Joshua Minton’s Online Pulpit : Coins from the Dead Revisited: Reflections On My Grandfather and How He Came Back to Life

My aunts and uncles are in their seventies. My mother was born almost 30 years after my youngest aunt was born–she was a surprise to say the least.

So my aunts and uncles are much more like grandparents than they are aunts and uncles. And my maternal grandfather was a wonderful son-of-a-bitch. He drank whiskey like water. He won and lost thousands playing poker (not to mention a few hogs and cows along the way–forget Wil Wheaton and those fags in Vegas because farmers are the most serious poker players you’ll ever find).

He sometimes fell asleep drunk on the toilet but he did it with class. He was a harsh man but I remember he had the most gentle hands and the biggest room-filling laugh.

My oldest aunt despised him when he was drunk–so he’d see she was coming and go to the cabinet and get out every liquor bottle in the house and do a couple shots so it smelled like he’d been drinking all day.

He’d invite his grandchildren over on Easter Sunday, after church, so he could give them melted chocolate that would ruin their nice outfits.

I remember being two years old and sitting on my grandfather’s lap while we counted money. I learned to count, add and subtract at a very young age because I shuffled thousands of dollars in coins into piles for rolling.

On one of those occassions, he let me sip from his Jaggin’ Coke and I remember liking the taste of the Coke a lot more than the whiskey. And this is where my Paw-Paw and I are different. I’m happy about that difference–it has made my life a lot more easier and far more enjoyable.

During times, the rest of the family probably felt like my grandfather made everyone’s life around him harder except for me and my mother. He bought us a house when she was a single mother, divorced after less than a year of marriage, and forced to move back to a great big I told you so coming from her family.

But she had me with her and because I was so damned cute, I was like a Talisman against any criticism my family could heap on my mother for up and marrying a man who hadn’t shown much initiative except for being a smart ass troublemaker and who was now out of basic training and headed for a spectacular career as an enlisted United States Marine (my father went on to become one of the most driven and gifted individuals I know and I am very proud that most of my inspiration and genetic drive for success comes from him and my grandmother).

But these memories of my grandfather I have just described to you are my family’s memories that have been handed to me as sloppy seconds. These are things that happened before my time and are therefore easy for me to dismiss.

The most striking memory I have about my grandfather is that he was kind, gentle, and fiercely protective of me. And to a seven-year old child–that is God and it’s a hell of a thing when your mother takes you aside on a Sunday and tells you that God died and that you won’t be seeing him around here no more and sorry ’bout your luck but this is how the big bad world works.

So the seven-year old kid shed his tears at the service and when he lost it, everyone lost it, because even though the man was a wonderful son of a bitch to most of the people in his life, he loved that little Juicy unconditionally and that had to count something toward his character. It had to be something he could offer up at the gates of heaven to barter for admission despite the sins of his past.

When I cried, everyone cried because I cried like Mary Magdalene at the cross–I cried because God was dead and it didn’t look he was ever coming back.

Well, imagine my surprise when my aunts and uncles came to Ohio to visit last week and my youngest aunt handed me a faded yellow envelope that had been folded into fourths. On the front of the envelope, written upside down, was my name with three lines underneath it–in my grandfather’s handwriting.

She told me he had left this in a drawer and they found it cleaning up his house after he died. The envelope had been lying in the back of a drawer for years and finally showed up at an opportune time to bring it to me in Ohio.

I opened the envelope and shook the contents into my other hand.

There were three 1979 Susan B. Anthony dollars
There was one new 1983 nickel (this was also the year he died)
And there was a 1971 Kennedy half dollar with a black X marking out the eagle

Now, immediately, my mind fixed on this strange X and I wondered why my grandfather left me defaced US currency.

Could this mean that he was the eldest member of a secret organization that sought to replace the government-controlled communications delivery process like the Tristero in The Crying of Lot 49?

But when I flipped the coin over, I saw that a low arch had been penned from Kennedy’s left eye to the base of his skull. Now I thought:

Is my grandfather trying to tell me that he was the one who shot Kennedy because he was an elder member of a secret organization that sought to replace the government-controlled communications delivery process?

Now, this is because I think and write so much about how communication processes in our society are changing reality daily, and this fixation has retarded the portion of my brain that deals with rational thought. Lucky for us all, I am aware of this.

So, I went for what was behind supposition number two. And immediately, my mind gave me an image of my grandfather and I sitting at the table and playing tic-tac-toe with money for money (there were nine half dollar pieces as game tokens but we played for a nickel a round). Hey, to a seven-year-old, that’s a lot of money.

So that X was probably a game marker and that suspicious arc across JFK’s head was probably an O that got rubbed out over the years (even though it is a perfect demonstration of the internal damage arc of James Files’s Firebolt bullet as it was fired from the grassy knoll and entered Kennedy’s right temple, forcing his head “back and to the left” while Charles Nicolette’s bullet from behind, only a fraction of a second later, pushed Kennedy’s head forward….but I digress)

Two days later as I held the half-dollar with the X on it in my palm (it has now become my take everywhere pocket talisman because when I am superstitious, I go all out). And as I stared at the coin, tears that were stuck in the faucet from twenty-three years ago started to roll and I had a good fourteen second squinched up facial convulsion that passed like the pain of losing anything does, anything but your own life.

It’s a hell of a thing when a dead relative reaches out and touches your hand years after they’re gone. Everyone says we keep people alive by their memories inside of us but that’s a bullshit lie because memories are stillborn experiences that weren’t taken to the very end. Memories are residual interest payments on the pain we inflict on those around us every day.

I imagine my grandfather used the sauce to drown out a lot of memories and who can blame him?

My memories of my grandfather are no more valid than my theories on the Kennedy assassination–just because I have them doesn’t make them true. I can imagine that my grandfather was a secret conspiratorial Patrick Henry assassin instead of a hard-drinking, harsh-talking, deep-loving man who was a skilled construction artist and who didn’t start loving and appreciating the people around him until it was almost too late.

It doesn’t matter to me how pissed off my Aunts and Uncles still are at him all these years later because of what a shit he was to them when they knew him.

It doesn’t matter to me how he spent months at a time away from his family and often left my mother standing at the door crying for her daddy who loved her unconditionally and gave her everything she ever wanted and who she wouldn’t see for several months at a time.

It doesn’t matter to me that granddad was a traveling man because I knew him after his big accident, when his legs had been shattered and all that was left were a metal walking cane with a grey rubber grip, the few braincells he hadn’t stomped out with fifths of John Daniels on the Interstate roads of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, and he had a heart the size of a god damned Illinois cornfield.

What matters is the way I still feel about him and about how good it felt to be touching a coin that was probably last touched by his hands.

I imagine him leaned over hunchbacked on that big kitchen table with the checkered vinyl tablecloth. I have just been picked up on Saturday morning after my weekly ritual of sleeping over at Paw-Paw’s on Fridays. We had just finished the last of several games of tic-tac-toe and I was the big winner that day.

And my Paw-Paw was drunk but happy because he has a light in his life that he finally has the sense to walk toward. He is scrawling on a white #6 envelope that would eventually yellow with the age and wear of 23 years in my aunt’s junk drawer. He is writing with a cheap ballpoint pen and he is writing the name of his toe-headed grandson which he underlines three times for emphasis; as if to say to his family:

You can tear down my house, haul out all my shit to the curb, sell it off and keep it. Send your kids to college with it or do something you love to do. I’ve been an ass and you’ve earned it. But whatever you do–you’d better make sure that this little boy gets these coins. He earned them! He’s a hell of a tic-tac-toe player and one day, he might just surprise you, world. So you’d better watch out!

My memories of my grandfather are mine to dress up as I see fit but these coins belong to the both of us.

And no matter how hard I try, I could never erase that X across the eagle or the arc across President Kennedy’s head.

But nor would I want to.

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