Memories

In the house that was built by my grandfather’s hand

22 November, 2012 (12:00) | Memories

My mom didn’t know her biological dad right away. I think it was her teen years, but you’d have to ask her for the details. Anyway, when we were kids, we’d go visit Grandfather Warnick. That’s what we called him. We’d just go over for a few hours on a Saturday and sit around and talk.

In his living room, he had a coffee table with some trays of candy in it. I’m not sure if it was him or his wife Edie that put the candy there. It was always candy corn and circus peanuts. I ate so much of them. to this day, I can barely stomach the smell, or even the thought of eating candy corn or circus peanuts. I can remember the neurotic state that bordered on masochism after eating a few circus peanuts. I felt sick, but I needed to eat more. I NEEDED more. I would sneak more.

Grandfather Warnick passed from cancer in 1992.  He had the same birthday as J’aime, Robbie, Uncle Tom, and I think we knew like half a dozen other people all born on Jul 8th.  complete tangent here, but I did an ice breaker in a class of 30 people once, and the instructor said that statistically at least 2 people will have the same birthday in the room.  We all balked.  Certainly not, we said.  5 people in, we found 2 people with the same birthday.  CRAZY.

Anyway, Grandfather Warnick had a full head of black hair when he passed.  He always had a pretty congenial attitude, but I never remember as very funny, he was just always nice and smiley.  I remember when he was put in the hospital before he passed, they wouldn’t let him work on his model boats because he needed a certain model glue that gave off dangerous fumes.  He was mad about that.  I got 2 of his boats, but I’m embarrassed to admit they both broke eventually.  I’d love to know if Edie’s family still have some.  I do still have a wooden pencil holder with an eagle he carved out of the front though.  It’s not super impressive, but still sentimental.

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