I have never
gotten a speeding ticket.
Twice I came
close. The second time was a magical misunderstanding while pushing 90 on route
84 that was transformed into a parking citation. But the first time...
The first
time was while I was still in college. It was after a Renegades game that we
had gone to together as a family. Afterwards, I drove my grandparents home,
which for me, whenever I drove them anywhere it was always such a privilege.
My grandfather
in so many ways was the man behind the wheel. He drove all across this country,
he knew a route through and around every city and a spot to stop once you got
there. In his Oldsmobiles he drove us from the candy store to Potsdam, to
Plattsburgh, to Syracuse, to East Carolina, to Cooperstown and beyond. When my
cousin Donna was being born he beat my Aunt Camille to the hospital with time
to spare. He drove us everywhere—occasionally crazy—he was the one who picked
me up after practices and track meets in high school, and then dropped me off
at work before I had a car of my own.
So the
significance of being the one to drive him and grandma home was never lost on
me. What was lost was the degree to which the town of Cold Spring along Route
9D is nothing but a giant speed trap. Also lost at that particular moment as
the flashing lights filled my rear window—my driver’s license. Fortunately before
the nice young officer could ask me if I knew how fast I was going, before I
could try to explain or fast talk or say anything to try to get out of it,
grandpa was on him.
“Excuse me young
man,” he said, “I’m sorry for my grandson. This was my fault.”
He reached
into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. “I have a pacemaker,” he
says. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I took some nitroglycerin pills.” Then he gives
the pill bottle a little shake just to make his point. “My grandson was worried
about me and just wanted to get me home.”
There it was.
Poor cop never saw it coming and never knew what hit him, but instead of asking
for license or registration we were on our way with the offer of a police escort
or a call-ahead to the hospital.
“No, no, no,
I’ll be fine. I just want to go home.”
And so we
did. Now beating a speeding ticket is not in it of itself the best of stories,
but the way he told it after, the mischievous glint and near giggle when he got
to the part about the pills—that’s what makes me smile today. There’s so much that
can be said about him: as a husband of what-would-be 70 years, a father, a
grandfather, a great-grandfather, a soldier, a veteran, a salesman, a sports
fan and witness to so much history, a lover of Sinatra on the stereo, bananas in
the morning, Italian bread ends dipped in Sunday gravy, and daily crossword
puzzles. A man of faith who believed that above all family comes first—those
were his words, “Remember one thing, all
of you: ‘Family. Comes. First.’”
But the one
element of who he was that always spoke to me, literally, was that he was a
raconteur—a storyteller. He was a storyteller to the point that every daily
interaction was a story, rebroadcast with drama and flair.
I wish I
could have seen him on a sales call because when
John Sanzo told a story he owned the room. He and Al Fox and Uncle Ernie,
gallant adventures to eradicate bee hives, shoe shines to mobsters, and sales
pitches to ballplayers—the latter sometimes behaving less reputably than the
former. The job lost to sit in the right field bleachers as Lou Gherig declared
himself the “luckiest man on the face of this earth.” Seeing grandma for the
first time at a party and following her around in love from the start. Tales of
Cus D’Amato and Yogi Berra, ejections from softball games. The time he bet my
then-girlfriend that he could guess her ring size just to get her to try on a
sizer, so the ring my wife now wears would fit when I proposed.
He told his
stories to draw you in, and if you sat at our table you heard at least one of
them. Every meal, every holiday, there was always a moment—especially if
someone new was joining us. If this was your first meal at our table each
platter passed along was nothing but a build up to his cue—and just as the
stuffed mushrooms got to your seat, he was on.
“Excuse me
young man/young lady, do you know what those are?”
“Uhhh…
mushrooms?”
“No. They’re
Cereal Chambers.”
“Huh?”
“Cereal
Chambers. What’s another word for cereal? ‘Mush.’ Another word for chambers? They’re
‘Rooms.’Cereal Chambers.”
And meal
after meal, there it was. Army humor. No structure, barely a punch line, but if
you were at our table you heard the joke, and if you heard it enough you got
it. You looked forward to it. Him telling it and smiling as he did made you
smile. And that’s what we’ll do. The mushroom sits at both ends of the life
cycle and when we all gather together, when generations of funny-faced kids heed
his words and come together to put our family first we’ll celebrate life and
death and smile knowingly as the cereal chambers are passed around. We’ll re-tell
his stories, we’ll tell stories about him, and more than anything we’ll thank
him for giving us an audience eager to listen and relive memories of a man that
meant so much to so many.
Long before
it came to pass I knew that when this day was upon us I would need to put to
words my understanding of a man who helped raise me and whose ideals became my
own. I would need to stand before His audience and tell His story. As always,
he did it his way because it turns out his story is his audience, and his
audience is his legacy. If you sat before him then he made you feel like family,
and while he didn’t do it alone, you better believe it that our love for each other as a family is the
greatest story he ever told. It’s the story he told to us in his love for
grandma and for each and every one of us. He said it with joy, he said it
plainly, and he said it often. And now, all that's left in response is to tell
him the same. Grandpa, I thank you. I
loved you as we all did. I loved you as a grandfather and as a father, and while
I will always miss you and I’ll miss the sound of your voice as you told your
stories— I won’t miss the stories.
I won’t miss
the stories because we’ll keep telling them.
