With A Whimper 
by 
Oldmudrat

Chapter 2: February, 2016

My great-grandfather, on my mother's side of the family,  was a strange man.  Daniel William
Pitt was a strange man.  Well, not really strange.  Maybe peculiar would be a more apt
description.  He was 104 years old when he died and had lived on the same plot of land for sixty
of those years.  He did not believe in modern conveniences with the exception of radio and
television.  The only reason he had electricity in his house was for those two 'damn fool boxes',
as he used to call them.  Only later did he add a phone and computer, at my urging.  Going to
college I missed our talks and with the phone and email we could keep in touch.

Shortly after his wife died in childbirth, he bought up almost 600 acres of land on the east side of
the Tennessee River where the river briefly visits Mississippi.  He built his house on a steep
limestone cliff that dropped one-hundred-ten feet to the river.  For ten miles either side of his
house there was no place that a boat could make landfall.  The only road in from the state
highway was ten miles of dusty, rutted red clay or ten miles of gumbo mud depending on the
season.  A car would never make the trip.  A four-wheel drive vehicle was the only chance, no
matter the season.  It helped keep visitors to a minimum, which suited great-grandpa just fine.

On those 600 acres were stands of timber untouched by chainsaw for over fifty years.  Steep hills
with swift flowing streams in the valleys. Swamps that were the home to alligators and more
snakes that you could shake a stick at.  And a shallow vein of coal that no one knew about
except him.

On that tall riverside bluff he built himself a log cabin.  Not one of those simple cabins, but a
large rambling structure.  Which was pretty strange in itself, because great-grandpa Daniel lived
alone.  Most of the time.  His only trips off his land was twice yearly trips into the nearest town,
Iuka, Mississippi, to restock supplies that he could not obtain any other way.  Those trips were
short... get the supplies and get out of town.   Fast.  

Do not get the impression that great-grandpa Daniel had not see the world.  He was a veteran of
WW2.  As a Marine he hit the beaches at Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.  He was still in the
Marines, having been promoted to Master Sergeant, when he fought his way from the Chosin
Reservoir in the Korean War.  After that little 'police action', he got out of the Marines and
started looking for a place out of the line of fire.

Great-grandpa Daniel was firmly convinced that the world was going to hell in a handbasket and
it would all be over very soon.  He held that conviction for fifty years.  It turned out he was right.

Maybe great-grandpa Daniel was not so strange after all.

I never understood why he took up with me.  I was nine-years-old when I first saw the Old Man. 
My father was his grandson.  The two of them never really got along.  But once a year dad would
load up the family   mom, me, my older brother Daniel, and my older sister Willimenia   and
visit the Old Man for a week.  Great-grandpa Daniel never refused those visits.  He usually found
things to do on other parts of his property whenever we were there.

I mean my dad and mom were not very subtle about the main reason for their visits.  As the Old
Man's only living relatives they stood to inherit his 'fortune'.  The land itself was worth several
million dollars by that time.  Brother Daniel and sister Willimenia were also obvious in their
attempt to suck up to the Old Man.

Me?  Maybe I was too young to bother.  I spent the weekly visits exploring the surround
woodlands.  That's how I happened to come upon great-grandpa fishing at a creek one afternoon. 
There was a fishing pole stuck butt-first in the muddy bank and a line floated lazily on the water. 
But great-grandpa was sound asleep, a open can of beer at his side.  I sat there until he woke up
and asked me if I knew how to fish.  I guess that how our friendship started.  That and I did not
give a shit about his money.  For a nine-year-old, who thought he was probably adopted   I mean
how could I have the same genes as the rest of my family, they were all assholes   discovering a
grandfather was the bestest thing in the world.

The best days of my life were spend on the river and in the wood with him.  Once I got my
driving license my visits were pretty much when the whim took me.  He was always glad to see
me and had something new to show or tell me. 

 It was great-grandpa Daniel who payed for my college education.  My asshole of a father
figured two years at a technical school would be enough education to get me a job.  But I wanted
more and the Old Man knew that.  So he financed an education at the University of Tennessee
and later medical school at the University of Mississippi.  I had a job, sometimes two, all
through my training, but the Old Man always sent along a little something extra every couple of
weeks.  He came off his property and traveled two hundred miles, the most he had traveled in
many years, to see me receive my Doctor of Medicine degree.

After residency training I started practicing medicine at a large hospital only an hours drive from
him and made frequent visits.  I brought Jules to meet him.  As we left that time, he whispered to
me, "You've got a good, James.  Treat her right.  You hear me!?"  I could only say, "I know and
I will."

And then the Super Flu struck.  His isolation proved no protection.  He stopped answering the
phone and did not reply to the frantic emails I sent him.  I assume he was dead, but I was too
occupied trying to save lives   and failing   to go find out.  Now there were no more lives to
save.  Now I was going home.

=+=

All these memories came back to me as I stood on the side of the highway looking back at the
city where I had lived for the past four years.  An empty city, except for the dead.  A thick pall of
smoke hung over the western suburbs.  Fire would spread unchecked now.  There were no
firemen to combat it.  The stench is hard to describe.  How can you tell someone how the
decomposing bodies of almost sixty-thousand people smell? You cannot.  It has to be
experienced.        

With a last look back, I climbed into the Ford F-250 four-wheel drive pickup that I had
'liberated' off the dealer's lot and started the drive home.

End Chapter 2

More to Come


