he was tied with my mother for my most favorite person in life. he was tall, intelligent, stylish, dashing, dry-witted, and loved his poodle and his red, red wine. he was a lot like cary grant except bald. my mother is a lot like her father except for the tallness and the baldness and maybe swap out dashing with diabolical. otherwise, exact replicas. he was the core of the family and a lot of screws started to fall out after his death. my aunt v got a divorce and then lost complete control of her 2 kids. my other aunt, s, moved to california, got a divorce, then got remarried and didn't tell anyone. family xmas, easter, birthdays, and cook-outs headed south. as they say, he probably did much rolling in his grave. i have really good memories of him in the summer. he loved taking my sister and i to local fairs and winning goldfish for us. he would ride his motobecane over on sunny days and then we would get our bikes out and ride back home with him to have ice-cream with my grandmother (since they only lived a few streets over). if my dad was tackling a project in the yard, he would ride over, sip iced-tea, and keep my dad company until it got dark. his corvette collection was the best. there were 4; one sold to aunt s, one sold to some greasy looking guy, and the other 2 - totally stolen from the garage on 2 separate occasions. he was pretty pissed about that. so was i. my favorite memory was when he would pick me up from half-day kindergarten in the gun-metal grey one and head straight to mcdonald's for happy meals. he would get one too so that there would be extra toys for us hanging around at his house.
i miss him. i was 3 days from turning 9 when he died on his birthday, november 10th. i didn't get enough time with him, but i don't have any regrets. he lived close and always wanted to see us. he was a wonderful man and i'm glad i got to have him in my life.
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