Of Primary Sources and Imagination

Peering into someone else’s life through the thoughts they chose to write down is at once both fascinating and challenging. For instance, why did his buttock need medicine? Also while he seems to be fairly free in his writing, meaning doesn’t seem to be much that’s off limits, I wonder why he doesn’t state what is keeping him up only that, “…two of us know the reason.” I’m appreciating his notations about the weather that is also something my Dad was obsessed with. I do think he could have done a better job of sketching his damaged watch crystal, what he drew just looks like squiggles. I wonder how often he had to get ‘haul offs’ ready. That reminds me of the annual purges of junk from the garage my Dad subjected us to. He was always cleaning out closets, drawers and throwing stuff out…then replacing what he threw away because he’d forgotten he tossed it! My dad would also hide presents prior to birthdays and Christmas. Every Christmas in the “present coma” invariably my Dad would survey the scene of giftwrap carcasses and glut of gifts and say, “I think there’s something missing.” At that point he’d disappear into the garage or some closet in the house, and return with a gift for one of us he’d forgotten he hid. He was also famous for hitting the after Christmas sales looking for deals on holiday paraphernalia. One year he found a great deal on a fake tree that was pre-strung with lights, brought it home opened the closet in the garage to store it for the following year only to find a very similar box with a similar tree inside from the previous year!

I read the bit about Poppa watching Bob Hope and Jack Benny and started to wonder what it would have been like to see those shows live, then was taken aback by “…no colored folks on Benny’s as on Hope’s” Knowing my grandfather would make such a notation is not surprising given the place and time he grew up and the time in which he was writing, but it made me wonder, given our current social and political climate how much has really changed in the 49 years since he wrote that? What is the KSJ and why is it having an event at the Alamo? He’s obviously excited to be part of whatever the KSJ is doing there seems to be a real honor that he was invited to speak. Also, what is ‘double pneumonia’?

I don’t understand these notes at all. “Fat that we eat is turned into Glysecerin and soap”. In our bodies? And very little fat grows on flat bones? “The leaf of a peanut produces starch.” What?! I wish I could make out more of his scribbles at the top of the pages, all I can really decipher is his last name and that he’s getting really good at Roman numeral II’s.

I just realized, or more accurately remembered, that my Dad had many bouts of insomnia. I remember often waking up early and finding him either sitting in a chair reading or asleep in a chair with a book on his lap. The weather seems to be getting worse though I don’t understand his temperature records. I mean on the 20^th he writes, “Temp 40 -70 Warmer outside – colder inside”, does that mean it was 70 degrees outside and 40 inside? Looks like his speech is almost ready!