At the time, it was a curiosity - a mystery, even. I've said before, I'm stubborn.
But I think this story has me beat.
Apologies to those who've heard this chapter before, but this time around - there will be new chapters.
For most of my family, the story began with an envelope that arrived sometime before 1965.
It was an unremarkable envelope, and it arrived at my grandparent's home while my grandfather George was away. It was addressed to him, but it was my grandmother who opened it. There was a Lancaster postmark, and the return address was from a hospital she'd never heard of.
Within moments of reading it, my grandmother was in hysterics.
The letter was from a physician. He seemed to be asking for permission to amputate George’s leg. This was necessary, the doctor explained, because George was not fit to make such decisions on his own.
Her husband worked on a train - had there been an accident? She frantically called coworkers and friends. No, they assured her, there had been no accident on the train. Even if there were - they certainly wouldn't notify the family by mail. George should be home on schedule, and everything should sort itself out.
Which left my grandmother at home staring at the clock and wondering; Why was it addressed to George? Was this all a mistake?
George did arrive on schedule, unharmed. When his wife confronted him with the letter, his response was indirect: “My God, he's still alive."
Who?
"My father."
And that was all he'd say. The letter's existence was only enough to pry out the necessary detail that George and his father shared a first name. After that, all questions were met with a gruff, "leave it alone."
The letter vanished, presumably signed and returned. Somewhere in Lancaster, a man no one knew lost his leg. There would be one more letter, years later. Grandpa George would read that one in private.
In all the memories of my grandfather, I can remember only one utterance about his father. "He said he was from Georgia. White Russia." He had said it like he was unsure -and wished he wasn't. I never asked him why he hadn't just asked his dad to be certain, it just didn't occur to me.
A lot never occurred to me back then. I also never wondered about why I had a grandfather with a surname shared by none of my great-grandparents. I was a kid, and had no interest in old people with funny names.
My early memories of Grandpa George were simple.
He was a mountain of a man with a booming voice. He was the kind of person who would do anything for you if he liked you, but he gave off vibes that told you not to ask for much. Truth was, I was afraid of him for a long time.
He was a history buff. He loved hearing a good story as much as telling one - so long as it was true. He had no use for fiction. Grandpa had an elephantine memory for battles and their generals, and he could put you right in the middle of whatever battle he was describing.
He loved firearms, and had a gun collection that was modest in size, but had no peer when it came to maintenance. Nobody had cleaner guns than Grandpa George. He'd take one out for just a minute, then clean it for ten before putting it back. We used to joke that grandpa liked cleaning guns more than shooting them.
I spent a lot of time watching grandpa clean his guns. That, and listening to everything grandpa knew about gun safety - grandpa was nuts about gun safety.
He was of course, much more than that. But I was a kid with simple questions and simple views. By the time my questions actually meant something, the time to ask them had passed.
Over time, I learned little else about my Great-grandfather. Mostly from how people said something about him, rather than what words they'd chosen. "Oh, yeah..." they'd say, "he left when grandpa was young."
It was in college that my curiosity finally connected the dots on why my great-grandmother didn’t share Grandpa George’s last name; she'd remarried. A fact that everyone knew, but one that somehow managed to elude me for more than two decades. Of course she'd remarried, her husband had left her.
Asked and answered.
Not too long ago, some other peoples' memories finally came bubbling to the surface. They were from George's sister Francie, by way of my mother. Before she died, Francie had told my mother a little about George Sr.
"Our father had a terrible temper," she'd told my mother, "just terrible."
It seems that George Sr. also had a modest collection of guns, and also kept them in near-immaculate condition. One day when my grandfather was around ten years old, he took one of his father's guns without permission and went shooting out in the woods. Once he was done, he snuck it back into his father's gun case and never said a word.
Of course, he'd put them back dirty.
It's easy to imagine what happened next. The father comes home and notices that someone has been using his guns. He confronts his son, who - being a kid - denies everything. Then he shows George Jr. the proof: dirt and residue on rifles that are always clean.
Then, according to Francie, George Sr. proceeded to beat his son.
Francie was a kind soul, so she called it a beating. But beating is far too small a word for what my great-grandfather did to his son that night.
I should point out that unless some ancient police report surfaces, there is no way to know what occurred with any certainty. All who were there are now dead. However, the two facts I have pretty much tell the story.
After that night - my great-grandmother gathered her children and left her husband forever. Because of what he did, my great-grandfather was put into a state mental hospital, where he spent the rest of his life.
It was this hospital that sent my grandfather the letter all those years later.
One other memory from my childhood comes back to me now. There was a time when my grandfather kept a pistol in his nightstand. Being a kid, it took no time at all for me to find it, and only one or two days for me to build up the nerve to actually pick it up.
It was, oddly enough, at a time when my parents and uncles were in the next room. I had figured they were too busy to worry about me, and anyway - I wanted to pick up the pistol.
It was a Browning 9mm, your classic movie pistol, and it was impressive. Aping what I had seen on TV, I gripped it and pulled the slide back-
-and watched a live round slide halfway out of the side of the gun, jamming it open.
I was dead. I knew it, I was too terrified to let the slide go back, because any slip could make the gun go off. Even if I managed to clear the jam, I'd have to take a bullet out of the gun and grandpa would know.
Kid logic exhausted, I gave up. I set down the pistol and went to my grandpa and told him to follow me.
As I entered his room with him behind me, I could just see it coming. I'd let him down. Everything he'd shown me, everything he taught me, I'd blown it, and he was going to hit the roof. He'd start with, "NEVER pick up a gun without an adult!!" and then my parents and everyone would come in and join in, and my life would be over.
But he didn't.
He cleared the jam, put the pistol away, and said "Forget about it. I've forgotten about it already." Then he pushed me out of the room. I couldn't believe it. He didn't punish me, he didn't even yell.
He got rid of the pistol after that, but he never brought that day up again - or told anyone about it - and I never understood.
I think I do now.
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