Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza were 40 years old in this picture, taken in 1948. Dad was a freshman in high school. Dad was 14, and Janice was 10. Mom and dad graduated from high school in 1951, and they married in June of that year. I was born in late October of 1952, and I remember my Grandpa Cles very well. This picture is only eight years before he died of a massive heart attack in February of 1956.
He taught me to recognize the sound of a meadow lark. I went for drives with him in his Oldsmobile 98, a navy blue car. I remember that he let me sit on his lap and hold on to the steering wheel. I focused on the emblem at the center, a jet with a vapor trail around a planet. With his passing in 1956, there was a vacuum that remained within me for a very long time. And when my father passed away at 57 in 1991, it became more intense.
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