Within the archives was a Book written by my grandfather in his teen years from 1908 to 1910. I remember him as a crude, insensitive guy who walked with a limp because of childhood polio. He died when I was fifteen. My only memory of talking to him was when I was about twelve. He was sitting in his chair sipping a bottle of beer. I looked curious at him as he had a shaker of salt for his beer. He called me over smiling, about to light a cigarette and asked “You know how I light my fire?” He leaned forward with a kitchen match to his bronze ashtray which had a standing nude female figure and lit it on her belly. I turned red and he laughed like crazy.The Book is a bound ledger of superior cursive writings of near perfect spelling and grammar. It could have been for schoolwork in the fifth through seventh grade. 
Some stories took the form of a letter to friends like Ray where he describes “My trip through South America” telling the details of dream. Another dream was written to Fay that contained all storybook characters crashing into the sea from Jack the Giant Killers air-ship. One titled “A Narration of Learning How to Swim” gives an account of being dunked by ‘larger boys’ at the “Sand Bar”. Because of his polio impairment I would expect him had born more childhood scars than he revealed in the writings. “My Autobiography” gave a chronology of an itinerant childhood where they never stayed in one town in middle Michigan for more than two years. There was no account of his birth father or his mother’s second marriage when he was nine. He only tells of staying with his grandfather and an uncle on occasion.
Some stories took the form of a letter to friends like Ray where he describes “My trip through South America” telling the details of dream. Another dream was written to Fay that contained all storybook characters crashing into the sea from Jack the Giant Killers air-ship. One titled “A Narration of Learning How to Swim” gives an account of being dunked by ‘larger boys’ at the “Sand Bar”. Because of his polio impairment I would expect him had born more childhood scars than he revealed in the writings. “My Autobiography” gave a chronology of an itinerant childhood where they never stayed in one town in middle Michigan for more than two years. There was no account of his birth father or his mother’s second marriage when he was nine. He only tells of staying with his grandfather and an uncle on occasion. Among the seventy odd pages are about ten pages of collected poems clipped from the newspaper and one poem written by him at eighteen. All of which has much more sensitivity than he had ever shown.
After all this delving, I did not find anything that put me closer to understanding the nature of my grandfather.
