Please stop me if you’ve heard this one before

Before my grandfather died I used to love spending Sunday afternoons at the country home he had for 40 years or more shared with my grandma. It was a big old sun-filled place with lots of rooms, odd angles and even a root cellar (which, it was discovered after my grandpa’s passing, was filled with Mason jars stuffed with money! He had been secreting them away down there for decades.)

The reason I visited wasn’t the house, though, or even my grandmother’s Sunday dinners, which were the stuff of legends.

I went for the stories.

As I’ve mentioned in this column before, my grandfather could spin a yarn to make Twain (Mark, not Shania) jealous. It was in his living room that I learned my appreciation for the storyteller’s art.

But even when I was a fairly young man, grandfather was getting old. Like most old men, he tended to forget what stories he had related before, and my visits often involved three or four “re-runs” before he would happen on a new tale, one I’d not heard before.

I didn’t mind; his stories were as good the second, third, or even fourth time around. They held up. My grandmother might have disagreed with this assessment, but that’s just the nature of married life.

When I was young, I never really understood how he could forget that he had just the week before told me all about “The Day the Still Exploded,” or “The Day I Shot an ‘Alligator.’” (He never titled his stories, but in the years since, I have.)

I couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t keep track of what he had said and not said.

I can now.

I’ve been writing this column for nigh on (“nigh on” is what we geezers say when we mean “nearly”) 20 years. That adds up to well over 1,000 columns – as many words as one of Stephen King’s “short” books.

That’s over 1,000 stories, most gleaned from my own life or the lives of those around me.

When I sat down this morning to write this column, I had a topic in mind; a story about the time my son (then 15) swiped the family car to go joy riding in the middle of the night. But as I started hammering out the words, they all seemed somehow too familiar. Had I written this column before? Years ago, maybe?

I just couldn’t remember. I looked through all my old paper files, but couldn’t find it there. Considering the state of my files, that proves nothing. I checked my backup drive, found nothing there either.

It’s a good story, and funny, I think. I’d like to share it with you. Maybe next week. If I remember. Or maybe I’ll tell it to my grandson.


Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.