My Pawpaw was right: ‘Gaaaawd damn!’

My Pawpaw was a smart man: He hated Republicans, and could totally rock a fedora.

I was chatting online with my friend and former colleague Lin Lofley today, lamenting a lot of things, but among them the fact that I’m so dispirited that I’ve been unable to contribute to my own blog. Fortunately, Lin has taken up some of the slack with several guest posts, and I have it on good authority that more will be coming very soon.

As a writer, it’s hard to understand my malaise. Current events have placed me smack dab in the middle of a target-rich environment, but it’s all too depressing. I keep asking myself what the hell was I thinking when I wrote that hopeful blather about piloting an airplane all the way to a miraculous landing, despite the fact that everything looked hopeless? True, I was inspired then by a dream, but one Donald Trump press conference was enough to wake me up to the fact that safe landings aren’t possible when the wings have fallen off.

I don’t want to waste time explaining my entire convoluted thought process, but somehow or other today, I started thinking about my Pawpaw. Regular readers of this blog know I’ve already written about him on a couple of other occasions, HERE and HERE, and I encourage the rest of you to follow those links and read about him because he really was an amazing man.

But one tidbit I never wrote about Pawpaw is something I find most endearing today: Pawpaw effing hated Republicans.

Pawpaw was, generally speaking, a gentleman; I rarely saw him get too worked up. Oh, he might have said a few cuss words in his day, but never with a hard edge, more of a rolling “gaaaawd damn,” as an expression of shock or awe. But he did get worked up, on occasion, about Republicans. As someone who experienced Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, he was quite adamant that he would never vote for a Republican ever again, and I’m pretty gaaaawd damned sure that he kept that vow!

I loved my Pawpaw and I miss him a lot today, even though he’s been gone for most of my adult life. How I wish I could hear his reaction to the abomination that now stands ready to take the Oath of Office in just eight short days.

Undoubtedly, Pawpaw would have an oath of his own: “Gaaawd damn!”