Heirloom
I doubt most people get to know their great-grand
parents. I only knew one of mine. My great-grandpa Loyd (with only one “L”) Ronald
Clark was born on Sept. 25, 1910. He was
an excellent woodsman and handy with a gun.
He served our country during the second World War fighting against the Japanese. During our brief interaction, he told stories
of boat fights and how he and the others on their ship would line up near the
side the enemy was boarding holding a knife in their right hand. That way, when the hand to hand combat
started, if they punched and missed with their fist, they still might make
contact with their knives. He said that
the enemy soldiers would sometimes jump back off into the water when they saw
the line of armed militants.
My uncle received one of his knives.
He told of more weighty stories as well. He told of a time when he was forced to kill
women because the Japanese had stripped them down and strapped them with
explosives and told them to run toward the American troops. He was rather unforgiving toward the Japanese
for that and other experiences.
In my youthful memory of Grandpa Clark, he seemed to
be of a sound mind. He told us that he
had actually seen a yeti while hunting, and was about to shoot it but decided
that it looked too human. It later
chased him and knocked into his car. When
I was younger I was rather convinced of the certainty of this story. Now, I’m a little more skeptical, but more
open to the possibility of the existence of the Sasquatch than most people.
My elder brother received a skinning knife with a
leather sheath.
As a youth, Grandpa Clark was rather mischievous. He once opened a can of German black bees in
his class room which, according to him, only sting you if you move around and
freak out. He sat quite still, laughing
to himself, while everyone else ran around getting stung.
I heard all these stories from him during the short
period of time where he stayed at my aunt’s house just preceding his
death. Actually he died in my aunt’s
house. He had very few worldly possessions,
and not much money to be given as an inheritance. I received two items – his bathrobe which has
since been word through and ultimately disappeared, and a blanket that I always
keep handy in times for when the winter sets in and I need extra warmth for my
shivering toes.
There really is nothing too special about this
blanket – it’s not overly thick, it isn’t large enough to cover a bed, it doesn’t
have an extraordinary design, just some simple strips on one side and more of a
plaid pattern on the other. It was,
however, the blanket Grandpa Clark had with him and kept his old, now frail
body warm during the short time he was living with my aunt preceding his
death. He passed out of this mortal
sphere to whatever realm awaits the disembodied soul while resting at my aunt’s
house. My family came over that very
night to pay our respects and say a final good bye. If my memory serves me well, he had the
blanket draped over his legs, the way he always did while resting in his
recliner chair.
Although I am named after my great-grandpa, I can’t
say that I think of him often. I do
remember him, though, whenever anyone asks to borrow my blanket. It came from him and warms me with his
memory.
Artist’s statement:
Honestly, this assignment was a little trickier for
me. Like I mentioned above, the object I
described does not bear any particular attractiveness. It’s not an unsightly blanket, but there is
nothing extravagant or impressive about it.
Honestly, the only reason why I’m fond of the object is because of the
man who gave it to me.
For part of the assignment, we were asked to read
Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Things. I had already studied many of Neruda’s
writings the previous semester in a Latin-American literature class, and I believe
to have read the very piece in Spanish before.
I decided to look it up again.
Not that I thought the English translation in the book had anything wrong
with it, but I just wanted to see the way Neruda originally penned his
thoughts. One thing I noticed right off
the bat is that the poem is much, much longer than the English exert we had in
our textbooks. He used repetition as a
poetic device and began many of his new verses (paragraphs, really) with the
word Amo meaning “I love.” His Ode
to Things was all about the things he loved and appreciated
and seemed to fall right in line with my thoughts about the blanket. I love the blanket. Amo mi
cobija.
Quite honestly, the outside source that I can
connect to most would have to be Mouse
Hunt. I only saw the movie once, and
liked it more than I thought I would (granted, I could have done without so
much sexual innuendo) and it became memorable to me for two reasons: first
because when the body of the deceased father plunges into the sewer through an
open manhole, my dad burst out, “That is the funniest beginning to a movie I’ve
ever seen!”, and second because of how important a little piece of string came
to be for two quarreling brothers. I can
still recall the string, though previously eaten by the troublesome mouse,
descending from the heavens as the brothers become united and the painted portrait
of their father then bears a smile where once a paintbrush had produced a
frown. Little pieces of string hold
essentially no monetary value, but for them it was priceless.
I was nine years old when my great-grandfather
passed away. I do not know the chronology
of when he did the different things I mentioned in the story, nor do I remember
the order in which the stories were told to me.
I decided to organize them by theme, and in accordance to my own stream
of consciousness. I chose these
particular stories to show that not only was he a real human being. He went through hard times, he had flaws, he
liked to have fun and overall was a good person.
I decided to include some of the other gifts that
people inherited from him in conjunction to a story almost as an afterthought. I thought it would make a nice allusion to
other stories that could be told, other memories that are had about my
namesake, Grandpa Clark.
