Happy Birthday to Mi!

Today is my paternal grandfather's 86th birthday. In honor of his birthday, I thought I'd share some of his history with my readers. His name is Jerry McClellan Baker. McClellan is a family name, but I must ask again where it comes from. He was born in Emhouse, Texas, close to Corsicana (home of my grandmother). His father died when he was six and his mother moved him and all the kids to her parents house. They survived the Great Depression with a garden and lots of creativity. He dropped out of high school to join the Navy. He worked on a hospital ship in WWII and walked the streets of Hiroshima three days after the bomb hit. After the war, he met my grandmother, Margie, in Corsicana. When I asked him what he first liked about her, he said, "She was a girl." I asked him what she liked about him and he replied, "I imagine that she was glad I was a boy." He got his grandpa name when my cousin Jeff couldn't say the words "my granddad." Jeff could only come up with the word Mi, so from then on he was called that. I love my granddad because he's a saver. He saves all his beer cans for me to take to church to recycle. He has a little shelf in his hallway that he puts all his empty beer cans in, not because he can't put them in a bag himself, but because the kids love throwing them in the bag. He saves all his complimentary address labels for Claire to play with. Ensure bottles are repurposed as spittoons and a empty bottle of nosespray is filled with glass cleaner for his eyeglasses. Rather than buying new eyeglasses for himself, he wears my grandmother's old frames. He is also thoughtful. He makes sure he always has corndogs, steak fingers, and strawberries for each time we visit him. He make sure the garage door is lifted when we come to visit and often backs out his car so I can park in the garage to not overheat my car's interior. He listens to Rush Limbaugh every day and always has a political opinion to share with me. "Look at all that snow. How's that for global warming?" or "Michelle Obama took all the fat out of my gravy." These are entertaining to me and sometimes spark a thoughtful discussion. Sometimes I just listen. In his working days, he climbed electrical poles for TXU. He still wears his uniform daily, unless it's a special occasion. He broke his hip in the 1980s and walks with an elevated shoe and a cane or walker. His house is covered with pictures and he tells me often how satisfied with his life he is. I love to hear his old stories and actively try to record them. Whenever he would repeat a story, I used to stop him to let him know that I remember it and appreciate his stories, but I've stopped that. Now I just listen to them again and enjoy that he is telling them to me and that I don't have to remember them myself yet.