I’ve had the great pleasure of traveling with this man my entire life. The lessons I learned from him while we rode together up and down the road are immeasurable. This past weekend I drove just over 881 miles to take my grandfather to his “home” in Southeastern Kentucky. Unfortunately, this was brought on by a funeral.

Grief and sadness aside, when it was announced that the funeral would be held “back home,” my mother and I quickly got a plan together to make sure my grandfather, affectionately known as Papaw, was able to get down there for the services. As luck would have it, we were also able to plan a couple days after the funeral to spend with him.

You see, no one, and I mean no one in my life, can tell a story quite like Papaw. He loves to share his history, our history, with the family. For years now, going all the way back to VHS tapes and the very not-digital camera, my mom has been recording them. In the past couple of years she has taken to re-recording them and putting them up on YouTube. Papaw has amassed quite the following, and he loves every minute of it.

“Put this out there for the world to see,” he’ll say, and we do.

Lately, to add to his retirement, he has taken up writing some stories down. My aunt, a very gifted teacher, is his editor, and then the final product gets distributed to some local print-media outlets where he was raised. He is loving his “third career” of Author. While we were down there we decided we would get a few of the stories he wanted to publish on audio/video record as well. With my mom directing and asking all the right questions to spur his memory, I got to filming and snapping photos. These stories will inevitably be turned into written, and hopefully published stories, for him as well. Therefore, we wanted to take some time and get really nice photos of him in the locations where the stories took place. That way, he can submit that photo with his article, and have some nice headshot options.

Talk about making a nearly 85-year-old’s day: explaining to him that he is now a regular contributor to one of his favorite publications, (we were able to stop in and tell them his idea, and they signed him right up), that he has an official copy editor, and now official headshots to submit with his byline. He is on “cloud nine” to say the least.

When he was growing up there were only three career options open to him since, much to his dismay, he was not eligible for the military. Where he was raised, he either had to become a coal miner, a logger (neither of which sounded like the right fit to him), or option 3 – go to college (not even remotely affordable for his family) and become a teacher.

So, he found ways to pay for school, and off he went. Career 1. He would hitchhike north to work in Del Monte fields in the summer, and that would get him enough to pay for his next year of education. The teacher shortage was so bad in that area of Kentucky that they offered him a job 3 years into his degree, so he didn’t even finish the program. Just got right to teaching, which he absolutely loved, and was very well suited for.

Unfortunately, teaching didn’t pay well enough back then for him to support his wife and child, along with the three children she still wanted to have. So, he went north into Indiana where several of her brothers had already established jobs in glass factories, and got himself a factory job. Career 2.

In the early 2000’s, when the economic crisis hit, his factory shut down. Luckily, he was a Union member, and was able to retire. For years after that, he was the primary caregiver for my grandmother, Mamaw, who passed in 2014. Since then he has made a move to a smaller home in a new, larger city with a senior center.

He does his favorite things. Gardening, fishing, and telling stories. I’m so glad that my mom and I were able to grab him and run off on yet another trip “home” and I was able to yet again hear those same stories I’ve heard time and time again. If it wasn’t for being willing to hear those same stories, I’d have missed out on the new ones.