I'm Just Carryin' on an Old Family Tradition

Earlier this week I was cleaning out my pantry. It had gotten pretty disorganized in there and summer vacation seems like the best time for this sort of job. As I was tidying up I had a breakdown.

My dad’s dad was known for his stockpiles of stuff. When I discovered six unopened boxes of Crystal Light packets, three opened boxes of them, and enough canisters of Crystal Light to make 32 quarts of beverage, I called my mother and cried into the phone, “I’ve become my grandfather!”

I can’t drink a Dr. Pepper without thinking of him. My grandparents lived in Philadelphia, so we usually visited them once a week while we were growing up. One of the first things Dave and I would do when we got to our grandparents’ house was head for the mudroom behind the kitchen and grab a Dr. Pepper. There were always cases of soda back there.

If we ever got a toy or a game that required batteries we waited until we went to Pop & Gig’s house (that’s what we call them, go with it). Pop kept a box full of batteries in the back of the house (beside all the Dr. Pepper), so we would just raid the battery box and begin playing.

This year for my birthday, a couple of dear friends sent me a Taste of Philadelphia box. In it were Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, a kind of candy my grandfather always kept on his kitchen table. If someone had handed me a Dr. Pepper while I was eating one of those peanut chews, I probably would have forgotten where I was.

Pop, and my father and I after him, could not resist a good deal. If he saw something on sale and it wouldn’t go bad, he bought it. But here is the thing about Pop—when he bought this stuff, I don’t think he bought it just to have it. He bought it because someone else might need it or want it. In the 16 years I knew him, I never saw him drink a soda and it wasn’t his Walkman using all those AA batteries.

Pop was wise about his money so that he could be generous. He bought shore houses for the family to enjoy. He and my grandmother gave Dave and me a weekly allowance. He bought me so many McDonald’s hash browns on Saturday mornings that I started to look like one. He would take us out for steak dinners and, during the meal, would ask, “Did you get enough to eat?” No matter how you answered the question, he would cut off a piece of his steak and put it on your plate.

As I think about Pop, and my dad, on this Father’s Day, I am thankful for the lessons they’ve taught me and for their tradition of stocking up. But if there’s an area where I really want to grow, it’s to learn their generosity. So if you need some Crystal Light, call me!

One more anecdote about Pop, unrelated to those above: A couple weeks ago while I was ranting about being at the shallow end of the family gene pool, my dad pointed out that Pop's genes gave me my singing voice.