“Remoted” – Workday 140 / Day 204 (Tuesday)

On October 6, 1916, somewhere in Finland, Grandpa Ray was born. At some time along the way he landed in Fitchburg and met and married Mummu, who had been born one day before him, half a world away. Mummu and Grandpa Ray divorced when Mom was six, in a time when it was unusual. Eventually, he moved his business (“rebuilding, aligning, and scraping” machinery) from Lunenburg, Massachusetts to Fort Worth, Texas, where people called him “Yank,” and he met and married Markie, a redheaded Southern Belle from Oklahoma. 

Markie and Ray in Fort Worth, 1999.

The summer I turned eight, my family drove to Texas in a black car with no air conditioning to visit Grandpa Ray.  We stopped in Oklahoma at some sort of amusement where my sister sobbed through the pony ride and I bought a cowgirl skirt and matching vest in black fabric with white embroidery and white fringe (which I still have). At a gas station, the attendant pumping the gas said in a Southern drawl, “Ah, lookey he-ah, we got a car load of Yankees,” and I thought that was the end of us. Later family visits involved air travel. My brother spent the summers of junior high and high school with Grandpa Ray and worked with him in his business.

When Grandpa Ray bought a new car, he would sometimes drive to Massachusetts to visit us and “break the car in.” He often preferred to sleep in his car in our driveway instead of in the house. When driving on a curved entrance/exit ramp, Grandpa Ray drove in as straight a line as possible because he said turns wore out the tires. He was infamous for his shortcuts that resulted in many extra miles and being an hour late.

At Grandpa Ray’s house, there was always a lot of food. Markie was an amazing cook and sweet potato casserole, breakfast casseroles, and decadent desserts like coconut cake and Milky Way Cake, made with 10 or 11 Milky Way bars were regular fare. Each visit was good for a ten-pound weight gain.

Our first cowboy boots.

There would be trips to western wear stores where we Yankees got cowboy boots, the Fort Worth Stockyards, the Dallas zoo, and Six Flags over Texas. Grandpa Ray would pull out his vinyl record Finlandia by Sibelius and play it for us at least once per visit. We would all go to Angelo’s BBQ for brisket, Spaghetti Warehouse, and Joe T Garcia’s or Casa Bonita for Mexican food. 

At the last house he owned, he converted the garage to a pool room with floor to ceiling bookcases. Pool was played by “Ray Rules” which meant you could forget about winning, because Grandpa Ray would move the balls and lift the corner of the table. That house also had a pecan tree in the back yard, and one year he sent us all bags stuffed with shelled pecans.

He was always full of stories, pranks, and jokes from which nobody was spared. Markie, with the patience of a saint would shake her head and say, “Oh, Ray.” Wait staff were usually dragged into the tales. He once tried to get a busboy who spoke little English to agree to go on a date with me. When I was 22, he set me up on a date with the guy from the auto parts store by arranging it before I arrived and then telling me that Danny S would be taking me out.

Grandpa Ray was a talented artist, and every year on our birthdays, we received a birthday card and letter with a beautifully illustrated envelope. I saved dozens of them in a box, now buried somewhere in the mess of the spare room.

I wish I’d known Grandpa Ray better. We exchanged letters throughout my life, but they were about daily life. On his end it was about roses, opening/closing the pool, or harvesting pecans, depending upon which year and which house he lived in. On my end it was school grades, ballet, and weather. I wish I could sit and talk with him once more to know him better, but he passed away in 2008.