random thoughts – Day 2,394 (Tuesday 10/6) – grandpa ray's birthday

Markie and Grandpa Ray.

On October 6, 1916, in Vaasa Finland, Grandpa Ray was born. As children, he and his sister Sylvia are listed with their parents in passenger lists for multiple crossings to and from America. The family settled in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Somewhere along the way he met and married Mummu, who had been born one day before him, half a world away. Grandpa Ray had a big reputation. According to local lore, he once physically picked up and relocated a friend’s car as a prank. In his younger years, he worked as many as three jobs at a time, including working in an apple orchard and driving a taxi. Eventually he established his own business specializing in “rebuilding, aligning, and scraping” machinery, based in Lunenburg, Massachusetts.

Mummu and Grandpa Ray divorced when Mom was six, in a time when it was unusual. When I was a kid and he visited, he would bring donuts, and allegedly, it was me who christened him "Ba Ba Gooie" because the donuts were gooey. Or something.

Yankee kids in Texas.

Eventually, he packed up and moved his business to Fort Worth, Texas, where people called him “Yank,” and he met and married Markie, a redheaded Southern Belle from Oklahoma and for better or worse and to her surprise, she became "Ma Ma Gooie." My family drove to Texas on family vacation when I was eight years old and we all got cowboy boots. Luckily, later visits involved air travel. My brother spent the summers of his junior high and high school years with Grandpa Ray and worked with him in his business (and was forbidden from addressing him as Ba Ba Gooie and had to call him Ray).

When Grandpa Ray bought a new car, he would sometimes drive to Massachusetts to visit us and “break the car in.” Grandpa Ray had some amusing theories. When driving on a curved entrance/exit ramp, he drove in as straight a line as possible because he said turns wore out the tires. The legendary “Ray shortcuts” (which we still joke about) usually resulted in many extra miles and being an hour late despite having left early.

There was always a lot of food at Grandpa Ray’s house. Markie was an amazing cook and full dinners with recipes from Southern Living Magazine graced the table nightly. Sweet potato casserole, roasts, side dishes, Jello salads, breakfast casseroles, and decadent desserts ensured we each gained a solid ten pounds during each visit.

At least once per visit, Grandpa Ray would pull out his vinyl recording of Finlandia by Sibelius, herd us into the living room, and make us listen to the entire album. There would be a visit to Angelo’s BBQ for brisket, Joe T Garcia’s or Casa Bonita for Mexican food, and Spaghetti Warehouse down at the Fort Worth Stockyards.

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

A birthday card from Grandpa Ray.

Grandpa Ray was a talented artist, and every year on our birthdays, there was a birthday card and letter with a beautifully illustrated envelope. He did this for all the relatives – his siblings and their spouses, their kids and grandkids, Mom and us kids. Recipients often relayed feedback received from letter carriers who enjoyed the artwork. A cousin has an archive of many of the envelopes, and I have dozens of the ones sent to me in a box in 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 his roses, opening/closing the pool, harvesting pecans, or big projects he was working on for major companies. On my end it was school grades, ballet, weather, my job. I wish I could sit and talk with him once more to know him better, but he passed away in 2008.