North Star Writers Group

I was leafing through an old family photograph album the other evening when I came across a faded, black-and-white snapshot of my late grandfather, Elmer Dobbs.

When I was a kid growing up in Flint, Michigan, Grandpa Elmer was one of my favorite people.

I guess he was super-special to me because he was a gentle hummingbird of a man who spoke softly and wore frameless spectacles that made him look for all the world like a miniature Santa Claus.

He also was a sharp contrast to my grandmother Odiel, who used to scare the hell out of me by shouting “Hark!” at the top of her lungs if I happened to interrupt her when she was listening to her favorite soap opera on the old Philco upright radio that was roughly the same size as a 1939 Buick sedan, had a round, lighted dial and dominated the parlor of their huge, two-story home on Page Street.

My favorite times with Grandpa Dobbs were when he would take me by the hand and lead me down the rickety stairs to the cellar to show me his fishing gear that filled two behemoth tackle boxes in a dark corner of the room.

There, in the dim glow of the cellar’s lone light bulb, he would open those tackle boxes and let me feast my eyes on hundreds of brightly-colored lures, bobbers and what-have-you.

Each lure was accompanied by a story from my grandfather and sometimes we’d be down there for two or three hours.

Another of my favorite memories about my grandfather involves all those Saturday afternoons in the summertime when he would tell my grandmother “I’m going to take Robbie for a little walk” and we would leave the house.

It was more than just a walk, of course, because we’d hoof it three blocks to a little tavern called Dinty Moore’s to hook up with some of Grandpa’s cronies from the Buick plant where grandpa built cars for something like 45 years.

They were big, beefy guys with names like Red and Potato Joe and Junior and Hank and as they swapped shop talk, Grandpa would sit me down at the diner’s lunch counter, order me a hamburger and a big orange drink and I’d listen as the men talked.

Then, as we were heading home, Grandpa would always tell me, “Now remember, Robbie, don’t tell your grandma where we went.” And, if I remember right, I never did tell her.

My grandfather died when he was 82 of a massive heart attack.

My favorite Grandpa Dobbs story dates to the day when he was 67 years old.

Grandpa Dobbs never had a driver’s license. The Buick plant where he worked was a short walk from his home.

Then, at age 67, he decided to get one.

He went to a license bureau. After taking his written test, the employee asked him some questions.

“This is the last question. Mr. Dobbs,” he told him. “What would you do if you were driving 50 miles an hour down a street and a man stepped out in front of you?”

Grandpa, as the story goes, peered at the man over his spectacles for several seconds, then replied, “I imagine I‘d hit the !@#$.”

They handed him his driver’s license five minutes later.

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