Grandpa Grandson Bonding Time

When I was growing up each summer my dad would spend most of his time building a house for rental property. He would usually break ground June 1st and would be putting the finishing touches on the house right before school started. I got to go with dad every day. As I grew older he began paying me to do things and he paid WELL! I remember one of my jobs being to mow the field where he eventually would be putting some houses. I would mow for SEVERAL hours but at the end of the day he would pay me 25 to 50 bucks depending on the situation. I was RICH! I was 10 years old. What did I have to spend my money on? Music and arcades!

My dad also "employed" grandpa to clean up around the outside and inside of the house as we finished stages of building the house. In the mid to late 80's Grandpa purchased a 1978 Chevy dump truck. It had the regular truck cabin but it had the lifting bed. Grandpa was getting serious about this cleanup job he had. Well any time he had to go to the dump I was his side kick.

I remember one time grandpa must have been in a hurry. I say this because he was changing lanes and passing other cars on the road like we were racing at Daytona. Every now and then another car that he passed would honk at us. A few "hand signals" were waved at us. I looked back and I could see debris flying out of the back of the dump truck and other cars moving to miss the 2 x 4 that just landed in the street.

I looked over to see just how fast grandpa was going. The thing was stuck on ZERO. It did not work. Now you had to approach things easy with grandpa. Sometimes he had a short tolerance for questions. As we were weaving through traffic on our way to the checkered flag I asked grandpa......Um...Grandpa....how do you know how fast you are going? Answer- I just go the speed of traffic!

Now where the traffic was moving that fast I have no idea.