Welcome To the 60s

Gramps didn't smell too good.

Chapter Seven

Welcome To The 60s

There's something about life you can always count on...the passage of time. It's always moving forward, ever constant on its journey into uncertain futures.

As I turned looking out the back window of our old white 58 Ford Fairlane I realized I was leaving the past. We left behind our little home on the Texas high plains, and although we had only lived there a year, I couldn't help but be sad.

It wasn't the same as before when we left Venezuela... I mean, it wasn't as though we were being thrown from paradise, but still, we had forged out a new life for ourselves, new friends, new memories, new...adventures.

It was hard leaving Sarah, but as I turned around and gazed out the front windshield I knew there would be new tomorrows and new adventures and, somewhere, a new romance. Sarah would soon become like Penny, a faint memory from the past. Even as we were leaving I had problems remembering what she looked like.

Like the words from an old Simon and Garfunkel tune, And the leaves that were green turn to brown. And they tumbled to the ground and faded in the night.

And then there was grandpa and grandma, but they had this strange smell. I think it's old person smell. We were all kinda glad to keep them at a distance.

Yep, the man who had been my father's father had become something of an anomaly, a strange odor that creeps up out of nowhere and somehow overwhelms your nostrils

with wisdom and decay, and something else too...gas. It escaped from his body like a high plains sandstorm, rolling over everything in its path.

 And what is it about grandmas? They always want you come and give them a big hug and a kiss. It's a real creep out, things of which nightmares are made.

And the harder you try to escape the tighter they hold.

“Oh just look at you, as cute as a bug. Why, I wish I could just squeeze you to death.”

Yeah lady, too much more of this and you'll have your wish. I'm eleven for heavens sake.

Once, during one of grandma's ambushes, my older brother Steve tried to hold his breath. Grandma squeezed him between her two, enormous, bosoms. She squeezed so tight she squished all his breath out. He nearly suffocated before Mom rescued him.

And so with our small caravan we were off to new horizons, my dad behind the wheel of a U-Haul, and Mom at the wheel of our old Ford.

Although we knew the future would be full of uncertainties there was one thing we could all count on, time would move steadily forward, and decades would pass...like gas from gramp's body parts.

Today's adventures would become tomorrows memories.

Author's Note

Moving to southeast Texas.

Reviews

[Sami Khalil]

Very nice and very affordable of praise in all aspects. The last line summed it up marvelously. Pen on. Bravo....:)....
Don't you love them even if they smell weird...lol

[Marie]

Time always mooves forward.

I'm not a grandmother, though I'm old enough to be one. I don't think I would relish the idea of hugging and kissing small children...