I think most of us had at least one main Mentor at one time or another. Mine was my Grandfather. He was born in 1885 and left school after the second grade because the teacher told him to cut wood for the School's wood stove. He told the teacher that he didn't come there to work for him, he was there to learn things. His Father told him that If he wasn't going to go to school he would have to go to work. His father gave him a Mule and a Plow and he went to work plowing other people's field for $1 a day. By the time he was 19 he had seen the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show twice and had $1000 in the bank. You might say that he had developed a true work ethic. He became the Overseer of Flower Dew Hundred Plantation. Grandma said that he was the most respected man in the county. I lived with them every summer and he worked my ass off on the farm but I was definitely his favorite grandchild. There was one thing that I noticed pretty quick. He never told me to do anything that he wasn't sure I could do. That was because he had had to do all those things himself when he was growing up and knew were a small child's limits were. I did tasks on that farm that I didn't even know I was capable of. At the end of the day, he would sit on the front porch and sip a glass of moonshine with a leaf of wild Mint in it and either smoke a Blue Ribbon cigar or his pipe. Well, Hell, I wanted to be just like him so I got me a corncob pipe and sat out there with him and smoked my pipe. My mother came out there and said that I shouldn't be smoking a pipe at 7 years old. He just shewed her back in the house and said, "I'll handle this". I puffed away and finished my bowl of tobacco and he said fill her up again boy, so I did, after the third bowl, I started to get a little dizzy and green around the gills so I went inside and climbed in the bed and watched the room spin around. He told My mother that he didn't think I would be wanting to do that again. He was right. He would tell me all about his younger years and how he had seen a horse and an automobile have a race and how the horse won the race. We raised every kind of crop you can imagine, Wheat, Barley, Rye, Corn, Soya beans, Peanuts, Potatoes and Tobacco. We had Horses(that includes Donkeys and mules), Goats, Sheep, Pigs, Cows, and hunting dogs(hounds). He always had one small lap dog that always was his squirrel hunting dog that would sit in his lap whenever he sat down(except at the table when we ate). That was a no no and the dog knew it. He worked up until he was 85 before he stopped farming. He had a stroke and passed away at the age of 94. To this day I miss him and his home spun wisdom. I have a grandson that I have tried to have the same kind of relation with. Yes he is my favorite. When he was born he seemed to automatically be well behaved and smart as a whip. I remember going shopping with the wife, my daughter and the baby when he was about 3 or 4 months old. My daughter asked me to hold him while she tried on some clothes. As soon as I picked him up I said, "Boy, If you behave yourself, you and me will get along just fine" Both, my wife and my daughter said, "You can't talk to him like that". I said, "Bullshit, he understands what I said". From that moment on he was a perfect child when he was around me and when ever he would misbehave, my daughter would threaten to tell his Paw Paw and he would beg her not to. I think he and I have that same bond that I had with my Grandaddy. He is very quiet and doesn't say a lot but he hangs on every word that people say and isn't afraid to correct them when they're full of shit. He seems to love it when the wife and I go to visit him and we talk constantly when we're together. If any of you didn't have a mentor like that, I think you missed out on a life changing experience.
