up on the ladders. That gives perspective on how enormous this airship was.

find out I forgot my screwdriver!

Tell the grandkids!

... My grandmother loved him dearly. After WWII, he became a mean drunk. My grandmother divorced him twice and would have remarried him again if he had become sober.

During one winter when my dad did not want him in an SRO or on the street, he came to live with us.

We had a mule named Hannibal. Hannibal tolerated adults barely, but that mule love my grandfather. We think he shared drinks with the old man. He had no car and he would walk miles to fetch a bottle way up the road. We'd find the bottles in the barn and especially in Hannibal's feed.

He loved a good fire but he missed often opening the damper and one night a few months after my sister was born (she and I have the same b-day, eight years difference). And my step mom (one of the nicest and toughest women I know) put her foot down. My dad talked to him as he drove granpa back to the city. "What's going to happen if you don't stop this drinking?"
"I'll die."
"Then what?"
"You stick a ham-bone up my ass and let the dogs drag me into the woods!"

He died about four years later. He was living in an SRO. My grandmother had my Uncle Fred go to the "hotel" to bring him over for Christmas EVe (she did this every year) so she could give him some new clothes and personal items. Where we parked in the lot and his window was first floor right in front of the car. Fred went in because he knew how he was on occasion. I could see them through the window shade. Fred came back. And for the first time ever he missed Christmas Eve.

That was the last time I saw him, through a window shade. He died in that room in March. He had a heart attack and knocked his nitro pills onto the floor. He died in his chair and sat for four days.

Without the ham-bone, we had him buried in the cemetery right next to woods. I hope he and the dogs and Hannibal are walking them still.

I still have his slide rule. A country boy who figured out higher math on his own.

Made me

... Goodyear had a company police detail that had as one of it's duties to hunt him down on Monday mornings. They would hit every Kenmore saloon until they found the one where he was sleeping: on the floor, on the pool table, on the bar and bring him in so he could layout the production for that week. He designed the tooling for the machines that made the first Sebring buke box that held more than 10 records. I have a table and lamp he made at home from a cherry tree that fell on his property. He was a natural born mechanic. His gardens and fruit trees were productive.

My grandmother went to work for Seiberling in WWII, "siping" tires, and working on a beading machine that made the wire circle that made rubber tires seal on modern rims. She did that until 64 or 65.

it was some news show. They interviewed a man, a former alcoholic, who had recovered. He came from a family with "funds", and he was starting a medical foundation that would cover research into curing alcohol as a disease.

I think another medical development has already found something. As I understand it, drugs like Wegovey (sp?) sort of systematically lower the desire for alcohol (also drugs).

Meditation will get someone to the same place. Most people don't know that, but it does. The problem with that solution is that most people in the torments of alcoholism are in no position to discipline their mind, which is necessary in meditation.

... regardless of his skills and usefulness. The Great Depression, which had a productive, smart man on relief with a family. My dad talked about relief giving him a pair of red corduroy nickers, making him the only kid in high school not in long pants.

The Depression had long lasting psychological damage for lots of people.

I’m tearing up now. 😥

... here's one to cheer you up:

I once owned an MG midget. I could only park two cars where we lived, so I rented a space that used shipping containers for units. I liked the guy and the office was just blocks away and I paid him in person every month.

One month, the girls (6 and 8) wanted to come along.

The park had a little granma house in the woods style style office and quarters. When I pulled in my oldest said, look daddy, the fairies and elves live there. I kept quiet - the owner was a midget, about 3' tall and kitted and tatted out like a mad dawg biker.

When we went in the girls were amazed, they'd never seen an adult the same height as they. They were quiet and kept watching the guy while I paid him and we gossiped. Then his son came out from the back and at 14 was about as tall as I. I could smell the gears in kid's head strip and smoke.

We settled up, he went to other walk ins and we went to the car. They were quiet until we got to the street, and one of them asked, "Daddy, who was that boy?"
"That's his son."
A few moments of whine of stripping brain gears.
"How could that be, daddy?"
"Easy, he's a block off the old chip."
My wife about lost her mouthful of ice tea.

A block off the old chip. What a great turn of phrase!