Friday, September 19, 2008

"What Would My Grandfather Think?

of me sitting at this table writing about him, Marlboro going in the left hand and a Corona in my right? High noon of a forgotten Friday afternoon. Sunlight beaming in through the mountains forming a perfect rectangle on the table, eyes adjusting, blue-grey smoke cutting up through the glare. I swear you can see faces in it..."

- Random Journal Drivel, July 25, 2001

Well, I've upgraded to Camel Lights and Armagnac. And I take photograhs like this:



Maybe he'd dig that. My Grandparents were all tobacco farmers and both of my Grandfathers had drinking problems. I only met my Father's Father once, when I was five, as he was dying. It's a David Lynch quality memory for me, him standing in the squalor of his house (my grandmother had kicked him out decades before) with crutches on one leg, that had been amputated due to progressive gangrene. Drunk. Really drunk, like for thirty years drunk.

My Mother's Father, however, I knew until he died when I was twenty-two. And his drinking was long over. But he did smoke Camel's and the smell lingering in my parents' house after he left was one of those magical childhood memories.

They don't smell that way to me when I smoke them. Or for that matter, anyone else.

The random journal drivel was written upstate in the Finger Lakes at my friends' Cathrine and Jeffery's cabin. I've lost touch with them and I should do something about that.

But me first, for now.

4 comments:

gary griffin said...

two things...
well, three.
-grandparents imprint and matter to children more than their parents, i think.
-people with mountain cabins should always be close at hand.
-me first is right now.

Dig, man, there goes Mack the Knife! said...

I love her bones.

Lin said...

I have fond memories of kissing a Camel flavoured man. Truly unique taste, both man and cigarette.

Stephen Haynes said...

A lot of your entries don't register with me on other than an intellectual level, but this one sunk deep into the marrow of memory. Not because of any commonality of experience, but because of the power and importance of recollection.

Oh, other than the fact that my father smoked Camels, and essentially died because of it.

Thanks for sharing it.