FJR

He would have been 94 today. I'd have called him first thing in the morning to wish him a happy birthday. He would have answered the phone as he always did: "Frank Riggle." It always made me laugh that he didn't bother with "hello." He got right down to the business of identification. It was both greeting and affirmation.

He died five years ago. One day he just sort of decided that it was enough. I think he died by force of will alone. But it's not his death that I remember today. It's that long and brilliant life that I never really escape.

J says that I talk about him a lot. I'm sure that I do. But I mostly try to talk like him whenever I can. When we're on the road and have miles to go before we get there, I try to throw in a "heck, we've gone pert-near a hundred miles already." Pert-near is my all-time favorite expression of Grandpa's. It's the midwestern combination of pretty and near. You'll find it's infinitely useable. One can be pert-near through with just about anything.

I often have reason to go "over ta _(insert place)_ to have a little look-see." Grandpa and Grandma spent a lot of their retirement driving around Michigan looking at things: small-town parades, sales at Sears, new buildings, boats on the bay. I try to remember this when I'm rushing about, furiously trying to get from one thing to the next without really looking around. When J is in Philly on the weekends, I often invite him to have a little look-see down ta the yarn store or over to the river. It's a kind of innocent invitation to see what happens.

I also try to keep alive his use--perhaps even overuse--of "doozy." (This shouldn't, of course, be confused with what he actually called me--"Boozie" (I like to think it was less for the drink and more for the endearment)). Sort of like pert-near, almost anything can be a real doozy. Well, that's a doozy of a hand, Boozie.

We liked to play a lot of gin rummy at Grandma and Grandpa's house, the kind where you put your sets face up as you accumulate them. This allowed for endless supplies of both pert-near and doozy. "Well, that was pert-near three pairs but for that doozy of a deuce." He always called twos "deuces." Maybe everyone does, but I liked it best when he did.

I think about him just about everyday. When I'm parking, I always look for the two open spaces, one in front of the other. He'd always bellow, "pull through!" because he never understood why anyone would back up when he didn't have to.

He also believed strenuously in hide-a-key. I believed--and continue to believe--strenuously in him.