Sunday, August 27, 2023
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Most of my conversations with Grandpa were about John Wayne, squirrels, guns, and art, haha.
I'm really glad Grandma and Grandpa were able to settle down nearby, this gave me a chance to really hang out and connect with them. I got to watch a lot of John Wayne movies with Grandpa and my sister at their house. He was SO excited to share his favorite star, John Wayne, with us, and I really enjoyed watching the movies too! I'm really glad we got to spend those evenings with him, he was always so excited and smiled ear to ear. He loved to tell us about his favorite John Wayne movie scenes, as well as other stories from his life. I'll never forget his pet pig that escaped from his pen, and went to school to find Grandpa! That pig was smart enough to wait at the side of the road for traffic to stop before crossing, all on his own!
Every time I visited, it was also fun to hear Grandpa's report about the devious squirrels he saw since the last time I was there. We tried many things to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeders, but amazingly they kept finding ways to: knock them down, dump the seed out, perform great acrobatics to reach it, and somehow even get stuck inside them! I helped Grandpa realign the scope on his air rifle many times. Then we would sit for a while and shoot some targets, we had a lot of fun! I added a photo from one of the times that I helped Grandpa adjust the scope in 2018. Grandpa took the shooting target sheet home, circled the 1 inch grouping of shots(that's when you know you've aligned the sights properly), and brought it back to me as a gift. It's been hanging up on my closet ever since.
I read through all the birthday cards I kept, from Grandma and Grandpa, and in more than half of them Grandpa mentions my art. He was always so supportive of my artistic endeavors. He loved so much to see what I had made whenever he visited, and I was always excited to show him! He wrote in some of the cards that he looked forward to seeing what I made next. Grandpa liked to carve, and I was always excited to when I visited him! My Dad and I once stayed with him in the camper at the camp ground, and Grandpa taught me how to carve! I was fascinated how he made roosters and hens from little branches. The way he curled the rooster tails was so cool and simple! It's the same way you curl ribbon, I never imagined that'd work on wood! He even made me a copy of his 2 favorite wood carving books, which I still have. I also still have a hen Grandpa carved for me, probably about 10 years ago, I included a photo of that too. Grandpa also liked to carve faces and houses into bark. The way he discovered paths, stairs, roofs, windows and houses, all in different shapes, within the waves of the bark, showed how much of an artist at heart he was. He had wonderful and whimsical imagination in creating, and I inherited it from him! And I am very glad I did! Grandpa taught a lot of people how to carve. I will never forget what he told me when he met a man with Parkinson's one day. The man's hands shook, and he had difficulty doing anything because of it. Grandpa said everytime he saw him, he was just sitting there in the chair. When Grandpa got to talk to him, he told the man, the motions of his hand looked just like he was carving wood. So Grandpa taught him how to carve, and the man loved it so much it became his hobby. Grandpa gave him a way to be productive, and I love that. Grandpa cared so much about other people, he went out of his way to make anyones day better. He loved to make people laugh, loved to make people smile. He loved to spread joy! I am very blessed to have grown up with him. I look forward to the family reunion in heaven someday!
-Kelsey Wilkins
