My grandfather, Louis Eugene Straight

Our family visited Louie once a year when we were young. The last time I saw him, he and grandma took the train to New Jersey from Kansas to visit my disintegrating family.

He was trying to stop drinking.
My older brother, Louie and I went to a pool hall in Chatham.
My brother was a man now, with a full year of college under his belt, so he ordered two beers, one for Louie.
I ordered a coke since I never drank.
When the glasses arrived, I switched drinks with Louie and told him I’d have the beer and he could have the coke.

I never realized it, but that small gesture showed how I felt about my grandpa.
I liked him. He was fun.
When we got back to the house, he made a point of telling everyone what a nice thing I did for him.
That’s why I remember the story. He made me feel good in front of my family.

My father Don never said things like that about me.

Louie didn’t like my father and told him to his face.
I remember my mother telling the story but the details are lost now.
She was secretly very happy that Louie put Don right.
I think he told Don that he treated his children bad, which was true.
My father was a jerk, no doubt about it.

The year after the New Jersey visit, my parents got divorced.
My mom and the rest of us moved back to Indiana where we had lived previously.
I was glad for my mom that she found a place to root, but conspicuously absent was no to return to her origin in Kansas.

There was a reason why she didn’t go back to her roots. Louie never stopped drinking and neither did grandma.

Gene Haynes