Watering the Grass

The other evening around sunset, when we were walking into house from the car, there was a smell in the air that immediately made me recall the summer evenings as I sat with my Grandpa Joe as he watered his front lawn on Lafayette.

After a day of being on his feet all day, repairing other people's shoes, he would come home and

eat a small dinner. Grandma always made his first course spaghetti and he ate only about an

ounce with butter and sometimes a little cheese. Then he would have a small portion of whatever else Grandma Santa had made.

After dinner, he would sit on the wide steps that led to their front porch. The steps were concrete and Grandpa Joe would sit there and water his medium size front lawn. I sometimes would sit with him or on a rocking chair on the porch that went across the whole front of the house.

He'd ask me what I had for lunch and breakfast. I think he feared that Mary Fran didn't

know enough to feed her kids. But on the other hand, I think it was a simple way for him

to communicate with me. As the water fell across the hot grass, it gave off an alluring

aroma. At the time, I didn't think much of it, but as an adult, whenever I smell it, it brings

back memories of those long summer afternoons that slipped into long summer evenings.

Sometimes in the late morning or early afternoon, my sister and I, and sometimes Barbara, would sit on the wooden rockers and play "I see something." The participants would say, "I see something blue?" and the other player would respond, "Is it the sky?" Well, of course it was. Then the other player would take her turn. "I see something green." And the other would reply, "Is it the grass?" Yup. As we got older, about 8 or 10, we became much more clever. We would spy passing red cars, or a brown bird. This led to cries of "foul" by the other player because how was she supposed to know what color car went by four minutes ago!

If you can't guess the passing cars then you might as well work them into the game. We

would count how many white cars went buy, or blue, or whatever color we designated. I

don't quite remember the point of that game, but at the time it seemed sensible and natural.

I don't remember ever seeing Grandpa Joe water the back yard, maybe he just put a

sprinkler out there. I do remember "running through the sprinkler" as being a favorite

pass time on a hot summer day. We would dry off as we played on an old swing set that

had been put up specifically to amuse the grand kids, which eventually numbered 14.

Sometimes, Aunt Rita or Aunt Barbara, or cousin Joann, would "lay out" on a blanket in the back yard. They would apply Johnson's Baby Oil with a liberal hand and lay on their fronts and then their backs while we played around them. Once I saw one of them put iodine in with the

baby oil and that seemed really gross, but I asked them to put some on me anyway. Nope.

Too young.

As the years went buy, we got too old to enjoy the simple pleasures of the back yard and

the front porch. If I had realized then what I came to understand about him later, I would have spent more time with Grandpa Joe, just sitting on the steps at twilight, watering the grass.