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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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My Frankenstein Grandfather
essay by Vickie Clasby
In my grandfather’s day, all men smoked, and most drank. He tended to do both to excess, and by the age of forty, had been a barely functioning alcoholic for most of his life, and had radical surgery for throat cancer.
I remember my grandfather as Papa. Papa was a very large man. My earliest memory of him is when he came back from the hospital after surgery. He’d had a laryngectomy and, although I did not understand what that meant, I was very aware of the hole in his throat, and the fact that he could not talk. A large section of the left side of his neck had been resected, and had also undergone radiation treatments which burned his skin a bright red. In those days, there were no electronic devices which simulated speech. He had to learn to speak by swallowing air and burping it back. It was called esophageal speech, and only his family members were ever able to understand what he was saying.
If anyone ever had a reason to drink to excess, it was my Papa. My grandmother had often said Papa’s father was a mean old drunk, and had regularly beaten all his children. And Papa, even after surviving advanced throat cancer continued smoking, and drank more than ever before because he was no longer able to work. He’d worked as a welder all his adult life, but with a tracheostomy, couldn’t handle the smoke and dust, and not many other jobs were available for people who couldn’t talk, so he collected disability payments for the rest of his life.
At least since he was unable to work, he took on all sorts of home improvement projects. Unfortunately, power tools and alcohol don’t mix. Luckily most of the accidents were fairly minor. Except for the ceiling fan. My grandfather decided one day to install a ceiling fan to help cool his workshop. In those days, ceiling fans had metal blades and powerful motors. He had been drinking while installing the ceiling fan, and after completing the task, walked out the door of the workshop to admire his work. When he came back into the workshop, with me following close behind, he discovered the hard way that the fan was too low. The blade hit him in the forehead and peeled the skin back like the skin of a peach, half way to his crown. Thankfully I was young when this happened, maybe six, and just have faint memories of this event. I do remember lots of blood. Papa had wrecked the car several months before, and they had no phone, so my grandmother wrapped a towel around his head and he walked a half mile to the doctor’s office. The doctor drove him to the hospital.
He recovered from the concussion and had a nice jagged scar the width of his forehead. Combined with the burned and scarred neck and the tracheostomy hole, he was quite a sight to behold. The hospital physician didn’t take much care sewing him up, and I guess it wouldn’t matter much how nice the scar looked.
I remember another instance in which the workshop got the best of him. My uncle, who was just a teenager at the time, was walking out the glass storm door from the kitchen into the workshop, with my Papa right behind him. Papa had been drinking most of the day, and didn’t catch the glass door as my uncle let go of it, and the door crashed into Papa’s face, severely cutting his nose. Even though my uncle was able to drive him to the hospital immediately, the skin of his nose could not be reattached. To repair the wound, the surgeon took a skin graft from the back of his leg. If you know much about alcoholics you’ll know that after all the years of drinking, Papa’s face was permanently red, especially his nose. And the skin taken from his leg was shockingly white. And hairy. When Papa came home, the hideous scars on his neck and the jagged scar on his forehead could not compare with the poorly sutured patch of white skin on his nose, sporting several black, curly hairs.
As frightening as he may have looked to other kids, he was my Papa. Despite his drinking problem and fairly minor accidents, I have mostly fond memories of him. I could understand everything he said, and remember him calling me his baby, and telling me how pretty I was. I do remember some of his darker moments, and wonder what my mother’s childhood must have been like, the oldest of five children with an alcoholic father and a mother who had no way out. I know it profoundly damaged her, and try to remember this when she behaves in ways that defy any sort of explanation.
Physical scars are often so much less significant than the scars we carry inside.
