Grandpa Butch

I adored my grandfather. I was his only granddaughter and he doted on me. One summer he built me a play house complete with a sliding glass window. None of my friends had glass windows in their play houses and I felt so special.

I was seven and at my grandparents home the night my mother went to the hospital to give birth to her third child. We anxiously awaited a phone call from my father. I already had a younger brother and I desperately wanted a sister. When the call finally came and my father announced it was a boy I was devastated and couldn’t stop crying.

My grandparents tried every trick in the book to calm me down. Finally, Grandpa Butch suggests that if I stop crying he will take me into town in the morning and buy me a new red wagon. That was music to my ears. I dried my tears, put on my pajamas and went straight to bed.

Grandpa Butch always kept his promises to me so the next morning, after breakfast, he drove me into town and we went to the hardware store. It no longer mattered that I didn’t get a baby sister. I had a brand new, shiny red wagon.