When Charm is not enough...

I honestly don't know when this moment occurred for my grandmother. For my mother, I think it began when she told her father she was marrying my father, and he gave her $20.00 and suggested she buy sheets with it. Please bear in mind, my mother, the younger of her siblings had managed to care for the family (my grandmother HAD to work for the phone company), for probably twelve years. In that time, her daddy had acquired another daughter (in Nashville) and had joined the Merchant Marines, leaving my grandmother and the children in desperation, while he blithely headed off for San Francisco.

Early on in my life, I was taught that my grandfather was not the best of guys. Still, he gave me my first beer at almost two years of age and enjoyed the show when my mother returned to find me holding firmly to the cat's tail, giggling, under the dining room table. To this day, I can remember how angry my mother was.

Frankly, Peeps was NOT to be trusted.

My grandmother was induced to remarry him at the urging of my Aunt Doris and Uncle Buddy. These were the older siblings who put Humpty Dumpty together again... My mother and Uncle Bobby were NOT pleased. (Think they did not want to move to Miami, and besides, they, along with my grandmother, had gotten their lives together again.)

For the life of me, I can't imagine what really made my grandmother try again. He was simply NOT salvageable. But, he was charming, funny, evil.

You know, when I think about it, he wasn't the crux of the situation. His damaged children were. I think, based on my experience, every child must want the puzzle of a broken family fixed. To have the pieces match, to fit the broken pieces back together at last. To have one cohesive picture.

Ironically, that can never be. Or, maybe that can never be with our current mindset.

Right now, I'm looking for a missing aunt. For all I know, Peeps, gave her away when my grandmother was sleeping. I really wouldn't put it past him.

My dad found her birth certificate, Cora May French, b. 5/13/1927 in Chicago to our grandparents, Elizabeth Louise Campbell and Winford Clifford French, in Cook Co.

Dear Aunt Cora May,
I want to find you for NO OTHER REASON than to tell you, you have family that exists and loves you, today! You were named for my grandfather's sister. We want nothing from you, just to know your life has been filled with love.

Peeps. (Not the marshmallow treats, my Grandfather)

Peeps. AKA PeePaw. This was my maternal grandfather. He was the trickster. He would pretend to drink tabasco sauce from the table. My cousin Steven would mimic him, getting a large mouthful of tabasco sauce in the process. Peeps thought this was funny. He kept monkeys. He called every one of them Sam. He would give Sam a lit cigarette, only to have Sam apply the lit cigarette to his rear end, scratching with it. Again, this was thought of as funny. Our "Sam's" always had large cages, probably 20' by 10' by 10' in size. They were well provided for, given fruit, and monkey chow, but they weren't happy. Sometimes Sam ran away. One time, aunt Doris and I tried to lure Sam down from a large tree (an Australian pine) in a neighbor's yard with a bar of soap. (For some reason Sam liked to eat soap.) I think aunt Doris caught him (by his slight but strong tail) and we took him home. Poor, Sam. He might have developed his own tribe of Monkeys in south Florida (near the Opa Locka Airport) and might have become famous (as far as monkeys go) with his own indigenous tribe. Alas, this was NOT to be.

Peeps had a gas station (my dad said he thought Peeps would buy excess airline fuel at a much higher octane and put it in his tanks). Dad said, Peeps' customers' old jalopies ran like crazy on that super high octane. I remember when his gas station had gas at 19.9 cents per gallon. Peeps also had a restaurant, right behind the gas station. I'm pretty sure they called it Frenchy's.

Frenchy's was one stop burger joint. It was an outdoor cafe with barstools all around (more like a bar than a burger place, but, it was a work of art in development. My mom worked there for a time. He also had a waitress with one blue eye and one brown one. She was the most incredible woman I had ever seen. He had a "bunny hop" contest right after it opened so it must have been Easter. He also had a postcard made of the place.

My grandfather was sort of like Ernest Hemmingway in his time. He was certainly larger than life. He was a stranger in a strange land, Florida in the early 1930's. He disappointed his wife and younger children at every turn (he was a major womanizer, an alcoholic, and had an abiding disrespect for the family unit) but, still he had a certain charm.