My Great-Grandfather

How old were you the 1st time you realized that you had life ‘figured out’? 12? A little bit later? Maybe it was when you had some success at school or when you performed a brilliant task at home or dazzled your friends with a keen insight or just maybe it was when you observed one of life’s ‘losers’ and got puffed up knowing that at least you were smarter or better than that pitiful soul.

As a kid growing up back in the 1950’s, I had many opportunities to visit with my Great Grandparents. They lived in Piermont, New York right on the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City. I can remember good times fishing and swimming in the Hudson.

And always hanging in the kitchen was a wrought iron piece that said- ‘VE GET TOO SOON OLDT UNDT TOO LATE SCHMART’. And there was an image of a wise older man giving some sage advice to a young man. The young man actually appeared Happy to receive what he was being told.

Unlike your family, mine has many ‘characters’ and sordid tales that have tried to follow me down through history. Great Grandpa Visser was a Dutchman who came to the States as a young man.

He had a brilliant mind for numbers and could calculate huge equations in his head. He worked in the New York and New Jersey shipyards as an engineer and planner. In today’s world he would be considered a professional in high demand.

Great Grandpa also helped Great Grandma with her business as well. She ran a bar in Nyack, New York which was 3 miles from home. After work in the shipyards, he would drive up to the family business and help until closing time. The big tree stood witness to how many rough nights at the bar Great Grandpa had. If he had had too much to drink, he would run his car into the tree.

Early the next morning, you could hear a banging sound outside. It was Great Grandpa doing some body work on his car. If you’ve ever seen cars from the 1940’s like in the gangster movies (yes that’s right before there were ‘gangstas’ there were gangsters), they had big old metal fenders. All you had to do was turn the wheel and get in there with a ball peen hammer and bang out the dent. Then it was off to work (no body shop required).

During prohibition the bar turned into a speakeasy. Since liquor was illegal, my Great Grandparents would negotiate deals to purchase ‘Bathtub Gin’ (It was the North’s version of Moonshine) from a supplier in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since being caught with the stuff going across state lines could bring imprisonment, they decided to let Great Grandma drive the 30 miles alone with a load of Bathtub Gin under the floorboards.

After they had sold the bar and retired from the shipyard, they both lived well into their 80’s. But Great Grandpa was an alcoholic and it really was a shame from my perspective. Here was a brilliant man who was unable to function with a shot and a beer every 3 or 4 hours. He was banned by Great Grandma from drinking in the house. So he had a little corner set up in the basement with a small table, 2 chairs and an ice box.

Periodically whenever we would be visiting, Great Grandpa would disappear for a while. I followed him once as he went down to his corner. He would sit with his little dog- Dutchy (of course), a White Owl Invincible cigar, a bottle of Stegmaier beer and a shot of Seagrams whiskey. He would tell me stories and how proud he was of everything I was doing.

And then he gave me a ‘slug’ (no not a crawly thing and no he didn’t hit me). He’d give me a slug of beer. I was maybe 9 years old. It tasted terrible. But it’s amazing how our taste buds can adapt and by the time I was 12 it tasted pretty good. Just in time for the older guys in the neighborhood to get us our own beer. So it wasn’t just a ‘slug’ anymore. But that’s a story for another day.

The truth is that Great Grandpa was self-medicating. The alcohol was used to take away the pain- physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Oh please don’t judge my Great Grandpa. He didn’t have access to everything we have today. The doctors didn’t write prescriptions like today. Back then it was usually penicillin or take some aspirin.

Today not only can you get drugs for anything that ails you but you can get drugs to counteract the side effects of the original drugs and then more drugs to counteract the side effects of the drugs you’re taking to counteract the side effects of the original drugs.

As a formally trained Social Studies teacher, it amuses me to hear the call for higher math and science scores. The essence of ‘VE GET TOO SOON OLDT UNDT TOO LATE SCHMART’ is the oft quoted maxim- ‘Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it’. Unfortunately it seems the course of human nature to repeat mistakes again and again.

While we’re trying to raise the next generation, Dads and Moms, Grandpas and Grandmas, Teachers, Coaches, and all types of Leaders need to be reminded that the kids are not the only ones who need to get SCHMARTER. One of the greatest lessons from parenting is that if you don’t start out HUMBLE from the day your baby is born, YOU WILL BE HUMBLED!

By the way, I’ve been told since I was young that my nationalities are Irish, English, German and Greek. Hmmm… no mention of Dutch. Could there be family ‘skeletons’ that I don’t know about? Not that it really matters- I’m living in the Precious Present and looking toward a Fantastic Future. The Past is just a place to go to see what does and does not work.

All the best… bye4now…