Rabbit

Yesterday, I discovered that my step-grandfather died.  That sounds really wrong, distant.

Rabbit was the man that raised my mother from the age of 4 along with her mom.  And, not to take anything away from bio-dads, being there counts for an awful lot.

Rabbit took on a large family back in 1946 when he and Grandma got married. She had three boys and a girl ranging from the age of 8 to 2. And no matter what people may say, add four kids to the equation and it has to be a difficult hurdle to leap.

To me Rabbit was my mom's dad. He was a Seabee that mom talked about being in the war. Rabbit was a truck driver, a bus driver and the man who lived in an electric blue A-frame house. The house was decorated with all kinds of things from his travels. When we traveled, I always looked forward to visiting him. I don't know why, he was always, what is the word, cantankerous by the time I remember meeting him. I guess that is why. Cantankerous Gramp's, that term is kind of redundant isn't it.

As I got older, I enjoyed exploring in the graveyard across the street the edge of the woods behind his house and looking at the things plastered all over the walls.  By the time I decided to become interested in family histories and genealogy, Rabbit was less than easy to get any information out of.

Rabbit will be missed.  Run, Rabbit, Run...I wish he had told us about how he had gotten his nickname, another family mystery