Heirlooms

Black electrical tape, Calvin & Hobbes, rifles, an organ

My mom's dad¹ loved a roll of electrical tape like some men love showy sports cars or showier bikini calendars or getting the biggest cut of steak. He could fix anything, mostly (a talent I decisively did not inherit). If you kept your eyes peeled walking around their house or the cabin, you'd spot some stuff jerry-rigged with black electrical tape or wire or whatever else it took to get the job done. When my mom's mom died (about a decade after grandpa, may they both rest in peace, but especially her after all the caring she did for him after his strokes), suddenly all the things in their old house—record players, couches, china, Calvin & Hobbes collections, jewelry, an old Bible bound together with, yes, electrical tape, and so much more—were up for grabs.

My sister had the foresight to grab me one of grandma’s iconic turquoise rings (grandpa was known to bring back turquoise jewelry as gifts for her during some of his travels around the intermountain west and southern deserts), with the idea that I could give it to my someday wife. At the time, I was 26 and dating nobody seriously, so the gesture felt more than a little optimistic. My sister wisely held onto it until just before I got married, when I gave it to Holly. I steal it back once in awhile when I crave a little extra feeling of connection to my grandparents. Or when I’m feeling a little too sartorially vanilla. 

Downstairs in grandpa’s nuclear fallout shelter-worthy basement (seriously, it was nuclear-grade thick concrete), behind a locked door, he had a gun locker. And every grandson was told they could choose one of his many rifles. He was never stockpiling munitions or conspiracy theorizing or hanging with neighborhood militias or anything. He actually hunted— pheasants, deer, ducks², a moose head that he stowed in a dark corner of that concrete basement, and he killed a bear (on his honeymoon with my grandma, if memory serves) even after she told him, "Mark, don't you dare go kill that bear!" The bear had been harassing them—getting into their food, clawing at the screen porch. So grandpa, in what was likely not his first and definitely not his last act of "I know you said this, but I'm doing THAT" (those genetics were transferred to me), went out one morning and shot that bear. It now hangs, mouth menacingly agape, over the door in the cabin living room.

My brothers and cousins all inspected grandpa’s rifles. This one had a cool [insert impressive gun accessory here that I can't even pretend to know: barrel? trigger? I'm useless] while that one had a custom [again, insert your appropriate impressive thing here to compensate for my lack of gun knowledge]. But I didn't want one. Never been much for firearms, I guess. Not since playing Cops & Robbers as a kid, at least. Maybe someday I'll regret not claiming one, particularly when the someday apocalypse finally cashes in on the anticipatory salivation of all the apocalypse-hungry, trigger-itchy, Bible-thumping, end-is-nigh, I-told-you-so, self-righteous paranoiac types. But I didn't take one. Declined my ballistic birthright. And not even for a mess of pottage.

Each grandkid was allowed to make a list of 10 things we wanted from grandpa’s house. Once the aunts and uncles had gone through their generation’s draft, then and only then would grandkid requests be considered by the committee. I knew exactly what I wanted and I knew the chances of getting it were slim. But I figured if any aunt or uncle didn’t want it or only sort of wanted it, then I was going to make my intentions unbearably clear. This was my list of 10 items:

1. Grandma's pump organ

2. Grandma's pump organ

3. Grandma's pump organ

4. Grandma's pump organ

5. Grandma's pump organ

6. Grandma's pump organ

7. Grandma's pump organ

8. Grandma's pump organ

9. Grandpa's bullet bandolier³

10. Grandma's pump organ

Grandma's pump organ⁴ now sits in our living room, scores of vandalous grandkids and great-grandkids later with its pedals threadbare and falling apart and half the stops needing serious help and my kids now doing their genealogical duty to make it unplayable. It’s a thing of beauty. A statement piece. It sounds good, especially if you’re playing in Eb, to match the Eb below middle C that’s permanently pressed until I find someone who fixes 19th century parlor organs (there are a couple of stops you can pull that disable that section of the keyboard, though, and allow you to stray from the narrow confines of Eb, in a pinch).

The other day one of the pedals came unhooked. In a rare uncharacteristic moment, I got on the floor to inspect the pedal and see whether maybe someone of my remedial handiness might fix it. The piece connecting the pedals to the bellows had become disconnected. What had been holding it together had fallen off. What had been holding it together?

Electrical tape, of course.

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1. Not the Soren/Anna side from my previous post. That’s my dad’s side. We’re talking Mark/Gertrude here and, to answer your question, yes, Gertrude disliked her name and told more than a few of us grandkids that we should not even consider saddling one of her great-grandchildren with her albatross of a name. If we loved her so much (which we did), she’d say, we’d let the name die with her and not make any great-grandkid lug it around. Her sisters’ names were Eunice, Afton, and Enid.

2. One of my favorite grandpa stories: once in the middle of the night, he was awakened by the incessant squawking coming from one of his neighbor’s ducks. As the squawking intensified and he found he couldn’t go to sleep and grew increasingly irritated, grandpa finally picked up the phone and called the neighbor. When the neighbor at last blearily answered, grandpa asked, “Hey, do you know when duck hunting season starts?” The neighbor didn’t make the connection and replied, “What?” Grandpa repeated emphatically, “do you know when duck hunting season starts?” “Mark, it’s 3 am!” the neighbor pleaded. “It starts in about 2 minutes if you don’t shut that doggone duck up!”

3. This was just to piss of my cousin Dave, who really wanted it. Don’t worry. He got it.

4. A Farrand & Votey organ, straight out of Detroit. Not sure of the year but it appears that it may be in the very late 1890s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrand_%26_Votey_Organ_Company