I love you sugar, come see us when you can.”
I can still hear him saying that. Even though our grandmother had passed on years before, he always ended our calls with “Come see us when you can”, perhaps it made him feel less lonely. My weekend visits to see Pippi began when I was in high school. I would take a friend, as I believed the pink brick house in Claude was haunted in ways I can’t fully explain. It just was. Later, I would plan my visits around when cousin Monica could meet me there for a visit with our beloved grandpa. When Pippi passed away, it was Monica that called to tell me, which was fitting, as he was the tie that brought us together in our adulthood.
Monica and I with our sweet Pip
I was older by the time I really got close to Pippi. He had lost an adult child (my dad) and his beloved wife of 44 years. He mourned for them deeply, but kept living. He didn’t have another choice. On every visit, we would have some reason to go into Amarillo – usually to shop, see more family, or for church followed by lunch at Furr’s Cafeteria. A certainty on these visits, was that on the way home, he would exit I-40, turn left and enter into the graveyard that held our loved ones. In my younger teenage years, this was weird, but comforting in an odd way. It was the only time I had to pay my respects to the dad I barely knew and our sweet grandmother, both who left too soon.
Monica and I were very protective of Pippi. His favorite thing to do when we came into town was take us to the café for breakfast, to show off his granddaughters. In his later years, the locals weren’t as kind to Pip as we thought they should be. A few years before he stopped driving, he was put on a new medicine that made him sleepy. One morning, on his drive to the café, he fell asleep at the wheel, crossed over into the two oncoming lanes of traffic and landed his car into the building that faced the courthouse.
Claude is a small town in the panhandle of Texas, about 30 minutes east of Amarillo. One of the town’s monuments was a cement Indian that stood out in front of the antique store. Unfortunately, when Pippi’s truck finally rolled to a stop, it had mowed the sacred Native American statue down. Thankfully, the non-breathing, cement man was the only casualty of the accident.
The folks of Claude handled this news hard. The grief-stricken people had a funeral for the Indian and buried him. Let me be clear for those in the back – they buried a CEMENT STATUE. When travelers driving down highway 287 started asking the locals where the antique statue went, they dug the cement Indian back up, pieced him back together as best they could, and stuck him in a wheel chair for all to see and enjoy again. I kid you not. Creepiest looking thing ever.
Visiting the Claude Indian. Poor McCray wouldn’t even stand by it. They even laid his cement fingers in his lap. Grief makes you do funny things.
It was after that incident that the locals weren’t as kind or patient with Pippi, and his granddaughters didn’t like it one bit. Breakfast wasn’t as sweet when we were dodging the looks of disappointment and judgement. Sometimes I think they thought that our Pip might have talked too much, which is exactly when Monica and I would really ramp up our interest in the story that we had already heard seven times before.
Pippi was a patient man who loved at all times. We chose to take his teachings and reciprocate the love back to him. They say grace is like working a muscle, the more you work it, the stronger it gets. The love muscle works the same. I never saw Pip lift a weight or run a block, but boy did he exercise the right muscles.
Once, we had a family reunion in Irving, three of us cousins took our grandparents car to the store to get bread. Our grandmother, Tootie, didn’t want to lose their good parking spot at the hotel we were staying at. It was right in front of their room, so you can see why this spot was coveted. So, she had sweet, obedient Pip stand in the parking spot while we drove off to get some white bread. (Pippi may not have had a t-shirt stating, “Happy wife, Happy life”, but he lived by the mantra. Smart man.) On our quick trip to the store, we made several detours, including dropping by to see a friend of Monica’s. You should never trust a new driver to make a quick trip, two hours later, we pulled into the hotel parking lot to find Pippi still standing in the good parking spot.
Now that I’m an adult and a parent to a driver, I can’t fully put into clean words the irritation I would have with my kiddos had it been me standing in the good parking spot during a Texas summer, for several hours. But Pippi didn’t show any anger, he wiped the sweat off his brow and simply asked if we got the bread.
Two things warm my heart about that memory. He stood there in the Texas heat to keep Tootie’s good parking spot, because…happy wife, happy life. Secondly, the three teenage granddaughters who needed to be reprimanded, were instead gifted with patience and grace.
Pippi loved at all times. He loved when it wasn’t convenient or easy. He loved at times when others weren’t loving or lovable. He extended love and grace. He provided a safe haven for so many of us. In a complicated world, he was not.
Nowadays, we speak of love languages. And I’m fairly confident that Pippi covered all of them. Quality time – he was always happy to offer to all of us. Words of affirmation – he was never shy about sharing how much he loved us. Physical Touch – there was never a shortage of hugs. Acts of service – he spent years protecting his country & providing for a family. And the final one, Gifts – I think all of us cousins would agree this was covered by consistently providing sugar cereal to the grandkids, and in later years, breakfast at the cafe in Claude.
Love is patient, Love is kind, Pippi not only understood this, but created a life around it.
And his granddaughter is still gleaming from his example.
*My apologies for those offended by my use of the word “Indian”. Since I am one, I deemed it okay to use it in my blog post. I normally use the term Native American, but that is not the name of the statue in Claude. It’s name is “Indian”.
