and “Vaudeville”
9. In a Strange Land
10. Meeting my Great-great-grandfather
11. And My Great-great-grandmother
12. Bad News
13. How to Save the Farm
14. To the River
15. Ireland and William
16. Richard
17. Swimming and Talking
18. You Call This Toilet Paper?
19. I Entertain the Family
20. Sissie
21. A Sunday in 1898
22. Fire!
23. Forty-seven Dollars Short
24. A Pile of Rabbit Skins and One Knife
25. The Founders’ Day Contest
26. They Pick . . . Me
27. Hoops? Hoops!
28. My Old World Seems Like a New World
29. Hellos and Good-byes
30. Visiting Peter, Mary, and William
31. A Visitor
About the Author or Stuff to Add to Your Book Report So It Isn’t Too Short
Chapter 1
My Brother, the Gift Guesser
“Hurry up, Michael, we’re going to be late!” my father yelled up the stairs at me.
Maybe Michael doesn’t even want to go, I thought. Did that ever occur to you? Maybe Michael has better things to do on his twelfth birthday than ride all the way to Fair Brook and be around a bunch of old people who smell like they wet their pants.
Most of them don’t even wear pants, I corrected myself. They just sit around or lie around in those stupid gowns and robes and they drool and cough.
Happy birthday, dear Michael. Happy birthday to me.
I stared out the window. It was raining really hard. There was some lightning and thunder.
“Mom says you can open one present before we go!” Dad shouted up at me. Present? All right!
I found my jacket. For some reason my brother had stuffed it under my bed. Probably I had accidentally left it on “his” side of the room and so he had crammed it under there. That was so typical.
“Michael!”
I was heading downstairs when I heard that same stupid brother ask, “How come he gets to open a present now?”
“Just one,” my mom said. “We’re opening the rest of them at Fair Brook.”
That’ll be fun, I thought. We can pass them around and let everyone slobber on them.
“But we’re not supposed to open presents until after the cake,” he said. “That the way we always do it.”
For a guy who was only fourteen, Robert was a real pain when it came to explaining how it had to be done. He always knew how everything had to be done. And he was always ready to tell the rest of us.
“Get a grip,” David said. That was my other older brother. He was sixteen and had just gotten his driver’s license and his letter jacket for track. David was madly in love with . . . David. But at least most of the time he was on my side. That was mainly because he knew it really bugged Robert.
“How far to Fair Brook?” he asked my dad.
As if we hadn’t been there a billion times.
“About thirty-five miles,” Dad said.
David looked at his watch. “We should get going,” he said.
Oh, okay, Dad Junior.
“He only gets to open a small present, huh?” Robert asked.
“I get to pick,” I said, thinking: Roll on out that brand new bike!
“Here.” Mom handed me a shopping bag that wasn’t very heavy.
“I guess there’s not a bicycle in here, huh?” I asked and she laughed as if I had made a joke.
“We figured you can have David’s old bike,” Dad said.
David’s old bike! That piece of junk?
“Not have,” David corrected them. “I said he could buy it from me. Cheap.”
Talk about cheap.
“How much?” I asked.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Dad said. “We’ve got to get going.”
“So open one!” That was my little sister Sarah who was almost nine. She had just finished the third grade. She was all right for short periods of time.
“You want me to go warm up the car?” David asked my dad.
In the middle of June? It was raining not snowing.
“I think it’ll be okay,” Dad said.
“So is he gonna open a stupid present or what?” Robert whined. “I don’t want to waste all my Saturday at that place.”
Dad didn’t exactly growl but when he exhaled there was something there that said, “Watch out!”
“I mean,” Robert quickly added, “I have a few other things I have to do later today and so I think we should get going.”
“So open one,” Sarah said again.
I looked in the bag. There were four or five packages inside. All in “Happy Birthday” wrapping paper. “What’s my main one?” I asked Mom.
“No fair,” Robert said. “On my birthday I had to wait until . . . ”
“This one.” Mom reached in and pulled out the smallest package. It was about five inches long, an inch and a half wide, and an inch and a half deep. She handed it to me. It was heavy.
“Probably a harmonica,” David said.
I hate that! I hate when people guess what’s in a wrapped-up present and then they’re right and they say, “I told you so.”
“Nope,” Dad said.
“It’s small,” I said to Robert. “You said it would be okay if I opened a small one.”
“Shut up.”
“Boys,” my mom said.
He started it, I thought.
“Probably a pocket knife,” David said. I tore open the paper before he could make another guess. I was already too late. “Told you,” he said, sounding smug.
It was one of those Swiss Army knives. The red ones. The kind that have a bunch of stuff beside blades. A screwdriver and tweezers and toothpick and saw and leather punch and can opener and bunch of other stuff.
“Cool,” I said and then remembered to add, “Thank you.”
Dad nodded and Mom gave me a little hug.
“Can I take it with me?” I asked.
“Sure,” Dad said. “I know Great-grandpa would love to see it.”
That brought me back to reality. Dad’s grandpa. My great-grandpa. That’s who we were going to see at Fair Brook. He and I have the same birthday: June 21. He was eighty-eight when I was b
orn in 1974. I never got to have a birthday all to myself.
Today I turned twelve. That made him one hundred. The whole family—grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins—were getting together to celebrate. They were getting together for Great-grandpa, not for me.
I wondered if he would even be awake for any of it.
“Grandpa told me Great-grandpa wants to talk to you,” Dad said to me.
“Gee, that’ll be fun,” Robert said and then wrapped his lips around his teeth and pretended he was trying to talk but he didn’t have any teeth.
“Robert!” Mom said and he shut up. Then she went to the kitchen to get my birthday cake, some bags of chips, and some potato salad; and Dad, David, and Sarah headed for the car.
Robert gave me his “gummy” face again and whispered, “Probably wants to give you a great, big birthday kiss.”
Chapter 2
Feet on the Hump, Chump
I got the hump. Boy, what a surprise. Here I was, twelve years old, and I still got stuck sitting in the middle of the back seat. That’s always been my spot, just because I’m the third child in the family.
Even with David driving, I kept my same spot. He moved up front, Dad moved over to Mom’s place in the front and Mom moved back to David’s.
David always got a window.
Robert always got a window.
Sarah always sat up front in the middle and messed around with the radio.
I always got the hump.
“Move,” Robert hissed at me when we were all in the car. He was to my left and he gave my foot a shove with his foot.
“You move,” I said.
“What’s the problem?” Dad turned around and asked us.
This was not good. With David driving, Dad was free to turn all the way around and get involved in anything that was going on in the back seat. Dad was free to get very involved.
“Boys,” Mom said softly.
“Tell him to keep his feet out in front of him,” Robert said. “He had his foot way over here.” He kicked the door.
“I did not. I . . . ”
“Keep your feet in front of you,” Dad said.
“Keep your feet on the hump, chump,” Robert said.
“Robert, stop that,” Mom said. I was glad to see at least she was on my side. “Michael, keep your feet in front of you.”
“The freeway?” David asked, not paying any attention to the rest of us.
“What?” Dad turned back around.
“I should take the freeway?”
How many times had we been to Fair Brook? Had we ever not taken the freeway?
“Sure, it’ll be fine,” Dad said and patted him on the shoulder.
What did he mean “it’ll be fine”? Why wouldn’t it be fine? What was wrong with driving on the freeway?
Nothing.
So what was wrong with David driving on . . . ?
David driving on . . . !
“Are you sure, John?” my mom asked my dad. “He hasn’t had a lot of experience.”
“You learn by doing,” Dad answered.
This was great. And in the meantime, my big brother would get us all killed.
We live in a suburb with a bunch of houses that all pretty much look the same because they were all built at the same time by the same construction company. They’re nice, but not fancy or anything.
Fair Brook is in a neighboring suburb that’s a little older and little more run down. To get there you go out to the freeway, hop on, drive for half an hour or so, and then hop off. It’s no sweat.
It was no sweat until today. Today it was still raining pretty hard, there was an occasional flash of lightning and roll of thunder, and my big brother—who had had his driver’s license exactly two weeks—was going to get us all killed.
“You think we could go any slower?” Robert asked David.
“Shut up,” David said.
“I mean, we’re supposed to be there for lunch not dinner, right?”
“Robert,” Dad said but he didn’t take his eyes off David. Why didn’t he take his eyes off David?
“He’s driving like an old lady,” Robert whined. “He’s driving like Mom.”
I almost laughed out loud. Not because what he said was funny but because what he said was sure to get him in trouble. I didn’t think calling Mom an old lady was a good idea.
She is, of course. All moms are. But she isn’t a really old lady like Grandma or Great-aunt Helen or Great-great-aunt Lauretta.
“Robert,” Dad said and my brother mumbled “Sorry” and turned and looked out the window. That was a smart move on his part.
It had taken me a while to figure out all this “great” relations stuff but I thought I had it down now. It works like this:
When it comes to grandparents, your grandparents’ parents are your great-grandparents. My great-grandfather—the other birthday boy—is my grandfather’s father.
When it comes to aunts and uncles, your grandparents’ brothers and sisters are your great-uncles and great-aunts. And your great-grandparents’ brothers and sisters are your great-great-uncles and great-great-aunts.
Don’t ask me why. I didn’t invent this stuff.
So Great-grandpa’s sister Lauretta was my great-great-aunt.
At least, I was pretty sure that was how it worked. I decided to test myself. “Aunt Carol is your sister, huh, Dad?” I asked.
“Uh huh.”
“And Great-aunt Helen is Grandpa’s sister.”
“Uh huh. You got your lights on?”
What?
“Yeah,” David said.
“And Great-great-aunt Lauretta is Great-grandpa’s sister,” I said.
No one said anything.
“Dad?” I asked.
“What?”
“Great-great-aunt Lauretta is Great-grandpa’s sister.”
“What?”
“She is, huh?”
“Right. His baby sister.”
“Baby”? She was this little, old, old lady who was all wrinkles and was so bent over she looked like a question mark.
“How much younger is Lauretta than Charles?” Mom asked Dad.
“What?” he said. “I don’t know. Five years. Eight? I forget.”
Gee, so she’s only ninety-two?
“And they used to live on a farm right over there,” Robert said, tapping the window. “You tell us this same stuff every time we go out to that place. We already know it. And it’s boring.”
“The Farrell farm!” Sarah said. “I’m a Farrell.”
“We’re all Farrells,” Robert said.
“So why don’t we live on our farm?” she asked.
“The farm got sold a long time ago,” Dad said.
“How come?” Sarah asked.
“I forget. Something happened. Did you bring that pocket knife?”
That last question was to me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Great-grandpa said he wants to see it,” Dad said.
“He what?” Robert asked.
“Who told him I was getting a knife?” I asked but nobody answered me. They were all distracted by a huge truck that was speeding right by us and spraying us with even more water. David reached down and switched the windshield wipers to “high” and nobody said anything. I was pretty sure Mom was praying.
Chapter 3
A LOUD Welcome
We weren’t all killed. In fact, by the time we finally got to Fair Brook Nursing Home and Convalescent Center the rain had let up some. It was a good thing because we had an awful lot of junk to bring in from the car. The trunk was loaded with paper plates and napkins and cups, bags of chips, a big bowl of potato salad and—most important—my cake and presents.
