My grandfather is on his deathbed in California; and as I think about his life, it's impossible for me not to see in his death the passing of an age.
He was born in 1906 in Connecticut on a dairy farm, before there were many automobiles, before there were airplanes. He was born in the year that Teddy Roosevelt signed acts to regulate food and drugs and the inspection of meat. He lived through the First World War. His grandmother died in the great flu epidemic of 1918.
He went to school, and high school, which he never finished. He became a tradesman, sharpening knives for a living. He was good at what he did. He worked and saved and opened his own knife-sharpening business. He married. He had children. He supported his family. He voted. He was like one of the guys in those Norman Rockwell paintings. He always had blue-collar tastes; he was never ashamed of his origins.
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