The Grandfather as an Eccentric and Trickster

Peeps. (Not the marshmallow treats, my Grandfather)
Peeps. AKA PeePaw. This was my maternal grandfather. He was the trickster. He would pretend to drink tabasco sauce from the table. My cousin Steven would mimic him, getting a large mouthful of tabasco sauce in the process. Peeps thought this was funny. He kept monkeys. He called every one of them Sam. He would give Sam a lit cigarette, only to have Sam apply the lit cigarette to his rear end, scratching with it. Again, this was thought of as funny. Our "Sam's" always had large cages, probably 20' by 10' by 10' in size. They were well provided for, given fruit, and monkey chow, but they weren't happy. Sometimes Sam ran away. One time, aunt Doris and I tried to lure Sam down from a large tree (an Australian pine) in a neighbor's yard with a bar of soap. (For some reason Sam liked to eat soap.) I think aunt Doris caught him (by his slight but strong tail) and we took him home. Poor, Sam. He might have developed his own tribe of Monkeys in south Florida (near the Opa Locka Airport) and might have become famous (as far as monkeys go) with his own indigenous tribe. Alas, this was NOT to be.

Peeps had a gas station (my dad said he thought Peeps would buy excess airline fuel at a much higher octane and put it in his tanks). Dad said, Peeps' customers' old jalopies ran like crazy on that super high octane. I remember when his gas station had gas at 19.9 cents per gallon. Peeps also had a restaurant, right behind the gas station. I'm pretty sure they called it Frenchy's.

Frenchy's was one stop burger joint. It was an outdoor cafe with barstools all around (more like a bar than a burger place, but, it was a work of art in development. My mom worked there for a time. He also had a waitress with one blue eye and one brown one. She was the most incredible woman I had ever seen. He had a "bunny hop" contest right after it opened so it must have been Easter. He also had a postcard made of the place.

My grandfather was sort of like Ernest Hemmingway in his time. He was certainly larger than life. He was a stranger in a strange land, Florida in the early 1930's. He disappointed his wife and younger children at every turn (he was a major womanizer, an alcoholic, and had an abiding disrespect for the family unit) but, still he had a certain charm.
Labels: Life on the Edge., PeePaw, Peeps