Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up With My Grandfather, Ty Cobb

by Herschel Cobb

  I looked at Susan, barely putting any air into my words, feeling like I wanted to hold them inside of me, not wanting to show my naïveté. I didn’t know what a “miscarriage” was, and when I heard the word “stillborn” spoken during that conversation I was not supposed to hear, the image in my mind was of a small, white, soft pile of flesh, with pink veins showing easily, and sunken, closed eyes. I blurted out, “What does that mean? Stillborn?”

  “Oh,” she replied, very quietly, “I think that means they were already dead when born.”

  “Ugh,” I murmured. “You mean, in that room?”

  “No, no. Wherever they were living a long time ago. Atlanta, Detroit. I don’t know.” Her voice had changed from softly insisting on answers from me to sharply cutting off the conversation. I knew this meant that Susan was piecing together what she knew, and what she had overheard in conversations at Grandma’s house. There were lots of conversations to pick and choose from and piece together a story. Aunt Shirley and Dixie talked, Grandma and Shirley talked, Aunt Beverly and Grandma talked. One of us was always in earshot, so sooner or later we pieced things together. Right now I could only wait.

  Earlier that day, we had been sitting outside in Grandma’s backyard, perched on the long brick retaining wall that separated the sloping hillside from the lawn. It was just after lunch and the sun was warm, with the flowers around the edge of the yard bountiful and full of color. We huddled together like two kids playing tic-tac-toe on a small piece of paper, bent over each other, nearly touching noses. Only, there were no giggles or gestures of triumph or defeat. We compared notes, looking for clues, filling the book of our lives, and the lives of Grandma and Granddaddy from forty years ago. We knew we were going to go to Lake Tahoe with Granddaddy this day or the next, and our attention was focused on filling in parts to our puzzle. We both jumped with surprise when we heard Grandma’s voice; she was practically next to us. I didn’t even hear her walk up.

  “Susan, Herschel, have you finished packing? We can go down to Atherton now.” Grandma’s tone conveyed a little urgency. “I just put some things in a bag for Kit. Susan, please make sure the boys have their swim things for the lake. And take something nice to wear in case you go out to dinner.” She was smiling as she sat down beside us and looked out over her gardens. “You are fine children. I think you’re going to have a special time with your granddaddy.”

  I quickly asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just run along and get ready.” And she smiled as she gave me a little push off the brick wall, which only made me more curious about what she meant by a special time.

  We packed most of the stuff we had brought for the summer, loaded our suitcases in the trunk of Grandma’s car, and climbed into the back seat. None of us knew where Kit was, and she called for him down the hill from her house. Soon he came running up from the neighbor’s house at the bottom of the hill. He was smiling with some teeth missing, his red hair flopping and his freckles more evident than ever thanks to the summer sun. His jeans were covered with mud, so we waited some more while Grandma took him inside and helped him change. I bounced on the back seat for a while, impatient to get going. It seemed like forever before they came out of the house, with Kit cleaned up.

  The fifteen-minute ride to Atherton was quiet, except for the radio, which Grandma always kept on the oldies station, number sixty-one on the dial. Bing Crosby sang a song, then the Mills Brothers, then three sisters. The music was mild and old-timey. I had made that ride often enough to let my eyes roll over the familiar hillsides, landmarks, turns, stop signs, trees, and winding streets without really thinking about anything, until we finally turned onto Spencer Lane, drove past one house, and turned into El Roblar. Granddaddy’s black Chrysler Imperial was parked in the garage as Grandma pulled up past the patio and stopped her car. The front door was open, but nobody was standing nearby.

  Grandma looked in her rearview mirror and said, “Herschel, take all your bags out of the trunk and put them on the patio. Somebody will come on out and help you.” She meant Granddaddy but was not going to say his name. I got out and went around to the front, kissed her through the open window, then opened the trunk and took out our bags. In the meantime, Susan and Kit kissed her good-bye and headed toward the front door. I returned to Grandma’s open window with a question.

  “Are you going to call later?” I asked. “It’s late to be heading up to the lake now. It’ll be dark by the time we get to Cave Rock.”

  “Don’t worry. I think everything is going to be fine. Give me a kiss and go on inside.”

  I leaned inside her window and kissed her again. She drove away, waving her familiar hand, which only barely reached out of the window. I grabbed the lightest of the bags and carried it into the house. The front room was empty, but I heard voices coming from the kitchen, so I put the bag down and hurried back to the kitchen to find Susan and Kit sitting while Louise was on the phone.

  I said, “Want me to put the bags in Granddaddy’s car?”

  “Hush, Herschel. Just a minute.” Susan motioned with her hand to keep quiet and pointed to Louise on the phone. She was speaking with our Aunt Shirley. I listened to her part of the conversation.

  “Yes, Mrs. Beckworth. Yes, all of them. And his shot too. No. Just fine. Been getting up early, 6:00 or 7:00. Regular. Talked with the doctor yesterday. Fine. Did all the shopping yesterday too. The boys like eggs, bacon, pancakes, or toast; Susan likes toast and jelly. Yes, plenty.” All of this said in response to questions my Aunt Shirley was asking about Granddaddy. I knew he took pills for his heart and an insulin shot every day for diabetes, but I could not understand why Aunt Shirley was asking about eggs and stuff.

  “Everything is just fine. Okay, I’ll tell Mr. Cobb, and he can talk to the children. Thank you, Mrs. Beckworth. Yes, I’ll call if I need to. Yes, ma’am. Thank you, good-bye.” She hung up the receiver and turned and looked at us. “Well, well, look how tall you all are. My, my. Stronger every year. Go on into the living room, and I’ll tell Mr. Cobb you’re here.”

  When I entered the living room, Granddaddy was already seated in his favorite chair, holding a book, with his fingers between the pages to mark his spot. I said to him, “Let’s go, Granddaddy, we’re all packed. It’s getting late, and we’ll be stuck in all the traffic.”

  “Come on in, Hersch. Hi, Susan, Kit. Come on over here and give me a hug.” He put his book on the floor next to his chair, and we all squeezed onto his lap, with his arms finding their way around all of us. “We needn’t worry about the traffic. You all can stay here tonight, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning. How about that? Do you want to?”

  I looked at Susan, and we both grabbed him and hugged him by his neck. We probably surprised him at how hard we hugged, but we were excited because we had always wanted to spend the night at El Roblar. He had to pull us away so he could breathe. We were so excited we wouldn’t let go.

  Now I knew why Grandma had given me that funny farewell in the driveway. I had asked Grandma many times why we couldn’t spend some nights at Granddaddy’s house, and she always answered, “Hersch, when the time is right.” This was the time. I never really considered her feelings about the question. We spent every summer with her, and she filled our days and evenings with love, understanding, room to grow and explore; with toys, adventures, stories, and smiling, laughing humor. We were her “redheads.” In some of the most important parts of our lives, she was raising us, providing guidance, care, and love, knowing that my mother’s days were filled with alcohol, pills, late nights, resentment, and anger. I never asked what she felt about giving us over to the man with whom she had shared her life for so many years, whose children she bore and raised, whose whims and outbursts she managed to endure and straighten, and who still held that place in her heart that would never be touched by another. While I was hugging my grandfather that moment, I thought of all of this. That sense of affection and trust stayed with me as though it were alive, and late
r that night it would be with me while I was discovering another aspect of my grandfather’s life.

  “Herschel, put your suitcase and Kit’s by the door to the front bedroom; you two can sleep there. Put Susan’s in the one down the hall, across from mine. She’ll have a bathroom to herself, and you two can share.” He nudged me off his chair, and I stood up with a grin like I’d reached into a big box of chocolate. “Do it now, so Louise won’t have to do it. Then check out the fridge, or play outside, or whatever you want. I want to read some of this book to Kit.”

  I carried the suitcases through the arch and put them next to the door to the front bedroom. Susan knew what I was anticipating, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. Now was the time. We were going to find out everything! As things turned out, our discoveries would really wait until the morning.

  It was now late in the afternoon, so we checked out the freezer and found two gallon cartons of peach ice cream, one of chocolate, and one of strawberry. Susan fixed a bowl of peach for Granddaddy and strawberry for Kit, while she and I had chocolate.

  Louise’s phone conversation in the kitchen with my aunt now made sense. Aunt Shirley was double-checking to make sure everything with “The Old Man” was all right. This really meant that she wanted to be sure he hadn’t had anything to drink and was not on a tear about something. In all the years I spent with Granddaddy, with all of the evenings out at restaurants and talking to his friends, I never saw him drink more than a sip of whisky.

  He never hid anything from us, and Susan and I knew enough to check. We lived with a mother who hid bottles of liquor and all kinds of pills. We had learned to spot what we called “danger” and “to duck.” We kept out of her way. She took uppers, which she called “goofballs,” to keep her going during parties at night, and downers to be able to sleep. It was impossible for me not to have heard stories about Granddaddy and his various escapades. Some were told and embellished as funny stories, and some revealed that he had a temper and sometimes lost control of it.

  Aunt Shirley subdued her disapproval and mild envy that we spent so much time with him, and sometimes argued vigorously with Grandma it was “too much” for Granddaddy or he would behave badly. Grandma had a way of treating people so that their behavior became appropriate. If someone failed enough times, they just disappeared from the rolls of her contacts. She knew Granddaddy better than anyone, knew what he valued in his heart. She saw that he wanted his grandchildren near him, and she knew how to accomplish that by combining his wishes with hers. She realized that his relationship with his grandchildren was different from that with his own children, both the salutary effect on him and the benefit to his grandchildren. He had changed, and each of Susan’s accounts to Grandma of our times with Granddaddy gave her more reason to foster our bond with him.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Susan and I played, explored the backyard, and stuck close to Louise in the kitchen while she fixed dinner. Granddaddy read to Kit for over an hour, and that was enough for him. When he found us, we were sitting at the kitchen table, splitting peas and munching on carrots. He told us he was going to nap for an hour or so and told Louise that we children could eat early or wait for him. He was still southern and liked to eat dinner when it was dark; this meant nearly 9:00 in July. We wanted to wait, because we’d been eating nonstop since mid-afternoon. Plus, we had never eaten at his huge dining room table.

  When Granddaddy returned to the living room after his nap, it was past 6:00, and I was examining the books behind the glass of the bookcase next to the fireplace. Most were beautifully bound in leather with the name and author embossed in gold. He walked across the entrance hall and surveyed the dining room, then sat down and asked me, once again, “You like books, Hersch?”

  “Yeah, I like some of them. I get one from Aunt Shirley every Christmas. She never gives me toys.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” he declared, “she gives them to me too. And I read them, most of them, anyway. You know, she loves that bookstore of hers.”

  I could tell he hadn’t quite woken up because before I could say anything, he said, “Say, why don’t you help out and clear off the table in the dining room? Put the papers over on a chair so we can use the whole table for dinner.”

  The table was filled with old newspapers, magazines, envelopes, some old junk mail, and a few small boxes that hadn’t been opened. I put all the newspapers on one side chair and the magazines on another, with the boxes on top. I was stacking the junk mail and envelopes when I spotted a check with a familiar name on it. In the upper left, in red script, was written “Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, Georgia,” with an address underneath in black type. On the right-hand side were numbers typed in after a dollar sign: 83,164.00. The signature below the numbers flowed lavishly and didn’t look like junk mail. I’d seen a check before, and this was one big check. I was careful with all the mail and put the whole stack on another side chair. I walked over to Granddaddy with the check delicately held between my thumb and first finger. “Granddaddy, here’s this.” I handed him the check.

  The startled look on his face was almost comical. “My, my, Hersch, thanks very much. I’ve been wondering about this. Where’d you find it?”

  “In a pile of letters and junk mail. What is it?” My curiosity was rising.

  “See the date?” He pointed to the upper right corner. “June 30, that’s the end of the first half of the year. It’s my quarterly dividend check from the Coca-Cola Company.” He handed the check to me, and I looked it over and handed it back. “Do you know what a dividend is?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s the money they pay me on my shares. Do it every three months.” Then he smiled wryly. “Helps me keep going.” He shook the check slightly. “This has been sitting around almost a month. Got to put this in the bank.”

  “What’s a share?” I asked.

  “A share means I own a little bit of the company. Like when I told you about stock? When they make money, they pay a little bit to me for each of my shares. That’s my dividend. ’Course, with Coke, I bought a lot of shares a long, long time ago. Still buy ’em. First shares I bought, Mr. Woodruff loaned me the money. Told me he and his associates just purchased a soda pop company and they were going to make it the biggest in the country and I should be a part of it. So he loaned me some money and I bought some shares.”

  “I thought you played baseball to make money.” He had my full attention.

  “Hersch, when I started out, they didn’t pay me much. Had to work hard and prove myself. I remember battling with my boss for a raise—that was something. Fought with Nevin every year.”

  He could see the inquiring expression on my face. “When I was your age, I worked tilling a cotton field, behind a mule. Me and a Negro boy, we plowed row upon row behind that mule, stuck in a hot, dusty field. Took turns. We weren’t paid much, didn’t have any extra money. Never had any ‘jingle’ in our pocket, and I didn’t like it much.” He reached into his pocket and showed me a wad of bills: his “jingle.”

  I started smiling at the image of him working behind a big ole mule. He continued, his voice rising with excitement, “No, it’s true. But I loved baseball. That’s what I really wanted to do. And I was determined. Yep, baseball had what I wanted. It was fast, and I could outsmart the other guy.”

  I thought he was done talking, but he went on, calm again. “Hersch, when you get old enough to work for a living, find something you love to do, then do it as best you can. It’ll all work out for you.”

  Then he said what sounded like the strangest advice. “Don’t wait for somebody to give you any money. Go out and do what you love and make your own.” He paused and then mumbled to himself, “I don’t think I did your dad any good by giving him all that money.” He shook his head. “Nope, I don’t think I helped him at all.” Then he folded the check just like it was any other piece of paper and shoved it in his pants pocket.

  I thought I had an idea of what he was talking about. My dad never
took up something he really liked to do except, maybe, boxing. All the money he was given and spent had blurred his vision, what he wanted to accomplish on his own.

  When dinnertime came, we all sat down and listened to Granddaddy tell stories about nearly everybody. We heard about Bobby Jones and golfing, Babe Ruth and the crazy “has-beens” golf match, about Bill Tilden and Uncle Ty, Jack Dempsey, and more about battling over his contracts with his Detroit Tigers boss. He knew a lot of people, famous and not famous, all guests at this very dinner table in past years. Most important to me, he told tales about our dad when he was a little boy. I hung on every word, absorbing the images of my freckle-faced father as a little rascal pursuing his adventures, both forbidden and approved of. He had two billy goats that ate anything they could, so my dad opened the gates to neighbors’ homes, watched them rummage around, and laughed and ran when the neighbors saw what was going on. Granddaddy smoothed things over by signing a couple of baseballs for them. My father had played on his high school football team, earning his letter and receiving mention in the local newspaper for outstanding games. Aunt Shirley’s and Beverly’s bedrooms were on the second floor, accessed only by an outside stair. When they wanted to stay late at a party without Grandma and Granddaddy knowing, Shirley would have my dad go up to her room and stomp around so it sounded like they came home. Granddaddy let us know that he wasn’t fooled—my dad made too much noise, so he slyly checked—but decided it wasn’t worth arguing with Grandma about. Normally he wanted strict discipline and she was lax, and this became a continuing conflict. Letting it go was unusual for him.