Father's Day - Grandpa Edition

A few months ago, I was talking with a dear friend and we got on to the subject of Grandads. 'You never really talk about your grandads, Rach.' Y'all know the strength of our friendship that this woman is on the list of select few that call me 'Rach' and I don't see red. And she's right. Because I went into survival shock when he died and somehow lost the words. I held my breath and forgot to let it out, forgot that the trick is to keep breathing. As for my paternal biological grandfather John Daniel 'Foxy Dan' Young, I never knew him. He was murdered in 1963 in Waynesboro, Virginia. 

I give you William Allen Jenkins, aka 'Jinx.' Jinx was...driven and charming. Stubborn as the Midsummer is long.

 This photo is in St Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. When I think of the places I want to share with my littles, I think of these islands. I think of the sea, and petit four cakes, and Jinx reading me Treasure Island, of staying up too late to watch 'The Elephant Man' on their Beta Max (the far superior technology, as we all know).

By the time I knew him, he had mellowed, like a good whiskey. He'd sip his G&T and tell me stories about the early days of building Air City, from the chicken coop to the shop front and warehouse on Wilmington Pike.

He was there when I made my ballet debut (also my last performance...the one where I accidentally knocked over my fellow tutu-clad Belles). He was there when my folks went through their first major marital implosion. Did you know that in the early 1980s, a pregnant woman was not permitted to divorce her husband? Oh, Mississippi. Why?!

 My grandparents bought the Shawna Marie in the late 1970s with a view to sailing around the world. They based themselves out of Charlotte Amalie Harbor and ran a charter business until 1990, after Hurricane Hugo came through in '89. Sailing after the storm had suddenly become a younger man's game and he had other kinds of hell to raise. 

For years, he and Lo was my survival guide for anything I needed to know about navigating the grown-up world.I did not always walk their line and they were not always right. He jumped off of waterfalls, survived polio, and always smelled like sunshine, Copenhagen chew, and determination. And I miss him, that stubborn SOB.