And I’m disappointed none of you knew him better. I did some poking around here and, I’m sorry to say, the best grampa story I’ve typed is the Tale of the Catheter.
His parents grew up nine miles away from each other in what used to be known as Prussia…but didn’t meet each other until they were both living in Philadelphia. Great-grampa John Sandowski (we think that was his original name; it permutated to Sendowski, Sendi, Sandi, and finally Sandy) and great-gramma Julia Sowa both worked in a sugar/molasses factory, saved up a bunch o’ money, and bought 640 acres from Dobson B. Searle (to this day there is a bar/restaurant in downtown St. Cloud bearing that name) in 1890. Twenty-six years later grampa was born not more than 20 feet from where I currently sit typing about him. Fifty-five years later I came on the scene.
My father took over the farm and moved into the house I grew up in when I was two or three years old, and I honestly cannot remember a time when my grandparents were not a part of my life. When I was three or four I really wanted to see him and wandered on up here (a quarter mile, on a busy road, across a creek filled with spring run-off). My mother was frantic. When she finally found me I was sitting on the front step with my hand on my chin, REALLY pissed off because my grandparents WERE NOT THERE! Because grandparents are always supposed to be there, y’know?
Grampa was a cattle jockey, buying and selling cows. When I got old enough, and started helping with chores, I started running with grampa. Up to the Pierz salesbarn, helping him bid on cows. Over to this dairy in Milaca; up to this farm in Perham; down the road to Buckman. And all the way, on each and every trip, he’d point at one farm (seemingly) per mile and say, “I bought some cows there once…” and tell me about the barn, or the wife, or the dog, and talk about the pie he ate or the beer he drank or the fat he chewed.
For the uninitiated, “cattle jockey” is on a par with “horse trader” or “used car salesman”. To be sure, there were people who thought grampa had screwed them over, and that’s fair; he wasn’t the most careful guy with a checkbook. He also sold barn equipment - stanchions and bulk tanks and barn cleaners - and there’s at least one guy who says grampa built the sleeping areas too short, the cows were always standing with their back legs in the gutter, and that’s the reason the farm went bust. True? I don’t know; the chances of that being sour grapes is just as true as grampa saying “close enough”. What I do remember is going to a farm with a half-built barn. The guy had run out of money while building and a proper roof was never put on. He tried to make do with those blue tarps but they leak. We visited in early spring, when the snow is melting and it rains a lot and everything is muddy. The farmer obviously took good care of his cattle, but the overpowering stench of wet and ammonia nearly made me lose my cookies. As we turned out of that driveway I told grampa the barn stunk. Turned out that grampa was on the bank board at the time and fought and fought to advance the loan to finish off the barn but the board still turned that guy down, and every time grampa had a chance to help him out, no matter in how small a way, he’d do it.
Service to others. That’s why I volunteer for the Red Cross, and that idea was instilled in me by my grandparents. He was a charter member of the local Lions Club, holding many offices over the years (including president several times), and eventually was awared the Melvin Jones ribbon (their highest honor. Think Boy Scouts and their Eagle Scout deal. While you’re thinking, think of what we can do with the couple o’ hundred Lions pins in his dresser drawer). He was on the local school board. He was a county comissioner. He co-founded the 4-H Auction at the Benton County Fair and has a cane … well, ok, several canes … with a wood-burned ring for each and every year he participated. All 50-some years. 15 years per cane.
Oh, hey! Here’s something I just remembered…
About a year ago, while I was laid off the first time, I took him to a doctors appointment and we stopped off at the Benton County Historical Society & Museum. We were hoping to see Ed Sowa, his mother’s nephew, but as Ed wasn’t there we browsed. The Historical Society has shelves upon shelves upon shelves of old township records. Since I live in Gilmanton Township I grabbed a random log off the shelf and opened to a random page. “Approved by John Sendi, Township Secretary”.
“Holy crap, grampa, is that your dad?”
He put on his glasses.
“When I was a kid I remember going to town hall with him, in November, shovelling all the way. He’d say 'They wouldn’t let me vote. I’m in America now; I vote!” And so did grampa, in off-years and special elections and regular normal elections. If the town hall was open, he was there.
Everyone knew him. Everyone. My first winter back I drove gramma and grampa to the state Lions convention at the hotel/casino in Hinckley (which is when I found out that great-grampa John took the train from Foley to help out after the Great Hinckley Fire.). We parked on the south side of the 200-foot lobby. The registration table was on the north side. It took an hour and a half to traverse that space as gramma and grampa had to stop and say hi to everyone.
My sister likes to tell the story of how, when they went to California for a funeral and stopped at a diner in Truckee, grampa introduced himself to four oldtimers at 12 and had four new good friends by 12:45. My brother likes to tell the story of how they stopped at this little diner in BFE Wisconsin for breakfast and this guy walked up to them and said, “Rhiney Sandy! I ain’t seen you in twenty years!” I like to talk about taking him to the Minnesota State Fair (fairground population 250,000,000,000 on a slow day) and watching him run into 20 acquaintances (and none of them in the cattle barns!).
And how children gravitated towards him! That day at the fair I made him go through the netted butterfly deal - three bucks to walk amongst butterflies - and totally jaded city kids just flocked to him.
Oh, Christ. And softball. I can’t type this without mentioning softball. He played back in his younger days, then grew up. He and his buddies had kids, and they played softball together. Then his kids’ buddies had kids and now THEY play softball. My brother and his buddies are, partially, the grandkids (grand nephews, cousins once-removed, whatever) of the guys with whom grampa played kittenball two generations ago. And every year the “Rhiney Sandy Livestock” team shows up at some tournament, and every year someone says (and we overhear it up in the bleachers, y’know) “Holy shit, he’s still alive?”
I was always here. When I was a kid, on winter weekends and after morning chores, I’d be found lying on the floor in front of the fireplace reading whatever was around - Hoard’s Dairyman, Readers Digest Condensed Books, the Sunday Star-Tribune. Smithsonian, National Geographic, The Farmer. The guy who quit school in eighth grade read voraciously, loving James Michener and Dave Barry and The Harvard Classics equally.
I went away to the Navy, sure that all of my grandparents were going to die, only to return and they’re still here. I was here when gramma died, and I moved in with grampa. “To take care of him”, only no one took care of grampa. Oh, please - he’s 85. Go ahead, YOU tell him no, I dare you! But having me here - even if I wasn’t here all the time, like gramma was - meant he didn’t always have to be alone, or eat alone, or watch TV alone, or eat Dinty Moore Beef Stew Out Of A Can all the time.
I was always here, until Monday. My SO is a truck driver and I see him rarely. I was laid off on the 12th; uni classes ended the 18th, Richard was in town the 28th, classes start on the 12th, so we thought I’d go for a ride with him for a bit. We left for southern Illionois late Monday night, and Tuesday my mother called to say grampa was in hospital. No biggie - he’s spent plenty of time there, what with his heart and diabetes problems. IV antibiotics to treat fluid around the heart/lungs. Wednesday morning we were in La Crosse, and that night I called grampa and hollered at him. “I leave you for two days and you land yourself in the hospital? I can’t leave you kids alone for a second!” Thursday night he collapsed. The nurses found him, performed a bit of CPR, and sent him to ICU. At 10p he was flirting with the pretty nurses. At 2:30a they put him on a ventilator. At 5a they pulled it out. He was dead by 5:30 and I was at a receiver’s yard in NE Philly. Where his parents met and married.
Him dying was NOT a shock - we’ve been expecting it for 20 years. It’s just that he went in for some “difficulties”, not for a death. We all expected him to keel over halfway between the house and the barn. Next to the yard light - then we could just toss him into the well. Or in the barn - then we could toss him into the manure pile. Croaking in a hospital is just too sterile.
A bunch of people here have met him. Several of the Minnesota contingent have hauled ass out here to watch Viking games, and a few were up here for PorkDope.
Every time one of my people (as opposed to people in general) meet him I watch, and we’d talk afterwards. lno, elenfair, he loved the fact you had service dogs (that Lions thang, y’know. Yeah, I know they’re EllyBabe’s, but you’re together so it’s the same thing.). Spidermwn and imthjckaz, he remembered you, as well. Jessity, he really liked you, even though my hot brother doesn’t remember. 
So many stories. I’ve just brushed…not even the high points, just the stuff I can relate and remember right now. Y’all would’ve liked him. Y’all would be happy to end up being half the person he was, to have a tenth of the wake attendance. More than 600 hundred people showed up, in sub-10 degree weather, to pay respects. A simple, beer-drinking, Copenhagen-chewing, cattle jockey had 600 people come to say goodbye.
We’re planting him in the family plot late Monday afternoon, right on top of the remains of his wife (“We’ve been married 57 years. 23 of 'em were good ones” (And another aside…EVERYONE, relgious, Christian, none of the above; whether or not a belief in an afterlife existed: we all had the same idea of gramma seated at the kitchen table, looking up at the sound of the door opening, and hollering: “Goddammit, Rhiney, where the HELL have you been?!”) ). I’m going to take a Copenhagen can and steal some of his ashes. I’ll duct tape an old-fashioned church-key to the lid and grab an old copy of a Zane Gray western. Come spring, when the ground thaws, I’m going to bury that can out in back of the pasture up on the creek bank where the water bends 'round an old oak. The waxed cardboard will rot within a year and the ashes will disperse and, a hundred thousand years from now, archeologists will dig up this rusted piece of chromed tin and a few threads from the duct tape (maybe I should use barbed wire?) and wonder what it is, what it was, what it was used for, what things used to be.
Grampa’d get a charge out of that.