Don't eat juicy tacos in my suit!

Pretty Penny had something to say about Grandpa also. She has a blog too, but I love her memory so I wanted to keep it right next to mine. I remember this day (the seemingly unrelated title of this entry is a had-to-be-there joke from that very day), I was really looking forward to spending some time with my beautiful new bride getting to know my iconic Grandfather. I was proud to show Grandpa my catch…

Jenny says:
About a year after Matthew and I were married, we made a trip down to Arizona to see everyone. Before we left, Matthew had been telling me some funny and interesting stories about Grandpa Joy. We had been discussing how we would really want these stories to be preserved for our children. Matthew said that Grandpa wouldn't be comfortable sharing the stories on camera or recorder. So, as Matthew and I plotted and schemed, we came up with an idea to secretly record Grandpa's stories. Matthew went out and bought a tape recorder - a very small tape recorder. We planned every detail even down to the shirt he would wear so that the tape recorder would not be noticed. Matthew even planned where Grandma and Grandpa would sit so that he could get a good recording and catch Grandma's comments also. Upon arriving at Grandma and Grandpa's we had a fantastic lunch of Green Chili Stew. Grandma prepared it, but Grandpa was close by the whole time. Once the meal was cleared from the table, we headed into the family room. In accordance with our plan Matt arranged Grandpa in his comfy chair, Grandma sat opposite him in the other comfy chair. Matt pulled up the rocking chair close by. Matt started by asking a couple of questions and there we sat for the rest of the afternoon. We talked about the Mexican train (it rained Mexicans that day), and Grandpa and Uncle Joe discovering electricity. We learned about the rationing of gasoline during the war and the extra friends having a rare commodity can make for you. We also heard about his fake heart attack and the real aneurysm that Grandma didn’t fall for. We sat and laughed for hours. Once you got Grandpa going, he could keep going and going. Every once in a while Matthew would rearrange himself or ask Grandpa to speak a little louder. Grandpa was a quick one because after some time he asked Matthew what was wrong with him and Matthew had to confess his crime. Luckily for us, it wasn't until after we'd finished most of the stories and as it turned out, once Grandpa learned of the recorder he seemed flattered and happy to tell a few more for the record.

By the time I was 15, I had lost all but one of my grandparents. I did not have the opportunity to spend time with them as a grandchild would like, so the most important story that Grandpa and Grandma Joy shared with me was a story of love, kindness and acceptance as one of their grandchildren. I was not born into the Joy family, but with them it did not matter how I became part of it - but that I was part of it. Being married into the Joy clan did not make me an in-law, in their eyes and in the eyes of my "other" mom & dad (Bob and Rox) I truly became a Joy when I married into the family, their love for me was no different than the love they'd had for Matthew who had been their grandchild for 23 years at the time. I will miss Grandpa AND Grandma Joy.

Man With A Name

My Grandpa, Charlie Joy, died on Thursday. 8/27/09. There went out a family request to share our memories of Grandpa, and let me tell you mine are grand, my image of my Grandfather was formed as a young boy when he was bigger and tougher and cowboyer to me than the Man With No Name ever hoped to be. So many of my memories are from so many years ago, from growing up, that a lot of them are a bit jumbled. I have memories of so many Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings and they all run together in some sort of festive collage of storytelling, card playing, family skits, turkey shoots, tiers upon tiers of cousins, and more hot home-cooking than you could imagine, and even a pet goat that grandpa gave me (and later taught me how to castrate, so don’t fmess with me).

Thinking on these things, I wish I’d kept a journal of some kind. I wish I could look back at my Grandpa through those eight year old eyes when my Dad gave me my first Chipmunk .22 at Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Joy’s house. But I can’t. I don’t remember anything specific from that Christmas other than opening that rifle and thinking “Cool!” immediately followed by the depressing realization that neither Dad nor Grandpa would ever let me out of their sight alone with it. What else went on that Christmas? I don’t know. Any of those Christmas memories could belong to that or any other Christmas, it is all a memory soup now, and who knows what I’ve forgotten? Now my kids are growing up. I don’t want to look back twenty years from now and have nothing but pictures.

Time to start a journal I guess. I’m told “journal” translates to “blog” on the Rosetta Stone of the Wikipedia Age, and I think you can edit it retrospectively so I can remember things the way I want to if I’m not satisfied with the way I previously intended to remember them. Very 1984, I like it. We’ll see how well this sticks, but at least I’ll have a place to etch something in digital stone when the mood strikes. Too start, this is what I remember about my Grandfather, and what I want to remember if the day comes around that I don’t remember so clearly…

When I remember Grandpa Joy I remember the image that I had of him when I was a boy. And truthfully, that image hasn’t changed as much as you might think it would. To me he was a living legend somewhere between Jeremiah Johnson and Paul Bunyan.

As a boy I was always amazed at Grandpa’s trapping and hunting stories. I remember learning how to shoot at the Thanksgiving turkey shoots Grandpa used to set up every year. Probably just about everyone in the family learned to shoot from Grandpa or from someone who was taught by Grandpa. I remember my first hunt; that year Grandpa and I both had tags. We separated and I shot my first deer with my dad. After my dad taught me how to field dress the deer (and carried it out of the canyon I’d shot it in), we went to join up with Grandpa. Grandpa had shot another deer and dropped it where it stood. He’d hiked to it and taken his knife to cut the throat and bleed it out. The deer must have only been knocked out by the shot and it startled under Grandpa’s knife, throwing Grandpa back as it jumped up and took off with Grandpa’s Old Timer still in its throat. I listened with wide eyes to this story and then we took off tracking the deer. I thought I was the coolest twelve year old this side of Four Corners – I’d gotten my first deer and now I was tracking another deer alongside my Grandpa, whom I knew to be a full on real live mountain man. Over the next year or so, when I’d think about that experience tracking the deer with Grandpa’s knife in its throat, I’d embellish it a little and daydream that Grandpa didn’t even use a gun – he just jumped out of hiding in a Mesquite tree right onto that passing deer’s back and almost had his kill when he got thrown and the deer got away.

We never did find the deer. The deer left a heavy blood trail at first, but over the miles the droplets were fewer and farther between until they left off completely. We never recovered the knife either; Dad says that even today Grandpa’s knife is out there somewhere with a buck on it. Dad still puts in for an Arizona buck every year; I’m convinced he’s hoping to get that knife back. It was a nice knife by all accounts, especially Grandpa’s.

Another thing that sticks out in my mind is that everywhere we went it seemed to me that on just about every road we traveled I would hear the same tribute, “Your Grandpa Joy built this road.” So as a boy I had the only slightly inflated impression that Grandpa built every road and bridge in Arizona. I was pretty sure Arizona existed because Grandpa had come from Texas to build it. I loved listening to his construction stories from a time when they used smoke signals to signal lunch break to the road crews. I could see things had changed, my dad didn’t need smoke signals because he had a cell phone the size of a cinder block, but I still saw every stretch of asphalt in the state as a memorial that read “Charlie Joy was here”. I still see the road that way and I’m glad Charlie Joy was here.