Best to Forget Some Things

This morning I went to my  late mother-in-law's house to see that the two men to cut the grass and the two men to blow off her roof had all they needed.

The men who cut the grass is an elderly man and his retired son.  I found out his son is retired from the Cobb County Police so I had a lot of names to drop.  The roof cleaners is also a father son crew.   Again, the father is elderly and the son is retired.   But their working arrangement is different.  The son goes on top of the roof with a blower and does all the work.  The elderly father stays someplace near on the ground just in case his son falls.

What we didn't know until all four of them and I were standing talking the two elderly men grew up together.  Now they are in their late eighties and were in school together at Blackwell School and were buddies a long time.  However, the elderly father of the roof cleaner has dementia  and did not remember his old friend.  That was a sad note.

Everybody started working except me and the old gent with dementia.  We leaned against the truck and talked.  I remember talking to him off and on over the year.  He always smiled when he spoke..  He has not lost that wonderful habit.  He still smiles when he speaks.

He asked me twice who lived in the house, he remembered being there before.  both times I told him and said she is dead.  That didn't prevent him from asking a third time.

In between confusing the present and what he recently said or didn't say he told me about his childhood growing up on a farm on Roberts Road (presently Barrett Parkway).  He told me in detail about the corn field and how they plowed it with a stubborn mule and in detail about how close he and his Uncle Bob was, and how Bob tried to get his (Uncle Bob's) mother in the asylum and how his father told Uncle Bob, if he tried that he would kill him.

He also told me how he and Uncle Bob would rabbit hunt and how they nailed the rabbits 

He also told me his father whipped him for the least thing but yet would not punish his two sisters at all.  As he told me  memorable things I saw, even though he was smiling, his eyes were moist.