Yer Friday Funny

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I've never had much use for tact.

You can say I come by it honestly. My grandfather was a man who did not know the definition of tact. He thought diplomacy meant you had to stand around in uncomfortable suits meeting very important people, like the Queen of England, while other people took pictures.

Aspect, according to Grandpa's unwritten Rules of Living, was what happened when you walked into the chicken coop and turned your back on the head bantam rooster.

Grandpa never beat around the bush unless he was quail hunting or had a fishing lure hung in tree.

If you needed to know something, Grandpa was of the considered opinion you needed to know it, you needed to know it right away and you needed to know it in very clear terms. I well remember him delivering a a few short sentences that could blast a 250 year old oak tree to toothpicks or turn an acorn into a 10-foot circumference oak tree in seconds.

At the same time if you didn't need to know, like as not he would not bother to say much of anything. He figured you could work your own way through it and if you needed his help, you'd ask.

When I was in high school, considering colleges, I was over at his house one day doing something. The door of my truck was open and there was a fifth of something visible.

"You don't need to think you're going to go off to college and stay drunk all the time," he said and that was ALL he said. Whatever reply I offered is lost to history, but definitely included something along the lines of "Yes, sir."

He was right too. I was sober when I ran out of money.

When I came home from college for some reason I was over to see Grandma and went to get a towel out of the closet. I spied a bottle in the back - Bourbon. No question it belonged to Grandpa, who had gone on his Permanent Fishing Trip by that time. I took it back to college with me and used it to get me past a brief period of financial embarrassment.

I can tell this story since Grandma has relocated to be with Grandpa now.

Dad told me to knock off early one day and run by Grandpa's house to see if he wanted to go fishing. It didn't take telling me twice.

I pulled up in the yard and walked in the house. Never bothered knocking. Grandpa couldn't hear it anyway.

I walked into the den. He was sitting in his recliner with an adult magazine, the kind sold with brown wrappers covering most of the cover.

"You wanna go fishing?" I said loudly enough for him to clearly hear me.

The magazine literally sailed over his head to land somewhere behind his chair.

Before he got done saying "Yep." he was out the front door. I did not believe my Grandpa could move that fast until that day.