The last few days as we have been enduring the seemingly endless string of 90 plus days of summer, we’ve heard the meteorologists promise (or rather threaten) even warmer days ahead. This weekend, today and tomorrow, the mercury was supposed to approach the magic mark of 100 in the Twin Cities, with unbearable humidity to boot. Well, it hasn’t come yet. Instead, we got severe weather this morning, followed by lots of clouds, just enough to put a cap on the rising thermometer. I think 84 F. is all we got today (although it was accompanied by a 74 degree dew point, STICKY.) But with expectations of super-hot, only hot was nice. Especially since my son and I hauled sheetrock this afternoon for a job we’ll start on Monday. It felt like a gift of grace. (My more pessimistic [ i.e. realistic] side tells me that we will pay for this break with tomorrow’s weather.)

Two weeks ago as our string of nasty weather started, I was “blessed” with three attic jobs. The worst of the three was an attic that we started last winter. It would have been a great winter job except for the fact that back then the attic did not have working, in tact, windows at the time. The previously vacant attic had suffered years of neglect and the windows had been broken and some were completely missing. By the time we made it back for phase two the windows were finally replaced and operational in the first section. However, the section of the attic where we worked lacked any windows. And of course there was no A/C. The heat was able to find us hiding in the dark. The stagnant air was just enough to keep us thoroughly toasted and roasted and broiled and basted.

But it was still fun to be back at that attic. The house sits on the corner of 16th and Irving Avenue North, with a great view of the house in which I spent my early years. As I sweated away my morning breakfast, I would take short breaks, walking over to the finished part of the attic with new windows that overlooked my boyhood home and the sidewalk where I learned to ride a two wheel bike. Most of the lawns on the block had a sharp two to three foot rise from the sidewalk to the edge of the flat part of the lawn, making a fall into the grass not so treacherous. I never used training wheels, but those sloped lawns gave me a lot of confidence to try it alone.

As I gazed upon that old house, built in the 1921, my imagination went inside. I wondered what had changed. When we lived there, my immediate family was upstairs and my uncle and grandparents were downstairs. It was a duplex with a full kitchen upstairs as well as down. It now looks like a single family home. Shortly before we were back for phase two, the house went up for sale. And noticing a little box on the “for sale” sign, we grabbed a brochure. It described the house as a single family with four bedrooms and two full baths.

Inside I could imagine my grandmother squeezing orange juice from fresh oranges with one of those glass bowls that had a ribbed part rising up in the middle on which one could turn and twist the oranges. It took a lot more effort to get orange juice that way. But my grandmother never complained. She was always willing to squeeze and twist and turn until we got our fill. I hope that we enjoyed it more then than we do now when we grab our Dole pasteurized OJ out of the refridge.

And inside I could imagine my grandfather sitting in the front sun room with a cup of coffee, a box of sugar cubes, and a carton of cigarettes. Although he never taught us to smoke, he was always willing to share his cubes. The thought now repulses me, but I would eat one after another, sometimes dipping them in his cup of coffee. Maybe that’s where my obsession for Java began? He was the talkative sort, a genial salesman, who loved to read and had an amazing wit. He would sit and talk politics into the wee hours of the night with one of his cousins who was on the Minneapolis City Council, an alderman as they were known then. He was always such a booster of his grandkids, telling me that I would be president someday. (As I think about that now, it sounds more like a curse, but I know his intentions were right. Plus, how could I improve on what Bill and George have done these past many years?)

He always adored us kids and loved for us to visit. And even after my parents bought their own house in the suburbs, they would drive in to visit grandma and grandpa almost nightly. We were blessed to have them so much a part of our lives. I always saw them as great role models, even though my grandfather’s past was not always exemplary. Early on in their marriage they lost their first born child, a baby girl. It was an event that totally devasted them. And then during the difficult Depression years, the bottle became too much a part of his life. His life for most of the years that my dad and his brother were growing up was consumed by a passion for drinking that would have completely torn the family apart except for the strong Christian faith of my grandmother.

From early on I knew that was a part of his past, but it never made sense to me because I never saw any evidence of it. As far as I knew, he only drank coffee (with way too much sugar.) Although my father does not like to talk about it much, he did open up to me about a year ago concerning my grandfather’s abuse of alcohol. He told stories of how he and his brother had to go out and find their dad as he couldn’t find his own way home. But then he told me something that I still have trouble believing. One day he quit cold turkey. On the day I was born, he made a pledge to be a worthy grandparent and forever gave up the sauce. And he lived a dry life from then on. I’m glad that I never had to experience those earlier hellish days. But I’m sorry that they consumed so much of my own dad’s youth.

But even as my dad talks about those difficult days of his father drinking his life away, he still shares a picture of a man who had a deep moral compass and compassion for others. My dad has shared with me a few times an event that has become a core of who he is. During the darkest part of the Depression years, when jobs and money were so scarce, my grandfather was using a stall in the men’s room at the old Dayton’s Department store warehouse. It was Friday and payday. Back in the ‘20s everyone there was paid in cash in an envelope with their name on it. And you guessed it, he found a fellow employee’s stack of cash for a week’s worth of work. At the time he was dirt poor himself, using way too much of his money on booze, and behind on many bills at home. There would have been no way to trace the cash that was in his hands. But he did the right thing. He searched for that man and presented him with his entire week’s worth of pay. His deep sense of honesty to this day deeply moves my father, and it’s hard for my dad to completely tell that story. But that is how my dad lives his life today, having that righteous example deeply ingrained into his conscience, from a man who had very real and visible shortcomings.

Well, I’ve looked into enough rooms for now. Maybe I’ll go see if I can still ride a bike.