Return to Pawpaw's World

Six years ago, I wrote a personal essay for the Wall Street Journal, which titled it "Pawpaw's World." Here's how it started:

At bedtime, as night falls over Brooklyn and my toddler Matthew has said goodnight to Moon for the umpteenth time, I turn off the bedside lamp and tell him it's time to sleep. Then I turn the light off, he rolls into the crook of my arm, cranes his head so he can whisper in my ear, and says, "Pawpaw."

This is my cue to tell my 20-month-old son stories of his grandfather, my own dad, who lives with my mom ("Mammy" to Matthew) in Starhill, a south Louisiana enclave where the only sounds at night are crickets and bullfrogs, not sirens on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Matthew's grandparents visited a couple of months ago, and he fell hard for them. Especially Pawpaw, who shares the boy's enthusiasm for graders and forklifts and things that go. After they went home to Starhill, Matthew kept asking for them ("Mammy! Pawpaw! See more!") and at bedtime wanted me to tell him real-life stories about Pawpaw.

So that first week after Matthew's grandparents left, we followed Pawpaw's adventures hunting squirrels so his family would have enough to eat during the Depression. We joined him in the rodeo, riding bucking bulls and wrassling steers. We followed Pawpaw into the Coast Guard, and rode out a hurricane in Mobile Bay lashed to the wheel of his 40-foot cutter. Then Pawpaw piloted a dinghy in rough seas, outmaneuvering a shark to complete a mission to change a buoy's light bulb.

Then I told Matthew about the things Pawpaw did when I was little. Once I saw Pawpaw catch an egg-stealing chicken snake by the tail and crack him like a whip, snapping the varmint's head off. I told my boy about the hunts, when Pawpaw took me into the swamp and showed me how to stalk whitetail bucks and other game. I told him about how when the Mississippi River flooded, Pawpaw would set lines in the backwater for catfish but often snared snapping turtles, alligator gars and fat black water snakes instead.

I went on to talk about the virtues I learned from my country-boy dad, and how so many of those virtues are fading from our culture as we lose touch with our rural past.

Well, here we are in Pawpaw's World this weekend, and we're preparing to leave Matthew here for a week to spend time with his grandparents. He can't wait. In fact, I think he'd just as soon we take his little brother and sister and hit the road right now. He's a different child here, in every positive way. He went swimming in the lake yesterday, he fished, he hung out at the camp having a blast. He's taking advantage of all the space out here in the country to run around like crazy. This morning, Pawpaw caught a fig-stealing raccoon, and took the boys down a country road to turn the varmint loose, and then took them to his workshop, where Matthew identified lots of the tools (he reads woodworking magazines for fun). We don't ever seem to get around to doing those things in Dallas.

Last night, tucking Matthew in after a long, long day, I marveled at how excited he was, despite the late hour. Matthew seems so anxious in the city, but out here in the country, he relaxes, smooths out. He said to me, "Dad, and you know, Dad, Pawpaw knows all kinds of things. He knows things that ordinary suburban people don't know."

And I'm thinking, "ordinary suburban people"? Does he think we're suburban people? Yes, he does. Anyway, his point was well taken.

"Like what, honey?"

"Well, he knows about building stuff, and about all kinds of wild animals, and plants, and guns. I think it's great!"

It is that. I think Matthew's going to have a great week.