Weekend at Perk's

Over the last weekend in March, I took a trip to visit my Grandpa in Spokane. He is 92 years old and lives alone (Grandma died in October). He is so healthy for his age and is very independent. I spent two nights at his house. He's lonely, and he enjoyed having someone to talk to. I listened to lots of stories of his childhood, of his teenage years, of his years serving as a pilot in World War II, of memories in the house he built on Lake Coeur d'Alene.

Grandpa was born during World War I. He was the eldest of 8 children. His family lived on a farm in Farmington, Utah in a 2 bedroom house heated by the wooden kitchen stove. The house had no indoor plumbing, so they had to use an outhouse. He loved growing up on the farm and the life that he lived in his youth.

As he told me the following story, I kept having different images from the movie "Up" pop into my mind. When he was a boy scout, he liked reading the BOY'S LIFE magazine and began idolizing many of the pilots featured. He especially liked Commander Byrd who flew to the South Pole, and Charles Lindbergh who was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh toured the country after that with his plane the Spirit of St. Louis (a single-seat, single-engine plane). When Grandpa was 11, Lindbergh came to the Salt Lake City airport. Grandpa had read about it in the newspaper, and had begged his dad to take him to the airport. When they got to the airport, Grandpa climbed over a fence to see Lindbergh's plane. He touched it and a security guard noticed and told him not to touch. Lindbergh was right by his plane, and told the guard that it was alright. He came up to Grandpa and talked to him and let him touch the plane. The summer after he turned 16, Grandpa took flight lessons and got his private pilot's license. Years later, when the World War II draft came, he was enlisted. He planned on becoming a flight instructor, but ended up becoming trained by the Army Air Forces as a pilot to fly C-47 transport planes during the war instead.

When I think of my grandpa, I always think of his downstairs den. Since he built the house on Lake Coeur d'Alene, it has virtually remained unchanged (which has been longer than my lifetime)! Even when they moved to the new house in the Spokane Valley gated community in 2000, he had the room built to replicate the one in the house on the lake, so it still feels the same! His room is full of his life's memories, and he pointed out multiple items in the room and told me the history of how he received each one, where he was when he got them, and what he was doing when he acquired them.
During the weekend, we went through some of Grandma's personal belongings like her clothes and jewelry. We sorted through old boxes of her crafting items in a downstairs closet. We went through boxes of various odds & ends from the storage room. I came home with over 15 boxes to go through and organize!
I enjoyed spending one-on-one time with my grandpa. I'm grateful for the opportunity I had to go and visit him. It was neat for me to listen to his stories and to hear about his many life experiences. It was good to see him and to know that he's taking care of himself in my grandma's absence--they were married for 69 years before she passed away! I'm the second closest relative distance-wise to him, and I live 5 1/2 hours away. Only my cousin Nate, who lives in Missoula which is 3 hours away from Spokane, is closer. Grandpa was grateful for a visitor and was so happy I was there. I hope to make the same trek again this coming fall (last November I planned to go, but it snowed the day I was to drive there and he didn't want me to drive through the snow alone).