Stations of the Cross (Driving with Grandpa)
My grandfather was a bit old-fashioned, and we’d get reminders once in a while, like when he met my friend Phil.
“So, Bill. What’s your last name?”
“Yurchuk.”
“Bill Deerchuck. What kinda name is that?”
“Oh, it’s Russian.”
“You don’t LOOK Russian.”
“Well, I’m half Russian. My mom’s Puerto Rican.”
“Oh.” Long pause, then: “Well. Nothing wrong with them…. They’re good people. Good, fine, people…” And you can tell that something in him is telling him he’s dug himself a nice, deep hole. “Very hard-working.” Phil and I, meantime, know that if either one of us looks at the other, we’re both gonna lose it.
He was also an old-school Catholic. You’d have thought that the Catholic Church was a travel agency, and all those church visits were racking up frequent flyer miles. And if, for some reason, you needed a reminder of that fact, you only had to look at his Buick.
Some people are happy enough just to put one of those Jesus fish on the trunk, or slap a bumper sticker on. Grandpa had rosary beads hanging off the rearview mirror, a St. Christopher medal on the dash, a saint or two fixed to the dashboard with some kind of adhesive, a bottle of holy water in the little caddy, a little bible in the glove compartment… that car looked like a rolling botanica. And if you ever sat in the car when he drove, you knew why he needed all that stuff. Picture a New York City cabbie in slow motion: all the bobbing and weaving and cursing, but without the punctuality. He’d be talking to his beads as he went, too, so the typical ride went something like this:
“Our Father, who art–SLOW DOWN! Ah, ya sonofabitch. Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy–ah, shit! name…”
And you’d be praying, too, but not for the same reason he was. To this day, I think the first joyful mystery is that we always got where we were going in one piece.