Triggered Memories

As I sit here working on my precalculus homework listening to the Zac Brown Band, I find it amazing where the songs are taking me. I keep thinking about my days spent following my grandpa, aka "Pops" around. I grew up in Little Rock through the school week and the weekends when I had to accolite for church. Otherwise I spent every waking moment down in South Eastern Arkansas just outside a small town called Gillette. I was always known as "Red's Shadow" or just "Shadow" for short.

I remember always being allowed to go with Pops when the other grandkids weren't allowed. One day, I asked Pops why I got to go with him and no one else could go. He just smiled at me and told me that he never had to hunt me down, and I always made sure he didn't need my help anymore before I would "steal" the fishing rod in his truck and go fishing. I always had a fear that he would leave me out in the fields. He had a sense of humor that that would be funny and would teach me a lesson. One day I had gone down the banks of the resevoir a little too far to hear the tractor. So in true Pops fashion, he shut the tractor down after moving to the field just past the stand of trees and moved his truck so I couldn't see it. I noticed that it was getting to be close to lunch time, my belly could tell me when it was time for a meal no matter if I was blindfolded and had no nose. I came back to where he was supposed to be, and tractor, truck, and Pops all were gone.

I pannicked. I ran the opposite way that he had gone because that was the way back home. I must have run for about two miles before the tears broke out. As I sat there on the side of the road with tears streaming down my face, along comes Pops in his trusty old pick-up. I was saved. I was so glad that I promised that I would never go so far from where we were that I couldn't hear the tractor running.

The truly funny thing is that Pops was just as worried about me as I was about being lost. Although he would never tell me that until about a week before he died. That was about five years ago, and to this day, I will hear a song that just makes me stop what I'm doing and break down and cry because I miss him so much. You see, he raised me as if I were his own kid, since my real dad was that but just absent. Dad was drawn into his world of booze and drugs. It was more important to him to go out and party than to make sure that his kids were raised right with a good father figure around. That is why I told my dad that my father died when he asked me why I was walking around like a zombie after Pops' funeral.