A MAN OF CHARACTER

In the old days it was common for grandparents to live in the same home with one of their children. I benefitted from such an arrangement. My maternal grandfather was a part of our family when I was a boy. We all called him "Pa"and he was beloved by all.

That old man was as wise as they come. He was illiterate, I learned later; could barely write his own name, and he didn't learn that until late in life. That's because in his day you didn't need school. At least that's what they told him. It was too late to go back by the time he figured it all out, so he took what he had and made the best of it. But he wasn't ignorant. He hadn't missed a lot along the way.

I remember him as a man who could do anything with his hands. Though he made his living working in the cotton mill, he was always building projects around the neighborhood and figuring and drawing in the little notebook he always carried. Numbers didn't seem to present much of a problem for him, and the things he built were made to last.

He wasn't much for giving up on anything he started, and he didn't have much patience with anybody else who did either; especially one of his own. Seeing things through was an article of faith in his belief system; a mission statement for his family corporation. He was a good role model for me, and wouldn't let me quit, no matter how discouraged I became.


I was tearing around the family kitchen one afternoon when I was about eight or nine years old. I was in a silly rage about something and declared that I was going to quit school as soon as I was old enough.

His reaction was immediate and forceful. "Get out back. I want to talk to you," he said.

He might have been thinking that if he had to knock some sense into me he didn't want my mother to see it. When we got outside he sat down on the back steps leading up to the back porch. "Come over here and sit down," he said.

Reluctantly I sat down beside him and stared off at a cloud in the distance, determined not to speak until he did. He took out his little notebook from the bib pocket of his overalls and opened it to a blank page. Then he produced the blunt carpenter's pencil he always carried in the same pocket. "Teach me to write my name," he ordered.

In my immature mind I thought he was just having fun with me. "Aw, Pa, you know how to do that," I said.

"No. I never learned. You teach me."

Still thinking that we was playing some sort of a trick on me I wrote his name on the page: "Joseph Clarence Harris."

He pointed to a few letters that he recognized; an "A", the "E", the "I".

"Pa, don't you know the alphabet?" I asked.

"Teach me," he said.

"Didn't you go to school, Pa?"

"Sure I did," he answered.

"Then how come you say you don't know the alphabet?"

"Well, I only went to school for one day."

"One day?" I asked incredulously. My mind was already jumping ahead to figure out how someone could be so lucky.

"Yeah. They didn't say I had to come back." And he laughed, so I would know he was only partly serious.

I wrote the alphabet out below his name, and we practiced the letters together for a while. Then I supervised as he wrote his name several times.

After a while he said, "Okay. That's enough for now." He closed the notebook and put it and his pencil back in his pocket and was quiet for a few moments. Finally he said, "Thanks. Now, don't ever let me hear you say you're going to quit school again."


Mine is probably the only "Greatest Men" list he ever made. But I saw a piece of greatness that day. An ordinary man would not humiliate himself to teach a lesson that would change the life of an ignorant boy.

I never threatened to quit school again. And I never thought of Pa in the same way again either.