An Old Story, An Old Wound

In 1971, Atlanta was still very much a small town. The interstate highways were not completed, so a trip from Atlanta to Marietta took an hour or more. (It still does, but for different reasons.) I remember one leg of this journey required crossing a one-lane bridge. That's one lane total as in "You go, then I go".

My grandfather lived in Marietta. He and my grandmother had divorced years earlier (an unusuality in the 1970's South) and we grandchildren trekked up to see him a couple of times a year. His was not an active presence in my life. He was distant, both physically and in my knowledge of him. But we lived with his shadow every day. Me with the idea of him built only from observations through small-child eyes; his children with the heavier memory of what might have been. He was short, trim, and drank Coca-Cola like a fiend. He was smart and well-read. From what they tell me of him, I would have liked him. I loved my grandmother with all my heart and I think I would have loved him, too.

This is how I envision what happened.