Happy Birthday George W

Thanks for greasing my bicycle's chain for all those summers, and for teaching me how to fix flat tires.

Thanks for "allowing" me to watch the Lawrence Welk Show at your house every weekend.

Thanks for taking us to Pizza Hut and letting me order the pepperoni and Cokes.

Thanks for getting me jobs mowing and raking your neighbors' yards.

Thanks for giving me your National Geographic magazines and for all those paperback novels from the drug store.

Thanks for all the iced tea and black licorice and salted peanuts.

Thanks for showing me how to check your crossword puzzle's answers in the special dictionary, for quizzing me with the Reader's Digest vocabulary builder, and for tolerating me while I clattered away on that old typewriter for hours at a time.

Thanks for the story from your immigrant parents about the mysterious Norwegian man who (every single day for years) carried a heavy bag of dirt from near the fjord to his high mountain home--until he "suddenly" owned a fantastic garden among the boulders.

Thanks for telling me that the "W" that served as your middle name was just a single letter (like the "S" in Harry S Truman), even though you were born on George Washington's birthday.

Thanks, Grandpa, for things that weren't obvious when you were here.

Happy Birthday--I miss you.