Saturday, August 30, 2008

August 30th

Today was my nephew Patrick's 13th birthday.I called last night to my brothers and my sister in law said they were at the track.I said what track and she said Del Mar.Patrick just called and he won the first race.I'm thinking my brother is taking his 12 to be 13 year old son to the horse track.His older brother was off doing something else.So I talked to a buddy from Pittsford days in Melbourne Fl. this morning and I tell him and he says"So,my dad used to take me to the track,we had a box at Finger Lakes Race track" I joked to him"Look how you turned out" and he laughed then said something unprintable and after I hung up I recalled his father owned and raised race horses on a farm he had folks run for him.The common bond is that both his father and my brother are Lawyers.So I talked to Patrick today and he said he won some money on the ponies.Today was also the 43rd anniv of the passing of my Mom's dad in 1965 at 67 years old.We lived next to my mothers parents then on a lot they had sold them and it was a few weeks after we had returned to Rochester from our month long camping trip out west through the Badlands,Grand Teton,Yellowstone and Glacier Natl. Parks.My grandfather was Belgian and raced pigeons.He had a coop in their backyard and that morning I was outside very early in our back yard when my grandfather saw me and asked where my brother Larry(the lawyer) was.I said he was still sleeping and he said go inside quietly and tell your mother you are going to go with me but don't wake your brother.I had two younger brothers also but they were sleeping also and he was only worried about my brother Larry because he was in those days a royal pain I was 10 at the time my brother 9.So I snuck over to my grandfathers and off we went with the pigeon crates in the trunk out along the river past the Univ. of Rochester a drive I loved in the fall but it was fun in the summer also.We drove out well into the country southwest of Rochester where we let the pigeons go and then drove back to Roch.I went back to our house and my grandfather sat down in his chair in the yard to wait for his birds and he was sleeping in it when my grandmother tried to wake him but he wasn't sleeping as I thought.He had a heart attack an died on the way to the hospital.It had only been about an hour since we had returned home.The rest of the day was a blur with relatives and crying and laughing and that night it was my brother Larry who went next door and slept at my grandmothers house something I was terrified of doing that night so I stayed home.The next day he tells us"I saw Grandpa last night" He was standing at the foot of my bed looking at me."All these years I've never talked to him about it again but I like to think my grandfather who wasn't a touchie feelie sort of person felt guilty about that morning and wanted my brother to know everything was O.K.

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