The Picture on the Dumont TV

The picture of Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza was one I always remember. I will never forget either one of them.

Grandpa took me for rides in his blue Oldsmobile. I sat on his lap and held the wheel, always looking at the emblem at the center: a jet or rocket circling a planet, so it looked almost like a ring was around it.

Grandpa taught me what a meadow lark sounded like while riding with him in his car through the meadows in springtime.

When I went with him and my dad to the haylands, south of Malad, I hunted for frogs in the small stream that flowed from wells on the Leonard Clark property. It was here where we bought meadow hay for years. Leonard was honest, and he became a trusted friend of our family.

I remember lying down on the road and looking down into a culvert, while waiting for my grandpa and dad to load hay on a truck. My dad kept telling me to get away from the water. He was afraid I would fall in and drown, although the stream was only a four or five inches deep.

Since I thought the same protective way about both my children and grandchildren, I am sure he thought I would fall into the water, get trapped in the aluminum culvert and drown before he could get to me. My grandfather would tell him to relax and that nothing would happen.

The funny thing is that my dad told me the same thing when I was raising my own children. I guess "relaxed" is what you do with grandchildren, letting the "little ones" experience life without instilling phobias in young minds.