Old Grandpa Tony [Anton] swore more than most people prayed, and I’m talking about the clergy. A 4’11 inches tall, that’s all he stood, I always thought he was at least six foot-one, even when I went to high school, but no, he was four foot, eleven inches tall. It’s not the unpardonable sin, I know—to swear, but if you added them all up, all the cussing words he done in front of me, and then there was the other 20-hours of the day, it would top the Andes, and then some. But he was kind enough to allow my mother and my brother and myself to live with him. And back in the fifties, it was rough, so I suppose I can say, thanks gramps. But the old Russian bear, used to say:

“I tell you vhut you gottaa wtch dem boys Elsie—dhay mak-a too mch noyce!” All the time, we had to be like mice.

“Well,” I heard mom say, “I can’t watch them every second of the day?” Grandpa thought about that for awhile, “I gonna thorw dem out!” he’d say. I think he started telling mom that from my thirteenth birthday on: steady. He liked my brother Mike for some reason: perhaps I didn’t pay him much attention, or for that matter anyone. I was very active: meaning, overactive, I could never seem to slow down, and that may have bothered him. Nowadays, they give kids pills up the tuba to slow them down: back then, mom would say: ‘Go run it off…” and out the door I went, and I’d run a mile here or there, and come back and eat up a storm (my son and my grandson are the way, but now they want to give them pills, pills: have them run it off, that is how I got rid of it).

“Yes,” mother would say,”I’ll tell him to play out side more…” (I was but ten, then, at the time). I think it all started one day when I was in Ernie’s l950 Chevy (my mothers boyfriend for forty-years), and mom was looking at me in the backseat, and I was about seven years old then, and I asked this and that question, never could be settled too long, and she noticed that, and would try to answer my many questions, and she’d get tired, and say: “Stop! You’re wearing me out with questions.” So I bought an encyclopedia set and read it a few times from start to finish: a to z. One year I read 400-books, after all my other activities. I slept four to six hours all my life, until I got ill.

—Then Grandpa would put his pipe in his mouth, pace the kitchen, mumbling, “Them god…d…m..kids.” He didn’t want us boys to say, but he didn’t want mom to leave, she did all the work, and bought the TV and the furniture, and did his laundry, and bought the groceries. He bought the meat for the Sunday meals, paid the heat and water bill, and phone bill. They had a good system I suppose. I always prayed mom would take us kids out of that environment, but it was as it was, and it gave me a father figure I suppose: he had good work ethics, and I suppose I got that from him. In any case, mom, she’d reinforce, by telling me, “Nobody’s going to kick you out.” And he never did. When I grew up: went to Vietnam, and come home for visits, Grandpa, being in WWI, was proud, but he still had that bear in him, and one day he said something, and I got mad, and I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I said:

“Grandpa, don’t swear at me, if you don’t want me here I’ll leave, but if you swear once more I’m going to knock you on your ass!” and I walked away angry. I had always felt bad about telling Grandpa that, even to this day, but, for it wasn’t called for: I could have walked away like always, I just wanted to let him know, I was not that little kid you could pull his ears, when you didn’t like what was happening. And I was sorry for that, as I had said—but I did make up for it, I think. When he was too old (meaning, 83-years old, he worked up to 78) and his children were coming over to count his money (he had several children living at the time), and was threaten by them, I heard about it, and made myself present, and told everyone: the threatening was over, that if I heard about it again, I’d throw them out, everyone out. I think, Grandpa may have heard it from the dinning room, not sure what or how he felt, but I guess, if it made up for that bad remark, so be it.

See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

• Curse of the Abyss Wrom [Chapters 25/26: Lady Belinda & The Chat]


• Magic Tricks - Black Art


• Magic Tricks - Misdirection


• Magic Tricks - Table Hopping


• Amaryllis of Hawaii Loves To Cook Recipes for Life


• Magic Tricks - Street Magic


• The Tiamat and the King [final Chapter #6: Sinned and the Secret]


• Diamond


• Flag Flying


• Planet SSARG [Chapter Seven Legs of the Spider: with Two Parts]