Real Families Open Call: Fireworks!

I wrote this post in response to an open call for submissions of essays about Real Families on Open Salon.  It has been selected as an Editor's Pick and will appear on the front page on OpenSalon.com today (7/27/10)

Like all major holidays, the 1956 Fourth of July started very early for the adults in the family. As a very mature 11-year-old, I was anxious -- too anxious, it turns out -- to join that club, so I was determined to help this year.

Every holiday in my family was a bit of a crap shoot. They would all start the same: Granny in the kitchen, throwing handfuls of this and pinches of that into huge pots; seasoning a mountain of hand-selected and Johnny-the-butcher-across-the-street-cut prime spareribs; boiling spuds for a tub of mustard-spiked potato salad; and, if we were lucky and she felt up to it, rolling out her flaky dough for her world-famous fried sweet potato pies.

The guy who held all the dice was my Grandpa. He always did, every day, but on holidays the relatives would come. What happened on a week night at the dinner table, we were all used to. But it was a horse of a different color when the relatives came.

Grandpa was a legendary drunk. His legend grew out of the fact that he would be "three sheets to the wind" --a phrase they all used, but not one of them would or could ever answer my incessant requests for a definition -- from about 30 minutes after he rose in the morning until he retired at night. But never, not once, did he ever miss a day of work. Not even the day after he stepped out of the coal delivery truck he drove on one icy evening, slipped on the ice and broke his leg. To this day I haven't figured out how he drove that truck with a cast on his leg.

My eleven-year-old self had learned by then to anticipate Grandpa's antics. That I was his favorite grandchild was a well-known, much discussed and deeply hated (by my sister) fact. He was only about 43 when I was born. My father was in the Coast Guard (November 4, 1944) so Grandpa was the one who drove my mother to the hospital. He was the one the nurse found in the waiting room when she announced my birth. And, according to lore, he was the one who paced the floor with me when I was screaming with colic.

On that morning, under the guise of arriving early to "help Granny cook," I climbed on Grandpa's lap and whispered in his ear. "Can you try to slow down on the booze today? For me?" He laughed, patted me on my head and slid me off his lap. "Anything for you, Punkin."
Well.

All the relatives had arrived, my mother and my uncle, her brother, were setting up the ubiquitous croquet set, the aroma from the barbecue pit was creating watering mouths and Grandpa was nowhere to be seen. That was never good.

Apparently, he had "gone to see a man about a dog," his way of announcing either a trip to the bathroom or a trip to the liquor store. The bathroom was unoccupied.

Suddenly he came sauntering around the side of the house, his ever-present newsboy cap pushed back on his head and a silly grin on his face. Uh oh.

Granny looked at him and sighed. Too loudly. Grandpa said, "Oh, brother!" Red flag number #3; the cap and the grin were 1 and 2. I grabbed my sister and my little cousins, who were running around screaming as they played Hide and Go Seek, and ordered them to sit down on the lawn.

As Granny was walking from the barbecue pit to the house, Grandpa reached out and grabbed her, hard, by her upper arm, sending the platter of freshly cooked meat flying. Jr., their son, my uncle, missed his croquet shot because he tossed his mallet sideways and reached his parents in about two long steps. He grabbed his father by the shoulders, spun him around and shouted "Not today, old man. Not today."

At 54, Grandpa was still lean and strong, despite his daily abuse of his body with alcohol. Uncle Jr. was an athlete, was a sailor on a ship during The War and knew his way around a brawl.

They grappled their ways up on the back porch, a long narrow expanse behind a large, side-by-side duplex. On the porch, in addition to the metal porch chairs were some tools that had been used recently to bust up some concrete for reasons I don't recall.

At that moment, my mother walked out onto the porch from inside the house. Confused by what was happening, she yelled "Goddammit, what the hell is going on now?" She immediately ran over and, without thinking, tried to get between the two furious men.

Livid by now, and roaring drunk, Grandpa grabbed the sledgehammer that was leaning against the porch wall, and took a roundhouse swing at my mother. I screamed and fell to my knees crying. All the younger kids were crying uncontrollably. The 20-pound head of that hammer wrenched the handle out of Grandpa's hand, grazed the skirt of my mother's dress and slammed its way through the entire wooden door that led into the kitchen.

And we still had the fireworks to set off.