Was your grandfather a character?

Valentine’s Day and other time-sensitive topics delayed my writing about this, but a few weeks ago marked the 50th anniversary of the death of my grandfather, Carl Spencer Tyree.

I’m juggling a lot of plates, but very few days go by that I don’t think of “Paw.”

“Ornery,” “opinionated,” “contrary” and “irascible” are some of the words people have used to describe him over the years; but I choose to take a more nuanced look at the forces that shaped him.

Both of his grandfathers fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. His first wife died soon after delivering their first child. He and my grandmother brought up five children during the Great Depression. In his later years, he struggled with arthritis, emphysema, Granny Tyree’s ovarian cancer and the social upheaval of the Sixties.

Despite all this, he did display softer moments. He was the only adult with enough patience to teach me to tie my shoestrings. Recently, my older cousin Hal reminisced about Paw entrusting him to take his beloved 1946 Chevy 4-door out on the highway.

But back to the cantankerous side…

Paw eked out a living as both a farmer and a carpenter, and the latter trade is tied to one of my favorite anecdotes about him.

Paw and his carpentry partner were doing an inside project on a house that – by pure coincidence, many years later – would be purchased by my mother’s sister and be where my wife and I spent the first 21 months of our married life.

Paw and the other fellow reached an impasse on how to fix one specific problem. Paw, true to form, dug in his heels and grew hotter and hotter under the collar.

His partner tried to cool things off, imploring, “Calm down, Carl. This isn’t worth fighting over. Before you say something we’ll both regret, I’m going to go outside for a few minutes and ask the Lord how to resolve this.”

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