MY GRANDFATHER WAS a rural route mailman by trade, but he owned a small farm on the edge of town. He rented out the land to other farmers, except for three or four acres that he kept for orchards and vegetables. The property included a big red barn and what seemed to me like huge lawns on all sides. The back of the house was dominated by an immense oak tree with a white bench encircling it. It seemed always to have a private breeze running through its upper branches. It was the coolest spot in a hundred miles. This is where you sat to shuck peas or trim green beans or turn a handle to make ice cream at the tranquil, suppertime end of the day.
I spent a lot of time following my grandfather around. He seemed to like the company. We got along very well. My grandfather was a quiet man, but always happy to explain what he was doing and glad to have someone who could pass him an oil can or a screwdriver. His name was Pitt Foss Bryson, which I thought was the best name ever. He was the nicest man in the world after Ernie Banks.
He was always rebuilding something – a lawnmower or washing machine; something with fan belts and blades and lots of swiftly whirring parts – and always cutting himself fairly spectacularly. At some point, he would fire the thing up, reach in to make an adjustment and almost immediately go, ‘Dang!’ and pull out a bloody, slightly shredded hand. He would hold it up before him for some time, wiggling the fingers, as if he didn’t quite recognise it.
‘I can’t see without my glasses,’ he would say to me at length. ‘How many fingers have I got here?’
‘Five, Grandpa.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ he’d say. ‘Thought I might have lost one.’ Then he’d go off to find a bandage or a piece of rag.
The other thing I did a lot was watch TV. My grandparents had the best chair for watching television – a beige leatherette recliner that was part fairground ride, part captain seat from a spaceship, and all comfort. It was a thing of sublime beauty and utility. When you pulled the lever you were thrust flung – into deep recline mode. It was nearly impossible to get up again, but it didn’t matter because you were so sublimely comfortable that you didn’t want to move. You just lay there and watched the TV through splayed feet.
My grandparents could get seven stations on their set – we could only get three in Des Moines – but only by turning the roof aerial, which was manipulated by means of a crank on the outside back wall of the house. So if you wanted to watch, say, KTVO from Ottumwa, my grandfather had to go out and turn the crank slightly one way, and if you wanted WOC from the Quad Cities he turned it another, and KWWI in Waterloo another way still, in each case responding to instructions shouted through a window. If it was windy or there was a lot of solar activity, he sometimes had to go out eight or nine times during a programme. If it was one of my grandmother’s treasured shows, like As the World Turns or Queen for a Day, he generally just stayed out there in case an aeroplane flew over and made everything lapse into distressing waviness at a critical moment. He was the most patient man that ever lived.
Bill Bryson is a bestselling author and broadcaster.