The first time I met him, when Val brought me to meet her family on one of those early days, he told me that he’d gotten his start as a bootlegger running hooch across the Ohio River. His wife, he told me, had been his getaway driver — that’s how they’d met. In retrospect, I should have recognized that twinkle in his eye — too much like my own grandfather’s was when I was growing up, bemused and mischevious. I bought it, of course, because I never really learned to tell when someone I wouldn’t suspect was pulling my leg. It wasn’t until after I left that they told me he’d been kidding me. “Oh yeah, I figured,” I said, playing it off. But I’d bought it.
He was always like that. Smiling, always positive, a little devilish when he wanted to be. I don’t know if “rascal” is the right word, but I have the feeling that had I known him when he was younger, it probably would have fit perfectly. He was scrappy; we thought, despite the many problems he’d had, that he was probably indestructible. When I’d see him, I’d always ask how he was doing. “Pretty good for an old bugger,” he’d say.
You certainly were, Ernest.
We’ll miss you.
