Some people might find that incomprehensible, but I have a different opinion. He picked me up every day.
Mom often told me, how grandpa would knock on the door early each morning. "Where's that little boy," he would ask.
My mom still wore a grin when she told me decades later. She would occasionally look at him before answering. "Oh, I sent him up town for some things."
Grandpa wasted no time before picking me up into his arms and taking me with him to feed cows with my dad, to ride to the haylands in the southern part of Malad Valley near Cherry Creek, or simply to hold briefly. I was with him every day.
He never allowed anyone to "badmouth" Grandma Liza. Anyone who did, would have found themselves with a confrontation. There would be an unpleasant warning, but no one ever showed grandma disrespect.
My father was the same with my mom. I was that way with my sweetheart. I would defend her to my last breath, and yes, there have been a couple of times when "outsiders" dared to do that very thing.
However, there is one thing my grandpa emphasized, that I wish I had done more to do every day of my life. Whenever someone said something negative about another person, grandpa always had the same reaction: "Do you know that for certain? Did you see that with your own eyes, because if you didn't and you don't know it for sure, don't say it."
Grandpa Cles was very firm about it. Grandma Liza was a class act too. I want my children and grandchildren to know what incredible people they were. People with a sense of right and wrong.
And as proof of the advantage of having lived like they did, I have met very few people in my life, who didn't like them, although Grandpa Cles had a way of dealing with undesirable people. He warned them once.
Sometimes I regret having lived that way. My sweetheart laughs about one fact in my life. She often says she has never met anyone who knew me, who either really admired and liked me or who had a great dislike for something I did.
Funny thing about that fact is that I don't regret the situation. It was another thing I learned from my father and from my grandfather. If I had something to say, I said it clearly without hesitation. It won't win me any elections, and if I'm ever in a beauty contest, I won't get Mr. Congeniality, but I sleep well at night having lived without trickery and guile. And after 56 years since the passing of my grandfather, I still miss him deeply. Death takes away so many people, who made such a difference in your life: my grandfather, my dad, my grandmother, my mom. They all meant a great deal to me. Their lives shaped mine in so many ways.
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