This slide shows y’all my gussied up, earring-wearin’ Mom with her beloved dad, LeRoy Anderson. The slide isn’t dated, but I’m guessing this was snapped in the mid-50’s. I gave Grandpa a blue Bow Tie o’ the Day in honor of his rabid love of BYU football. If a BYU football game was being broadcast on tv, Grandpa heard and saw nothing else. Grandma could slip him a plate of her yummy food while the game was on, but that was all the interaction he could muster while watching the game.
By the time I was born, Grandpa’s hearing was already kaput. To talk to Grandpa meant I had to yell. He was always glad to see me, and he plied me with pink mints from his shirt pocket. But I don’t recall ever really having a serious conversation with him.
I do have a very specific memory of riding with Grandpa in his tractor at his farm when I was around 5 or 6. I remember he drove us in the tractor from one end of the field and to the other, and back again, over and over, until the tractor had covered every row. I don’t remember what machinery Grandpa had hitched to the tractor, so I don’t remember exactly what he was accomplishing. But I can still vividly see the grasshoppers leaping high—right and left in front of us, to either side of the tractor as we drove. Even then, I felt like I was in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, and Grandpa was Moses, parting The Grasshopper Sea as we made safe passage across it.