FRED

Right now, we are all sitting waiting on tropical something Fred to make landfall. Fred has changed its mind countless times for the last few days and swapped from a Tropical Storm to a Tropical Depression to a Tropical Disturbance and back. In one article, I saw Fred described disarranged mess, a storm that would land on its own time in whatever form it felt like. A storm with its own mind…

This reminded me of another Fred, once in my life. My pawpaw Fred. While you could never accuse Fred Walker of being a disarranged mess, it would be fair to say he was a storm with his own mind. He was the youngest of ten children and a Korean War vet. He tended a homestead, trained horses and worked at a mill. He was not much on tv but loved onions. He was not much on religion, but he faithfully sat on a back pew just to listen to the piano player each Sunday. He did everything according to his own mind. He would drop off tomatoes if he felt like you needed them, and kept the fridge stocked with bologna to be used for sandwiches or dog treats depending on what he felt. In 25 years, I don’t think I saw him wear a shirt that did not have a line of buttons going up it or was a color other than green or brown. People probably called him set in his ways.

I guess I always felt he deserved to be. Thanks to his ways I learned about Tom. T Hall, bologna sandwiches, crawdads in a creek. I even have a wonderful crockpot all thanks to pawpaw Fred and his ways. He did everything with intention. Nothing was done without purpose. Even now I know he would be proud of my writings, although he would be less thrilled to find himself as the subject matter. But a mess? No that was not a word to ever describe Fred Walker.

He was a storm with his own mind, a wonderful storm.