Grandpa’s Forgiveness

Once I helped Grandpa to place an electric wire around the hog lot. When we were finished, the spool of wire was left lying in the grass. Fascinated by the silvery thin metal, I went back to get a length. But the high-tensile wire wouldn’t break. Instead, it spooled off in the grass like a giant slinky.

In the hog lot, Grandpa was jumping up and down, whooping and hollering.

“Unplug it Grandma, unplug it! Unplug it!,” I whined.

Later that summer Grandpa went to get the wire. By now the wire was hidden beneath tall grass. Grandpa found it the hard way. His foot became entangled in a coil and he dragged it into a hot wire. “Yikes!” With high voltage pulsating through his body and unable to free himself, he began yelling for help.

Grandma and I were in the kitchen preparing a tall stack of graham crackers with peanut butter to wash down with a cold glass of milk with cream on top when we heard the frantic calls. Mystified, we ran through the house and out onto the front porch. In the hog lot, Grandpa was jumping up and down, whooping and hollering. Grandma quizzed the situation, reached up, then yanked out the cord that set power to the electric fence. But when Grandpa made not the slightest change in song and dance, she reconnected it. “Ouch!” I knew the problem, but feared I would incriminate myself. Poor Grandpa. I couldn’t watch him suffer.

Grandpa came to the house, still chanting, I thought it wise to make myself scarce. When I returned later, my grandparents were in the kitchen talking. But when Grandpa saw me enter the room from the corner of his eye the conversation was quickly shushed. But I distinctly heard the words: “I just know that little redhead woodpecker had something to do with that.” I thought surely this will end my trips to the Saturday night movies. But all was forgiven. Never was a word said.

The shock must not have hurt Grandpa — he lived to be 96 years old!

F. McCormick, Yadkinville