Gramma never talked much about her dad. She always said he’d died when she was a young girl. But we never found his tombstone anywhere and we looked and looked in both cemeteries. Gramma wouldn’t say much because the truth is . . . he hadn’t died at all . . . he’d run off. He was an Irish drunk . . . a bum . . . couldn’t stand the gaff. Just turned tail and went somewhere. His son had gotten killed . . . crushed in the wagon brake. He was just a little boy barely walkin’. It was gramma and her dad there at home when the accident happened. Gramma was only 8 but she remembers the awful screamin’ and cryin’ and hollerin’ when her mom come back from town. The little boy laid out cold on the bed with a quilt pulled up to his chin. Gramma said for weeks and weeks her dad drank whiskey and refused to eat. Then one day, he wasn’t there anymore . . . just like that . . . gone off to nurse his grief. Gramma and her mom moved to town . . . sold their land for 10 cents an acre. Just gave it away. They couldn’t stay out there anymore. Gramma quit school in the 3rd grade to help out. They cleaned for rich people and took in minin’ laundry. That was one of the worst jobs you could do back then . . . tryin’ to beat the coal dust outta somebody’s filthy overalls. Gramma never heard from her dad after that. I guess in a way he was dead . . . dead at least to her.