My
grandparents came to town in a huge, white RV that had driven over the grand
canyon, through Yosemite National Park, and across the great plains, and they
parked it in the tiny RV campground next to Burger King in Swananowhere, just
fifteen minutes from home, and I would visit them every Summer just a year or
so after my sister was born.
My
grandfather, a WWII veteran who had toured—and survived—D-Day, liked to show me
the campground’s few offerings. There was a picnic house in the middle of the
huge grassy field where the fake owls lived, and he would beat me at
shuffleboard with the nearly broken community sticks and scratched red plastic
pucks.
My
grandmother would walk me to the tiny sunken creek that crackled underneath the
metal-fence topped hill, opposite the campground, where the Burger King was
built. Sometimes, we might go there for breakfast. If it was with my
grandfather, that meant 7:00am, and black home-brew coffee that tasted like jet
fuel. If it was with my grandmother who woke five hours later, I’d order a
burger for lunch and play with the light-up Men in Black toy. But my
grandmother more often brought me on a stroll to the buckeye trees that lined
the tiny creek, and she’d show me how to pry open the green fruit they dropped
with a cinderblock, so I could pry the seed out with my fingers. She told me
buckeyes were lucky. I carried no less than three in my pockets whenever I left
their RV to go back home.
My
grandmother was also a fudge popsicle connoisseur: the half-fridge in their RV
was about a quarter full of her latest test-purchase in flavor, consistency,
and overall fudginess, and I owned pride of place as her favorite test subject.
We sat together on the couch that turned into a dining room table, and
taste-tested our newest choco-loaded favorites, and looked at the things they
brought with them across the country. My grandfather’s childhood Bible,
complete with a pencil-line sketch of a rugged looking outlaw on the inside
cover. A broken Radioshack clock-radio combo that I fixed with a 9-volt I
pulled out of the fridge. An orange tiger-eye stone from out West. A
make-your-own-sock-monkey kit. An old family photo.
And
a stuffed teddy bear. Only 5 inches tall. He was made out of something that
looked like a light brown dishtowel. He had no face, his left arm and right leg
were freying, and the cotton was sticking out. He looked like he had been beat
up in the washer, and spent most of his days holed up in the Nike shoebox under
my grandparent’s bed.
She
said I could have him, if I wanted; he used to be hers, but she’s not played
with him in a long long time. I took him, and immediately gave him a lopsided
smiley face with a ballpoint pen.
Note,
my grandparents let me keep a lot of things from the RV park: a Radioshack, clock-radio combo, an old
bible, the family photo, a green mesh bunk storage net for sailors, several
pocketfuls of buckeyes. I’ve gotten rid of most of them over the years, or
moved them into storage, or slipped them into photo albums I don’t look at
anymore.
But
I still have this bear, and he sits on top of the shelf over my bed, grinning
at the walls like they’re the most wonderful sight in the whole wide world.
