L. P. to Eternity

A great man died today. He was a compassionate, patient, egoless man who lived an extraordinary life and left behind countless admiring friends and relatives. He was my grandfather. Born in 1917 on either June 8 or 18, in Hibbing, Minnesota, Lloyd Perry Wing had travelled around the sun some eighty-nine times before he died in a hospice in Mesa, Arizona at 12:01 a.m. on September 7, 2006.

His family was Norweigian, "squareheads," as they were called, recruited high into the northern plains to build the railroads that helped unite the powers of North America and forge enterprise throughout the wilderness. When he was eighteen months old, a fire struck the family home while his father, Walter, was out working. His mother ran the infant boy outside and set him in the snow, then went inside to save his older brother and sister. All three died, consumed in the flames of the fallen house.

His father didn't have the time or resources to fully provide for his son, so L. P. was sent to live with his aunt Cora in the Ozarks of southern Missouri. There he lived with five half-sisters, Mertie, Ester, Eppie, Bettie, and Carol, and one half-brother, Floyd, or as he is properly known, "Sonny." He later recounted to me that these were the best years of his life, wandering through the oaks of mountains yet untouched by sanctions of mankind.

As a child, he rarely frequented school, saying later that this was due to having a cross-eyed teacher that couldn't control her pupils. In the seventh grade, he and three friends hopped a freight train headed to California. They spent all summer on and off the cargo trains, stealing loaves of bread from bakeries and pies from windowsills to persist through the hungry spells. During one of these excursions, one of his friends was killed attempting to hop from one train to another. L. P. was later separated from his friends by accident, and ended up riding by himself to California, at which point he promptly got back on another train home. "I went out there and I came back," he said, "Ain't no reason to stay."

Back home in Missouri, he found himself poor, without education, and no longer able to rely on support from home. It was time to go to work. One day, while sitting on a bridge with a friend, watching the river go by, a man came down the path wearing a brand new uniform. My grandfather asked the man where he was coming from and he replied, "They're signing up for the U.S. Army Air Corps. They give you two pairs of pants, two shirts, and a brand new pair of shoes, plus three square a day and a pouch of Bull Durham for rolling." That was all the information he needed.

In the armed forces, he quickly accelerated through the ranks. He had a natural aptitude for machinery, and developed a keen understanding of plane engineering. During this time, while stationed in Kansas City, he also assisted his surrogate father in jobs building and repairing local homes. On one such job, he noticed a lady sitting in a porch swing across the alleyway, and he was compelled to walk over to her. He introduced himself to Norma Smith, the young lady across the way, and as he later told me, "That was pretty much it." They were married shortly thereafter, and commenced creating a family that included daughters Carol and Melinda, and two sons, Perry and Dan.

World War II came around, and he was stationed in the South Pacific throughout the early campaign. His role had grown to Master Sergeant, which was one step removed from his final rank, Senior Master Sergeant, the highest any infantry man can achieve. He repaired airplanes and avoided much of the heavy combat, although there was one incident which he later revealed: "One time, it was only me and my PFC, and we started receiving gunfire from up on a hill. I grabbed my gun and the PFC and I went up the hill on either side. Boy, my heart was beating. We were going to come in either flank and come around wherever the shots were coming from. As we got near the top of the hill, I heard two shots. Me and the PFC both circled around fast, and we saw a little Filipino boy, standing behind a dead man, holding a rifle. The little boy had saved our lives. We made him a nice meal and he was our friend from then on."

He was later stationed in Germany, where he allegedly sold Johnny Cash his first guitar, through a roundabout series of barters that included him somehow acquiring a new vehicle to drive around town. After this he was transferred to Adak, Alaska, during the onset of the Korean War. He flew in airplanes in seventy-below weather, and raised his family in the nightless and desolate expanse of the Aleutians. After this ended, he returned to Kansas City with his family and there they remained for the better part of twenty years. He worked at Fort Leavenworth training plane mechanics, and travelled some throughout the area giving seminars.

But this isn't about his work. This is about a man that said of his time in the armed forces, "The biggest thing I learned was, there ain't no reason to stand when you can sit, and there ain't no reason to sit if you can lay down." This was a man who was rarely seen vertical, more often supine on the couch, reading, napping, or watching historical documentaries. This was a man who lived to laugh and let life breathe.

When I was born in 1978 in Kansas City, he was there in the hospital with my mother, father, and grandmother. Three months later, my grandmother was dead from cancer. My parents moved us to Maine after my second birthday, where we endured two winters and much culture shock. Right before I was four, we all loaded into a Ford truck and headed to Phoenix, Arizona, or as it was then called, "the Anti-Maine." L. P. was not adjusting well to life without Norma, so my mom suggested he come stay with us for a while once we got settled. In addition, my uncle Dan, who was then in college, lived with us, five total in a three bedroom house.

It's impossible to retrace all of the memories from this time in this space, so I can only offer glimpses. Grandpa would joke about my head size, saying, "Look at the neocortex on that boy," and would often pinch me on the side of my stomach, or as he called it, my "brisket." He used the phrase, "Whack them weirdos," in all sorts of applications. He almost always wore a hat, tilted askew, set high upon the crown of his head. With my allowance money I bought him a Top Gun hat which he wore for most of my childhood. During the summer months, he watched over me while my parents worked, driving me around in his plush Lincoln Continental to see movies, and we always set aside time to catch two shows, the Andy Griffith show, and All in the Family. He was my friend, he was my second father, he was a smartass, and I loved him.

Did I mention that he was a musician? He had played guitar for bands throughout his military career, and while in Phoenix he helped form a group of musicians called the Primetime Players. They had an extensive touring schedule throughout the retirement communities of Mesa, Arizona, bringing life to the lifeless with songs of a more familiar era. Much later he bestowed one of his guitars, a Gibson Les Paul, to me, but I wasn't very proficient at guitar picking and so it became more of an heirloom. When I was in high school, our house was broken into, and I was fearful that the guitar may have been stolen. Once I found everything intact, I called grandpa and he said, "It don't matter if a guitar is gone. The only thing that matters is that you and your mom is safe. We can't buy another one of you at the store."

I went away to college in the northeast, and only saw L. P. on holidays and throughout summer breaks. He had taken a great liking to the absurd writings of Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy, most especially: "You should never take your dog into space, because he'll burn his face off in re-entry." While I was at school, he helped finance a truck for me to use while I was home, and we talked on the phone about once every two weeks. His eyesight was fading badly, and he could no longer drive at night. The gigs with the band were dwindling, as were the members of the Prime Time Players - only one, jazz pianist Leona, was still alive when I graduated.

After college I spent three lonely and heartbreaking years chasing my ego in Los Angeles, and decided to return home after having been mugged at gunpoint on Hollywood Blvd. I came home jobless, directionless, and living off unemployment. But I was only minutes from my grandpa's house, so each Tuesday we would go to a casino on the reservation and play poker. He would always give me $60 to play with, which I would swiftly lose at the table. After our poker game, he would amble over to the video poker machines and, without fail, win at least $40. On one occasion, after such proceedings, he cashed in his winnings from the day, then turned from the cashier's teller and pulled four twenties from the stack of bills, placing them in my hand. "Now everyone breaks even," he said, "But you buy lunch. That's what the winners do."

Two months later he fell down and broke his right hip. He was eighty-six, and the rigors of the hospital were more than he could handle. I stood by his bedside and witnessed the valium induced hallucinations, his reaching for food that wasn't there, his mumbling, "put that there, over by the logs, there by the cabin," his intonations to me darker than expected - "You do what you need to do, drink a bottle, go in the forest, you ain't ok right now, you find that thing, you don't look well without it." I thought he would pass right there in front of me, right there on the bed in the hospital, and in many ways he did.

When I last saw him, he weighed 125 pounds on a six-foot frame. His digestion was troublesome, his reaction time eroded, his purpose diminished. His humor was intact, though, and he stood and walked on his own. After I left, I wept in the car for some time. I cried for myself, for my selfish need for him to always be vibrant and hilarious, for my memories of dignity.

The last time we spoke was his birthday. He said, "I made it around the sun again," but the ceaseless nature of time was taking away the days. He went to the hospital for a colonoscopy, and cancer was detected, along with a striking case of pneumonia. My mother, my aunt Carol, and Carmel Barela, his girlfriend of more than twenty-three years, attended to his care in shifts. After a series of tests, it was determined that he wasn't going to get any better without intensive medical procedure, and the family elected to move him to the hospice bed in which he took his last breath this morning.

Today I cry for the loss of the greatest man I've ever known. He ascended to great heights from relative obscurity, though you would have never known it had you met him. Instead, you would have heard him tell a story about a little creep hiding in the mailbox and wondered, is this guy for real? Then he would have said something along the lines of, "I hear ninety-percent of accidents happen within five miles of the home. I'm moving," and you would realize that yes, he was for real, he was absurdly and undeniably the real deal, a man of great benevolence and humility and perspective. You would have met my grandfather and loved him, just like everyone else did. And he would have made it seem as if he never even tried.

posted by ZHorton at 6:27 AM | 1 comment(s)