The Old Man: Pappaw

He was a tall man with a headful of white hair. He wore thick glasses and rare it was when I did not see him dressed in overalls. He never owned or drove a car but he owned and used a few tractors in his time. He raised some cows, owned a chicken house for a time and slaughtered hogs on the coldest days in winter. In the hardscrabble north Georgia soil he always tended a garden and whatever grew there-beans, corn, okra, squash, apples-ended up on the family table or preserved in some way in a jar for consumption later after harvest had passed and when the cold winds whipped down from the mountains to the family’s front door. Sometimes he may have even preserved other things in jars just to sell to others but some things are better left to share only among family.

This man was my Pappaw, my Dad’s dad.

I recall learning he was born in another century, the late 1800s, and I then considered it awesome to know somebody so shortly removed from the Wild West by just a few years. He married an older woman, older by just a year or two, anyway. Together they had four boys and three daughters and each one, minus one, had a nickname others in the family used although no one in the family could or would ever explain why or how those nicknames came into being. My dad was planted smack dab in the middle of the seven.

Growing up, we would visit my Pappaw and Mammaw usually on Sunday afternoons after church or as my Mammaw would say after “meetin’”. Sometimes aunts and uncles and cousins would be there. More often than not, my Pappaw might make an appearance but usually not for very long because on his farm, there was almost always something to do and he was the man to do it.

I noticed something from time to time whenever we would be at Pappaw’s house or even sometimes when we talked about him. I noticed that my Dad and his brothers and sisters referred to him as “the old man”. Every time I heard that phrase I cringed a little. After all, old isn’t always looked on as being something a person looks forward to, especially when you are young and strapping full of life. Mom and Dad had also spent time and exerted effort teaching me to be deferential especially to older family and friends so for me to hear people I love refer to my Pappaw as “the old man” just seemed to be disrespectful and more than a bit confusing. Do understand I never recall hearing anyone call Pappaw “the old man” in a mean-spirited tone but still something about hearing that phrase associated with my Pappaw has stuck with me all these years.

I never asked anyone why Pappaw was sometimes referred to as “the old man” until recently. We were with family talking about family when Pappaw Dills was remembered.  I was sitting near my Dad so I told him how I remembered him and his brothers and sisters calling Pappaw “the old man”, a phrase they sometimes reference even now over twenty years after Pappaw’s passing. I asked Dad why they sometimes referred to Pappaw as “the old man”. Dad didn’t really have an answer; it was just what they called him. I then asked if they ever called Pappaw “the old man” to his face. Dad grinned and sharply said, “Noooo.”

Dad’s reply didn’t really give me an answer I wanted but gave me enough of an answer to understand it all a bit better. Maybe there was some of that youth-knows-better-than-age idealism floating around when one of the seven first uttered that phrase “the old man” and it stuck, like their nicknames stuck for the rest of their lives, even past the point of realizing under the gray hair and behind the thick glasses and down in the heart underneath those overalls was a world of unique wisdom earned from life experience. Maybe somewhere was a tinge of remembering how their youth was spent working hard on the farm and how Pappaw, their Dad, was the one who was driving them to work that way. Even then when I heard someone say “the old man” I could pick out a respect for that man who gave them life and who taught them hard work is not a thing over which to feel any shame.

Maybe that is me projecting what I want to believe so my memories stay warm and remain unspoiled. After all, my mileage varies. He was their dad but he was my Pappaw.

Pappaw lived to be an old man according to today’s standards, ninety-seven years young. His last few years were challenging. His life of hard work caught up with him just when he slowed in life. His feet and knees could not hold out longer than the rest of him. One leg was removed and then later another. Many of us thought once he could no longer be mobile the life would drain from him and he would wither away. He was tough though, made out of strong stuff. He held on and stayed sharp mentally, rarely forgetting a name or face. He stayed at home as long as his children could care for him then he went to a facility where at least one of his children visited him every day until he drew his last breath. That’s how they showed their love; they were there for “the old man” until the end.

Family still lives on that farm, a farm never since cared for the way Pappaw cared for it. Sometimes bits and pieces of what I knew there float through my memory, the well where we dropped a bucket down into the earth’s belly and drew out cold, cold water, the old outhouse down a path in the woods, the pond down from the house out from the old home place, the song of the guineas over in the pasture. Mostly I think about the people I knew there, loved there. I think about seeing my Pappaw on his tractor or watching him walk down the dirt road to check on his garden or just listening to him talk while he leaned back in a cane-bottomed chair.

Memories yellow with time. I now know I was younger then and he was old, at least the way some people choose to measure time and age. Still with that knowledge, he never seemed old to me.