51 Days with Grandpa

In 1969, I made a number of third party phone calls while with my sister away at college. Those were billed to my parents and when the bill came was $51. They decided I could work off $1.00 a day for every day I spent with my great grandfather John Richard Chitwood, born in 1877 died in 1974. To prove I'd spent time with him doing more than sitting, I had to write down what we talked about and what we did. A punishment as a 12 year old has turned out to be one of my most treasured...
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In 1969, I made a number of third party phone calls while with my sister away at college. Those were billed to my parents and when the bill came was $51. They decided I could work off $1.00 a day for every day I spent with my great grandfather John Richard Chitwood, born in 1877 died in 1974. To prove I'd spent time with him doing more than sitting, I had to write down what we talked about and what we did. A punishment as a 12 year old has turned out to be one of my most treasured possessions. When I got a computer in 1988, I entered those pages into the computer and "edited" out some of the grammar. That is a huge regret now. My grandpa was my hero and the only grandparent I ever really had as my parents lost their parents as children. Only my grandma Robbie, his daughter, my dad's mother was alive, but she lived in California and we were in Arkansas. And, I had Grandpa's wife, Grandma Lena. These were my great grandparents, the people who raised my daddy. There were 200 years of history in what he told me from the Trail of Tears, to Civil War, which his father, uncles and grandfathers fought with the CSA and to stories of Frank and Jesse James.