Eggs and Cheese

When I think of my grandpa Leslie,I think of him sitting quietly and not saying much. I spent more time with him growing up than anyone in my life. See he was my babysitter when my mom and dad would do whatever they needed to do. I even lived with them(my grandma and him) when my mom was doing her student teaching. I would ride with him all over the country in his pickup and he would always take me by the store for ice cream and a coke. He would always have butter brickle ice cream at home and that guy had me eating everything from sardines to brains (in eggs that is.) See I never ate much of anything my first 2 years and I usually just drank milk. He enjoyed the simple things in life because when he was a young boy he had rheumatic fever and it damaged his heart valve. When I was 11 DeBakey and Cooley operated on him in Houston. He lived about 10 years after that operation whereas if he hadn't had it , his life would have been cut short. When I was living with them in 2nd grade, my teacher had sent home something for my parents to sign in the middle of the week. Since my dad was a traveling science teacher with OSU at the time and not home on the weekend either they couldn't sign my paper. Well the teacher told me not to come back without the signature and my grandpa ended up in the superintendents office very upset over this situation since my parents were both out of town during the week and only home on weekends. The stories go that if I was upset, he was very upset. I was the girl he never had. I was special to him. Whenever he was getting older and harder for my grandma to handle,She called my daddy once and told him to come home and get grandpa in the house. He didn't want to come in so daddy called me to go get him in the house. See they lived 15 miles away from us at this time. He also smoked cigarettes and when I was a toddler, I ate his cigs out of the ash tray. Yuck!!!But he was the MAN and whatever he said or did was the BOMB.