A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

Grandma Campbell's House
By John Carpenter
Email:jmcarp33 at comcast dot net
(above email address formatted to reduce spam)
January 10, 2008

Whenever I go home to Connecticut and point out the obligatory landmarks of my childhood to the offspring, the most special one is my grandmother's old house. Now a slightly odd combination of yellows but with the same small yard I mowed a few hundred times, it takes me back to my awkward mid-teens. Her house was 100 yards or so from ours and you could see it from the phone on our kitchen wall. She'd call every morning and I would stand there, looking out the window through two yards at her back door, listening to her voice.
She never said hello but went right into whatever was on her mind, which was often "those damned Red Sox." We were both fans but lived in the New York end of the state, meaning we could only catch the Sox on the radio at night if we were lucky. She'd lay in bed listening, or maybe sit at the kitchen table smoking her Kents and cursing Carl Yastremski.
Some days she'd ask me if I'd pick something up for her, or drive her to the bank or her bridge game. That meant I'd get to drive her Pontiac Bonneville with the V-8 engine and the bench seat. I'd say yes and walk down, lanky skin and bones and hands in pockets. She'd be in her kitchen finishing her tea and one last smoke while reading the obit page of the Norwalk Hour, scanning the headlines like some people check their stocks. "Better see who died."
About every other time I was there, it seems, she'd recall the night before. "I had a dream, Johnny, that you became a priest." She didn't say it like some backwards way if telling me that's what she wanted me to be. I honestly think she had those dreams and maybe wasn't sure whether they were good or bad but felt she needed to tell me. She would, then she'd cough a little and stamp out the cigarette. "I've got to put my teeth in and we can go." She'd also talk about my mother, whom she was probably driving nuts for any number of reasons at that particular time. "You're mother," she told me at least a hundred times, "is a saint." Why she would never say that directly to my mother is anyone's guess. But I think my mom has forgiven her. At least I hope so.
In 1986, when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs and the Red Sox lost the World Series, my phone in Boston rang. My mother didn't say hello but went straight into what was on her mind. "Thank God," she said, "that your grandmother wasn't alive to see those damned Red Sox." I agreed and we laughed and I didn't tell her that her mother always told me how smart she was, that she had had her tested at Yale and she was a genius — a genius and a saint. I should have told her, of course. But I was 24 and living in Boston and probably just went back to drinking beer with my buddies.
I miss my grandmother, though, and think about her every time I go home to my parents and answer the phone and stand there looking out the window.

About the author:
I'm a former newspaperman turned stay-at-home dad currently finishing my first novel. And yes, you're right. I should be working on it right now.