I stayed with Joe’s grandpa a few weeks ago. I started this post while we watched a baseball game on the couch:
Last month he celebrated his 90th birthday. Save for the cane he keeps by his blue recliner, Grandpa Ra isnt hearing impaired, memory impaired or anything impaired come to think of it.
He’s also three times the cook I’ll ever be.
A Brooklyn, N.Y. native, Grandpa Ra was a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan until Walter O’Malley moved the team to Los Angeles in 1958. In the years that followed, Grandpa Ra begrudingly rooted for The NY Mets.
Joe says he still hasn’t forgiven O’Malley for the move and when I asked Grandpa about it, he said, “Joe’s goddamn right.”
Agghht is Grandpa Ra’s favorite expression. He uses it to punctuate his frustration at the beginning of sentences. (And to mark his frustration at the end of sentences.) It’s an endearing conversation staple.
Example:
Joe laughed. Shook his head and walked into his parents’ house presumably to take a shower. Grandpa shrugged, made the agghht noise and turned his attention back to the TV presumably to the baseball game he’d been watching.
On the phone with my Mom. She says:
“I remember it as the Brooklyn Dodger faced the Chicago Cubs and it was at ebbits field and it Gil Hodges night. We were with my Uncle Joe and cousin Joe. And it was Unlce Joe’s first major league ballgame.”
Also, she claims that in this case “not married yet” actually means she was “about 8 or 9 years old.”
Still on the phone with Mom. She’s now copy editing my post. She correctly pointed out I left out a “was” before “Gil Hodges night.”
Did Joe’s Grandpa really “Agghht” Lou Gehrig’s Iron Man status? Wow…