The Man with the Golden Sugar Cone

As brash as our grandfather could be, and contrary to his outward appearance, Grandpa was one of the most gentle and kind men I have ever met. We lived in a very loud household, which probably was also why Grandpa always had headaches. Our grandmother, mother, Sam and I did not help. Between the four of us, we argued a lot. Though, whenever there was a blow out of yelling, no matter who was involved, you could bet that about fifteen minutes after everyone had calmed down Grandpa would sneak upstairs with his car keys in hand.

He would lean into our rooms (which we’d usually been banished to) and whisper in his deep, gruff voice, “I heard they have a new flavor of ice cream at Thrifty’s. Get your shoes.” And while we always knew there was no new flavor of ice cream, we’d hurry to grab our shoes and quietly creep down the stairs like we were super spies out of a James Bond movie.

He’d hold up the act of secrecy until we were in the car and on the road. Once in the car, usually only Sam would keep up conversation. She’d hum something to herself or tell Grandpa and me a story as he and I stayed quiet with a small smile on our lips in anticipation of the impending ice cream.

When we got there, it was always the same. Grandpa got two scoops of Rocky Road, Sam got a sugar cone of Mint Chip and I got one scoop of Rocky Road. Then we’d pile back into the car with our bounty and Sam still singing in the background . She really never stopped. She’d just keep going and going and going, but on super-secret ice cream trips it was hard to get irritated with her.

Grandpa would always drive around until we’d finished our ice cream so we could dump the evidence before we got home, so we spent a lot of time in the car as he and I both took forever to eat and Sam would have inhaled hers well before we had even made a dent into our icy mounds of chocolate and marshmallows.

After getting rid of empty cups, we’d usually run into a gas station bathroom to rinse off any remaining stickiness. In the early years of doing this, that part of the trip tended to take a little bit longer as Sam had a way of getting ice cream pretty much everywhere. There was even a trip that we had to stop and buy her a new shirt as she’d dropped an entire scoop down her front.

Once we were all cleaned up, we’d head home. This was one of the rare times Sam was quiet when she wasn’t sick. She knew as well as I did that we now had the challenge of creeping back upstairs and into our rooms without being discovered. Of course, now I know Mom and Grandma knew about these trips every time we went, but at the time Grandpa kept us under the belief that this was secret and special. So, we’d creep back inside and slowly crawl our ways back up the stairs and down the hall until slithering back into our respective rooms, pretending like no adventure had ever been had and not daring to even speak to our mother until we were sure the scent of chocolate was no longer on our breath.

“You’re Sisters!”

Our grandfather was a quiet man. A brilliant and quiet man. In his younger years he had dreamed of being a jazz trumpetist. He even graduated from Julliard. For those of you who don’t know, attending (let alone graduating from) Julliard is a big deal if you’re an aspiring musician.

He also played at Carnegie Hall multiple times. That’s a big deal too. In fact, Grandpa liked to flaunt that he had played at Carnegie Hall. It was always when I was getting frustrated playing my violin that it would come up.

He would walk into the den with a grumpy expression  and fold his arms as I struggled through scales. When I was on the verge of giving up he would speak in his gruff, baritone voice (that sounded like a mix of James Earl Jones and Clint Eastwood in one man), “Joanna Lynn Cleland, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” He always used our middle names when he was trying to be serious.

I would roll my eyes before turning around and replying evenly, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Grandpa then would chuckle and mutter, “Good girl,” before letting me get back to my practicing with a small smile on his lips. I have heard that dumb joke over a million times and I will probably tell it a million times more.

Anyway, with having to support nine children and going to war in his early twenties, Grandpa’s dreams of music fell victim to the suffocating drone of reality. He was a door-to-door salesman for a while and eventually joined the navy. You see, my grandfather thought that he was going to join the navy and play in the navy band. He never dreamed that his ridiculous skill of perfect hearing would land him on a submarine as one of the top sonar guys of his time.

No, joke. My grandfather had such a good ear he learned to recognize the difference between the passing of a humpback whale’s song, a pack of dolphins romping by and the bay of an enemy sub looming in the depths beyond. He could hear everything.

Even in his elder years, he didn’t lose this skill. A pin dropped in the front hall of our two story home, and he heard it no matter where he was in the house. Not just heard it, but was irritated by it. Being great at hearing was a blessing and a curse for our grandfather. He was often stricken with headaches which only added to his grumpy outward demeanor.

For two little girls, this was a tough thing to deal with. Especially as two little girls that were sisters tended to fight. A lot.

I’m not talking the normal arguments of dissention. I’m talking about a war of vocal magnitude so loud that our neighbors a half block away could hear it. While in public I was a quiet child, but when it came to fighting with my sister I could scream with the best of them. Oh, how we yelled. It would be over the dumbest stuff too. Most of the time it was about what TV show we were watching. Our fights also went from grumpy whining to screeching at the tops of our lungs in seconds. There was very little middle ground.

Obviously, for our grandfather this was a nightmare. He was constantly assaulted with the high pitched harpy cries of his two granddaughters.

One day, amidst one of our fights, we heard Grandpa bellow from the front hall, “You two are sisters! You should love each other!”

This only caused us to stop briefly before the screeching began again. To us, fighting was part of how we loved each other. We never really physically hurt each other minus two times. Once Sam nailed me in the back with a massive universal remote (which dropped me melodramatically to the floor) and the other I shoved her into a wall for no reason other than I was mad at Mom and she was there.

After a few moments, while we were screaming at each other, we heard the heavy stomps of Grandpa coming up the stairs.

We lived in an older house that creaked with every step you took. We had learned over the years to be able to recognize who was walking around based on the sound of the creaking footsteps that the house made. Low and behold, Samantha and I had been blessed with our Grandfather’s gift as well. At least when it came to listening to houses creak.

This time it was rather obvious it was Grandpa coming up the stairs. He came barreling into the room after a few more heavy steps, bellowing over our screaming in a deafening roar, “If you two don’t stop this I’m going to take my belt off!”

Both Samantha and I stopped immediately. We’d never been struck as kids by an adult, so the idea that our giant of a grandfather was about to beat the crap out of us with a belt gave us both a sudden abject fear of the future.

It was then from way downstairs in the kitchen all three of us heard Grandma chime in with a warning tone, “If you do that, Tom, you’ll be chasing those girls with your pants around your ankles!”

Turns out Grandma had perfect hearing too. She also had a wonderful way of diffusing situations with random interjections. I’m pretty sure Sam picked up some of her word-weaving skills from Grandma.

Anyway, Grandpa’s face immediately went beet red. He grumbled something beneath his breath before storming off, leaving Sam and I stuck in an awkward place between receding terror and laughter. I can only imagine our Grandfather’s contorted and embarrassed expression as he stormed back down the stairs in the wake of his granddaughters’ giggles.