Pops: Very Still Waters

Early every Sunday morning, my maternal grandfather, Hjalmar Eclov, beetles down our down our dirt driveway in his elderly Volvo and arrives at our back door, ready to be entertained. My mother has asked her father repeatedly to come at 9:00 a.m. rather than 7:30 a.m., but he is oblivious to her preferences. As it turns out, that has always been the case.

My maternal grandfather, Pops to us kids, has a benign face that belies the

depths within.

If someone is not awake to open the back door for him, he will stand and slam the storm door repeatedly until one of us comes downstairs. It is usually me, as my bedroom is over the back porch. Or he’ll bang on the basement window over Jake and Eddie’s beds until one of them responds.

Pops is born to Swedish immigrants in 1890 on a farm in the depths of South Dakota. He is one of 13 children, many of whom die at birth, including his twin. He is the only one to get a college degree, from the University of Minnesota. He has an amiable face with a peanut nose, shared by Jake.

Pops is notoriously cheap. We are instructed NEVER to tell him the price of anything new in the house, any gift, lest we be treated to a lengthy harangue on the many ways he could have found it or something like it for less. Every Christmas or birthday gift to him goes back to the store for the cash refund. Although he speaks Swedish as well as English, he is not interested in Swedish food or books or movies. He IS interested in the mailer he receives for a Swedish nudist colony and brings it one Sunday to show off, but he never joins.

As far as I know.

Every Christmas, Pops gives each of us the same thing: a pair of Muk Luk slippers and pajamas that are precursors to the Star Trek uniforms: black banded neck, wrist and ankle cuffs and light jersey knits for the rest. The colors are atrocious and include Harvest Gold and Avocado. I don’t know about the others, but I hate mine, and they just keep coming.

The cast of Star Trek models the style of pajamas given us by Pops.

If the boys don’t appear at breakfast early enough, Pops sometimes will say to me, ‘Go wake Jake (or Eddie) up, I’ve got something important to talk to him about.”

I go into the basement and shake Jake from his bed. He comes upstairs grumbling in a good-natured way.

“Whatcha want, Pops?” he asks.

“I’ll give you a quarter to get a haircut,” Pops responds with a straight face.

We don’t know if he’s kidding or not, but we all burst out laughing. A quarter!! Haircuts haven’t been that cheap since before the Second World War. In the early 1960s, a man’s haircut costs from $2 to $3.

He arrives with things he’s gotten free and dumps them on my mother, including a willow tree and a brown cocker spaniel, both of which she hates. Nevertheless, she plants the tree and watches it grow until it splits down the middle at 17 years of age. The cocker spaniel, Cocoa, likes to sleep on the dining room table and must be shooed off. He leaves behind little piles of dirt and fur. Later he tears out my Pekingese Happy’s eye in a fight over a treat. Sadie separates them with a broom. Happy is off to the veterinarian and Cocoa is off to the pound. Jake insists it is Happy’s fault, but I don’t believe him.

Pops is a good natured, somewhat stout man who dances with me perched on his shoes when I’m little. Over the years, though, I begin to suspect all is not as it appears when it comes to Pops. My mother once sourly remarks that he used to embarrass her when he affected being a big dumb Swede at parties, humiliating himself by dancing just as he does with me.

As it turns out, that’s the tip of the iceberg.