Driving with my hero, Grandpa
By John W. Fountain
By John W. Fountain
With 50 years and the console of his Cadillac Escalade between us, we headed for breakfast on a cold clear winter’s morning this week. I sat in the driver’s seat. Grandpa rode shotgun.
He could have driven himself, still, at nearly 94 years young. But he concedes to his loving wife’s cajoling: “Let John drive, honey.”
“OK,” he says, as he climbs from behind the wheel and I take control. The car’s wheels turn as we head for breakfast, conversation filling our drive.
Grandpa talks about how he earned 50 cents a day when he first came to Chicago in1942.
Laughter. It is good for the soul. My grandfather, George A. Hagler, is living proof.
“Lymon was just a baby,” he says, referring to his second oldest daughter, now in her seventies. Eventually, Grandpa’s hourly wage increased to 89 cents, he says with clarity and delight as if it were yesterday. He talks of childhood pranks. Of “corn night” when the boys in his hometown would knock on people’s door and when the door swung open, threw in the corn and ran.
We chuckle.
The conversation flows to national issues: to protests in Ferguson and New York, racism.
“Racism will always be here,” I say. “You can’t legislate matters of the heart.” Grandpa agrees. “Nope, you can’t legislate love.”
I continue. “Standing in the dungeon of a slave castle in Ghana, our guide asked if we knew what was right above the dungeon… We shook our heads. He answered: ‘The church of England.’”
“So much damnation beneath their feet, even as they praised God,” I say.
“That’s right,” Grandpa says.
“…I think there are going to be a lot of people surprised that there is no white heaven, no ghetto section in heaven,” I say.
We laugh some more.
Laughter. It is good for the soul. My grandfather, George A. Hagler, is living proof.
Raised by his grandfather who was born a slave, he grew up in a time when Jim Crow reigned. For black folks, even in Pulaski, Ill., life was hard and plain. He married at age 16, without a high school education and soon had little mouths to feed.
Grandpa migrated to Chicago, not in search of the “Promised Land” but a place where — with broad shoulders and a strong back — he might make a living, buy a house, raise his children. He carried with him a willingness to work, commitment to family, his faith.
And yet, struggles and hard times for my grandfather were plenteous. I know this. Not by what he alone has told me. But also by what my grandmother shared with me many years before she died — often while stitching a quilt or making peach cobbler — about the man she loved and so deeply admired.
Not because he was rich or famous. But because of his love for family, for the way he treated her, for his character, integrity.
Grandmother must have also loved him for his wit and humor. For his ability — and willingness — no matter what problems, issues, isms or schisms arose in life, to allow it to roll, as Grandpa would say, like water off a duck’s back. To choose to be better not bitter.
For after all these years, there is still an irrepressible delight in his voice. A sparkle in his eyes. Both unfettered by life’s troubles, unblemished by hate, by disappointment or heartache, or even losing his first wife of nearly 65 years.
And in a world where role models sometimes can seem in short supply, I have never had to look far. Grandpa is my hero.
Today, Grandpa is 95 years young. And there’s nothing between us, except love and admiration, as the car’s wheels roll.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Website: http://www.johnwfountain.com
