My Grandpa can kick kick your Grandpa's Butt
or, at least he could when he was alive.
He died last summer...73 and had been battling Alzheimer's for 5 years. He had a good long run and had done his thing. An airplane mechanic in WWII, he worked on Doolittle's B-25 after it came back. Married, widowed, married again. A good life, I think.
anyway, had to return home for another death in the family recently and as usual we had a good old Irish wake and lots of stories were told and retold as a couple of gallons of Bushmills and Jameson's were consumed.
I heard one about my grandfather that is too good not to pass on.
A little background first:
We lived with my grandparents when I was 5-8. Every Sunday morning we would all get up and do our thing and go to church. I remember every time I had to go in to the bathroom after my grandfather there would be a terrible stench. The obvious reason comes to mind and to this day I've always thought it was that.
No so.
My grandfather was a pretty hairy guy. In fact, his first name was Harry.
My uncle told this story that the old man used to take lighter fuel and rub it on his chest and back and then take his Zippo and burn the hair off of his chest and back.
That's pretty effing hard.
My Grandma would have kicked your Grandpa's butt!
My grandparents came from a long line of factory workers from the West Midlands in the UK (the home of God knows how many revolts and rebellions, sword-, gun- and munitions factories and the Industrial Revolution!)...
My Granddad was a nice quiet guy but probably normally hard as a working geezer from that time. His uncle was a prizefighter at the time of the Tipton Slasher (and the same neck of the woods though I'm sure I'd have been told about it if they ever fought), whose main job was a slaughterman. There is a newspaper piece from the time about him KOing cows with a punch and wrestling bulls to cut their throats. He was knwon as Jump-up Jack cos he was very short and he had to jump up to reach most of his opponents.
One of his brothers got the Mons Star (or was it Cross?), and was shot three or four times in the First War, but lived to his eighties.
But my Grandma... my Grandma... My Grandma was monster! Tall and beefy, usually if my father was being bullied by other kids, she'd throw crocks and pots at him and clout him round the head till he went back out and fought them... and he is 6'4 and (now) 21 stone!
But just the once she went out against the mother of a local ruffian...
called round her house (the old back-to-backs), pounded on the door, and when the offender squared off and started taking her jacket off for the fight, my Grandma decked her, taking advantage of her hands being tied up in the jacket sleeves! That was the end of that one!
My Grandfather was a war hero
My late Grandfather was a retired Colonel for the 100th, one of two all Japanese divisions fighting for the U.S. in WWII. He lost his hand in the war, and became the caretaker for Punchbowl, the national cemetary in Oahu. Here's an article where he recounts one of the battles.
Actually, he had two hands.
His right hand was crippled from shrapnel and had limited functionality. He could still drive and shoot with it, in fact, he shot a bear long after he retired. It was just flesh, bone and connective tissue, and he could whip it around like a morning star. This sounds a bit gross, but he used to crack my head with it when he was annoyed with me. It was like being hit with a rock.
It's all about amusing you, WFH...
...I wish I could make stuff up like that. I could be a great writer. Fortunately, the world is weird enough that all I have to do is observe. As for the rest of the stuff on that thread, I catagorically disavow any knowledge of their actions...
My grandpa was an original, that's for **** sure. He was an ornery SOB, but he must have had to have been to excel as a Japanese-decended officer in the US Army during WWII. Things were quite different then - can you imagine the commanders of an all Iraqi battallion now? Note that we still have yet to intern Americans of Iraqi descent, but that happened in a heartbeat for Japanese Americans in WWII.
