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"Pop"

I had a grandfather who stepped into my life at the very moment the Arrows were about to take over, during the years my father was engulfed in the sinister battle we call alcoholism. Trained as a civil engineer, my father fell into a career in sales just when the US Army glutted the market with engineers after World War II. Arthur Miller captured the tenuous nature of his life in Death of a Salesman: "He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back - that’s an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat and you’re finished.  Nobody dast blame this man."

My mother went back to college and then to work to help make ends meet and I was largely left on my own to form my understanding of the story of life and my role in it.

Filling the Empty Space
My grandfather, Pop, filled an empty place in my soul at a critical moment in my life. He was my hero, a cowboy and a gentleman in a Stetson and boots. Spending summers on his ranch was a schoolboy’s dream - riding horses, chasing frogs, harassing the big, old cows when I was sure no one was looking. I remember riding in his old Rod pickup, Pop and his cowboy hat and leather work gloves, waving at nearly everyone on the road.  Folks seemed to wave back with a sense of respect. It gave me a settled feeling that someone was in charge, someone strong and loving.

Pop loved me as a boy and called me to be a man. He taught me to saddle and ride a horse - not merely for fun, but to take my place on a working ranch. Together we explored the open spaces of the eastern Oregon sagebrush, mending fences, tending sick cattle, fishing Huck Finn-style with willow branches and a piece of string. Early in the morning we’d go for coffee, milk, and doughnuts down at the diner where everyone knew us by name.

Sunday afternoons we’d go 'visiting' - calling on relatives in nearby towns and farms. Together they would sit and chat, telling family stories that gave me a sense of being part of something larger than myself. Even though my own world was shaken by the earthquake of my father’s struggle, I knew there was another world where things were well and I could have a place in it.

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Excerpted from the Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldridge (Thomas Nelson, 1997).