Interesting Things About the Pop Pop and The Crew

For anyone who knows me, I sit in this picture at Christmas of 1956 surrounded in with toys.
This was something my dad started. Christmas was his favorite time of year, and I never remember there ever being a disappointing one, unless it was a transition time--a time when boys become young men and presents are not trucks and bulldozers and battleships but sport jackets and shoes and records or tapes. But here begins my passion for music. I am looking at a small record player, and I had hand fulls of small 45's, which were small records about six inches in diameter that played at a higher speed than the larger albums. There were recordings of Christmas songs and nursery rhymes, all worn out within a few years from listening to them every day. It was also in this house on South Main in Malad where dad would play his jazz records and talk to me about the instruments, trying to get me to see the difference between a trumpet and a sax. When I played in band and began to excel, a regular baritone sax was not good enough. He bought me a Selmer, and I will never part with it. Like Charleton Heston, someone will have to pry my lifeless fingers from it to take it from me. Oh, that was a gun that the former Moses was talking about when he said that at a NRA convention.

This is Christmas Eve when Cles was one year old. He had this great stocking cap, an Idaho Vandals sweatshirt, and jeans that his grandma found him. They were a size "O." I wish we still had those jeans somewhere, but everyone always throws things like that away, in spite of fun memories. The horse would make galloping noises, and whenever a child pulled the reins backward, the toy would whinny. It was a hit, and not many years later, Lydia loved the toy too. Any visitor's child unlucky to sit on it found Lydia's elbow placed every so firmly in a spot that send frightened eyes over the top of the little horse in an incredible gymnastics move.

Jack won the hearts of every teacher and teacher's aide at his preschool, and his signature wink became a legend. When he and I watched a movie together today, I worried about something mean he said earlier in the day. It was not anything major, just something that surprised me. I was talking to him about it, and I said something that I believed to be very important. "Have you ever seen Pop Pop hurt anyone?" He thought for a moment while we watched his favorite Japanese animation film called Howl's Moving Castle. We were watching a movie, and I had my arm under his head. "Well, sometimes when you put your arm under my head it is a little uncomfortable." My grandchildren are always thinking. Memories of each of them make me smile every day. All three have different little quirks, yet they share a zest for life. When they laugh their eyes sparkle like stars in the sky, and their laughter is infectious. The sound makes people around them turn and smile when they hear it. All three are hypersensitive. And all three are little ones I love very much.

Tommy loves chocolate, and his favorite bar is a Kit Kat. That was my Grandma Liza's favorite too. In fact, it was staying at her house on weekends that made my sisters and me fans too. And when Tommy visits Pop Pop, I can always tell when he wants me to tickle him. He will peek around a corner whenever I tease Anna or Jack. I can feel his smile, even though he stands behind me. Enticing him to come closer to make him laugh is easy. "What have you got on your shirt right there." I point at any spot. He approaches with a smile on his face, because he knows Pop Pop is going to tickle him.