On Friday, June 3rd, at the age of 86, my Grandpa Peck passed away. In my years on the farm, Grandpa Peck was a constant. He and Grandma Margaret lived just two fields over, towards town. I saw him every day.
My grandpa was one of thirteen, born shortly after a pair of twins. By the time he could hold his own bottle, Bert and Alma were still very small and on bottles themselves. In fact, he was growing faster. Their grandmother was babysitting when she saw my grandpa crawl into the twins’ crib and take one of their bottles. She picked him up, scolding him. “You’re a peck of trouble!” she said. It stuck.
Everett Orval Edwards, Jr., was too big a name for a little fella, anyway.
My Grandpa never grew out of his orneriness. He’d always pull in to the driveway with the latest joke he picked up at the Co-op with his morning coffee. He loved planning practical jokes to share with the gang at the pinochle parlor, often building complicated doodads to accomplish the job.
When I was really little, my grandpa was a full time farmer, but all of his equipment and tools were at our place, meaning he was over all the time. He’d come over in the cool of the day, work for a few hours, drive home precisely at noon, eat lunch— Grandpa Peck liked a little bread with his butter and a little tea with his sugar— and nap, and then come back to work. As he got older he started to forget things, so in the afternoons, I’d trot out to the shop to help him tinker.
The shop was my grandpa’s domain. Although you could put a grain truck in it along with all of the other tools and supplies, Grandpa Peck could put his hands on whatever widget you wanted. I learned early on that if you took down the claw hammer to build a lop-sided birdhouse, you put it back on the peg board where it came from.
Although I’m not the most mechanically inclined, Grandpa Peck never fired me as his helper. When I was 13 or 14, he brought home a one-way from an auction—the best deal, he claimed. It only needed all new blades. We put it up on blocks, pulled all of the discs off, replaced them, and Grandpa Peck hitched it up to his John Deere and took it out for a test run. Within hours, he bent the main shaft. I don’t know how many times we worked on that one-way—I think I could still put it together in my sleep.
Sometimes Grandpa would take me on errands, usually involving getting a pop at the Co-op. Once we went into town to see a lady in town who had a batch of kittens. I got to help Grandpa Peck pick out a little orange ball of fur, and I held it the entire mile back to Grandpa’s house. That little fuzzball grew into an orange mammoth, answering to the name of Buckwheat.
Several years later, Grandpa Peck came to the house with something to show me. On either side of our driveway, he had posted “Slow Cat Crossing” signs that he had handmade. By that time, I had a string of cats that followed me wherever I went. The neighbors joked, because of Grandpa’s poor paintbrush penmanship, they couldn’t tell if they were supposed to slow down, or the cats were just slow.
I loved him, with the deep dedication of a child. He smelled of Doublemint Gum, metal shavings, and sawdust. He was always there, he was funny, and he was my grandpa.
After I left the farm, we spoke a few times. There were some phone calls for a while, which usually ended in tears. Why didn’t I come visit him? Why didn’t he come visit me? I asked in return. There was no meeting me on my terms.
The last time I saw him, three years ago, dementia had settled in. He couldn’t string full sentences together. All he could do was cry, cry, cry. Now, his soul has passed on, freeing him from the torture of a decayed mind.
Rest in peace, Grandpa Peck; I will miss you always.
