My grandfather died last December, a month short of his 82nd birthday. He grew up during the Depression and lied about his age so he could enlist in the Navy early. He worked three jobs to support his family - he would leave the house on Friday morning and worked straight through to Sunday.
He was a designer of things - vending machines, industrial brushes. Parts of the Apollo 11 lunar module. The lines of his drawings were straight and dark and clean, and his handwriting looked to have been typeset.
He could make himself an extremely disagreeable person, particularly in his declining years, but he could also be kind and generous. My favorite memory of him is of the time he helped me build my Pinewood Derby cars. This annual ritual of forming a slippery-fast racer from a plain block of wood brought us as close as we would probably ever be. Our car never won, but it didn't matter.
Lately I've been channeling my grandfather.
At work, I've started keeping a stack of blank paper at my desk and making drawings of what I'm working on. I've started using a pencil instead of a pen, and I've started writing like him, though not quite as neatly.
This week, the kids wanted to make washing machines. I have no idea where this idea came from, but I'd promised to help them, so today, despite a smallish hangover, a leanover really, we made washing machines out of plastic jugs, a couple of cheap pens and a few kebab skewers.
I hope the kids remember that.
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