Grandpa Fred

It’s a few days late, but here’s Tuesday’s column. I’ve been looking for a photo of Fred, but haven’t been able to find one yet.

GRANDPA FRED

While in Great Bend over Thanksgiving weekend, the town’s high-rise apartment building caught my eye.

It’s bound to catch anyone’s attention because, except for grain elevators, tall buildings are few and far between in much of the state.

Great Bend’s high rise has 12 stories and houses more than 100 residents, many of them senior citizens.

It has one major flaw though; it’s not set right with the world.

The building has a square footprint, but it’s set catawampus to the street. Windows look out toward awkward directions – such as southeast and northwest.

It’s disorienting, for sure. I can’t even contemplate how anyone – especially a Kansan – could live like that, askew to the grid of the land.

But then, perhaps it’s just me that’s a bit grid-obsessed. I wonder, is there a phobia for people who have discomfort with or a fear of misaligned buildings?

Anyway, angles aside, I have a fondness for these high rises, because during my teenage years, my maternal grandparents lived in a similar, but larger, high rise in Fayetteville, Ark.

Grandma and Grandpa loved that place. They made many friends and played cards with an elderly gang, including a cigar-smoking woman named Edith. Their next-door neighbor, Ruth, treated us like family and baked us cookies.

Outside of their ninth-floor apartment, a walkway led to all the apartments on the floor. The walkway also served as a balcony and faced the south. Here, my plant-loving grandparents raised tomatoes and grew flowers. So, they were happy. They could sit outside on long summer evenings and talk to their plants and their friends.

My grandfather died in 1975, and not long thereafter, Grandma moved from Arkansas to Kinsley to be closer to our family.

It was in Kinsley that she met Fred. Fred was probably about 83, and my grandmother, 77.

I don’t know the particulars of their courtship or wedding, but they had a civil ceremony. (I told my friends that Grandma “had” to get married.) Fred seemed like a decent enough man, but he wasn’t Grandpa.

Grandma and Fred moved from Kinsley to a small house in Larned in 1977. When I visited, we played cribbage. It felt odd, but good, having my Arkansas grandma live a mere eight miles away.

Unfortunately the good times didn’t last long. Grandma died in her sleep about a month after they moved to Larned.

He never quite seemed like a grandfather, but my mom kept Fred involved with us. He came over at Christmas and other times.

Fred liked to brag about his health and strength. And, he was a tough guy. He took on a job of dismantling a wooden elevator in the Kinsley area.

One Christmas Eve, Fred told us he was nimble enough to do a headstand. And he insisted we step out on our front lawn so he could prove it. Which he did.

Meanwhile, Fred moved from Larned to Great Bend and got an apartment in the high rise building.

When I visited him there, he showed me a shirt he had sewn. His very first sewing project – and he attempted a dress shirt – with buttonholes and long sleeves and a pointy collar.

He had done a remarkable job on this yellow knit shirt. The only unfortunate thing was that he used a ball-point pen to mark places on the cloth and the ink seeped through at the seams. But still, a man’s shirt! That’s no easy sewing task.

Fred was an elderly man who stepped in and out of our lives. He married my grandmother, tore down buildings, did headstands, and sewed a shirt. Fred died in 1984.

And every time I see the Great Bend high rise, I think of that carefully sewn shirt and I think of Fred.

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Cheryl Unruh writes Flyover People, a column about Kansas topics, published every Tuesday in The Emporia Gazette. Copyright 2007 Cheryl Unruh.