Just a little onion in them eyes

He was the kind of man who still had a little bit of dirt under his finger nails after a hot shower, his wrinkled skin was tough and tan bearing the sun spots of years in cotton fields and cow pastures, building roads and bridges, and doing work most men are too weak to endure.

He had that silver hair that he always smoothed over with a comb and a little bit of stubble that never quite got removed with his electric razor.  His accent was the kind that was thick, adding “r” to the end of any word that didn’t.  He cut off his own left hand with a chain saw and managed to drive himself to hospital “cause the other feller was too weak stomached to finish the drive”. He survived a brain aneurism, a bulldozer collapsing on his body for 8 hours, and getting struck by lightening… twice. 

When the doctor told him to sit still after his knee replacement surgery, he made sure to sit on the passenger side while my uncle made the rounds to check on the cattle. Tough doesn’t even scratch the surface of who he was.  He taught me to drive a stick shift, how to cull a chicken, and how to feed a baby calf a bottle.  He was strong as an ox, fearless in every way. 

With all the crazy work he did, he never once wavered when my sisters and I would ask to join him too- the answer was always yes. He was Doc Plunkett, my grandfather, and the kind of man that makes you wonder how anyone could ever be afraid at all.  “Lauuuuura… get on over thur’ and see bout’ makin’ me a ‘mater sammich.” He would say when we would come in the house from checking the cattle.  “And if there’s a little onion, put me a few slivers of that on thur too.”

I would do anything he asked because his life was spent making sure he left a heritage that gave me anything I asked for. Some summers my parents would drop us off for a week or so in this little farm town bordering two North Alabama Counties.  It was a place known for the smell of chicken houses, cow pastures, Christmas lights in July, and the kind of accents Hollywood could never mimic. 

This little town could be considered the poster child for the southern cities that every one makes fun of, but it was where he was. His home wasn’t just his, it seemed that the whole community considered it their own.   They never had much, he and my grandmother, but everything they had they shared; folks just knew they were welcome without asking.  The refrigerator always “had plenty, why don’t you getchu’ some”, whatever that some was.

Vienna sausages and moon pies we bought in bulk and the coffee pot stayed full sun up to sundown. The doctors monitored his health by giving him a list of foods he should avoid and he called that “a doctors thoughts and not my own.” 

Those visits, whether weekends or week long, would always come to an end.  I would crawl up in his lap while he was sitting in his remote controlled recliner.  He would bounce me on one knee and sing a Baptist hymn and tilt his head to the side nudging me to give him a kiss on the cheek. That last hug though, the one that meant good bye, those brave, tough eyes of his would fill up with tears while he  hugged and kissed all our faces.  I, the sensitive child, always leaned in and asked what was wrong.  With his strong, southern voice he would whisper to me, “Naw Hun, it’s just a little bit of onion in them eyes of mine.”