Grandpa was also capable of being morose fluently in Spanish (he had a doctorate in Latin American Lit, if I remember right). Actually, this poem is about me. FYI, the spelling may not be correct on this, I’m doing this the “easy” way and only transcribing ones that have already been typed. Grandpa’s chickenscratch is slightly beyond me.

Mi Nieto

Qué donaire tienes, nieto,
Qué gracia con tu abuelo,
Cómo luces en cualquer día,
Cómo de todo eres fin.

Cómo a mí me instruyes,
Cómo a mí me haces reír,
Qué amable me haces sentir,
Siempre me sabes dirigir.

A tu padre no conocí,
El tiempo no me lo dejó,
Ya que tenemos un poco de él,
Lo vivamas juntos tú y yo.

Honesto has sido conmigo,
Honrado también lo eres,
En extremo, qué coraje;
Anuncias al hombre que fueres.

¿Fue azar o mi destino
Qué me llevó a ti acá?
¿Qué milagro te engendró?
¿Qué dios a mi te envió?

So, my grandma died about a year and a half ago, my father’s mother. Grandpa Hank died… I don’t know. Ten years ago? I was in California at the time, I know that much. That’s it, my sister, my father, and I, the last of the Walker bloodline.

After months and months of hemming an hawing and storage units and crap, I finally took some initiative and took all the remnants of their lives to my house.

We’ve been going through it, slowly. I gave away the appliances, I’m trying to sort out the furniture and the boxes of completely random shit: Grandpa’s AA chits, his records, the pencils and crosswords that Grandma filled out obsessively. The strange silver dish that was the centerpiece of every Christmas, filled with plastic holly leaves and a half melted candle. A mint colored monkey statue. A wind up bear who pours himself a soda and then drinks it. Boxes of unlabeled pictures of people… my ancestors? Strangers? Who knows now.

But there was a large stack of poems. Handwritten, on yellow legal pads. The poems of my grandfather, along with the typed copies my grandmother would transcribe so he could submit them to dozens of vanity publications, poetry contests, legitimate press… All there, the madness in his head, spilled out of the page…

I am going to transcribe some, here. So it’ll live forever on the wire, my Grandfather’s horrible, depressing legacy.

And now, for the first time on the internet: Henry Marvin Walker

Bad Dream

I was fourteen and she called
Me her “Golden Boy”. I went
From triumph to triumph: Co-editor
Of the school-paper, swimmer of

Rivers and lakes, hot contender
On the tennis court. I crossed
Bridges and soared beyond without
Touching the handlebars.

I keep having this dream/memory
About a year that never was.
I could never have been that young,
That carefree, that hopeful.

When the dream recurs, I turn aside
And grit my teeth to keep from
Weeping.

I haven’t blogged about this up until now because I was hoping to give myself some distance from it, but to be honest, distance doesn’t seem to be on the agenda. So, fuck it. Here’s the raw dump.

In the end, I kicked him out. That’s the whole truth. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take watching the house fill up with useless crap and watch the abandoned projects drip oil down onto the floor. I couldn’t take hearing about how fucking busy he was. I knew it was over, I just wasn’t sure _how_ over.

I gave him a timeline, I gave him a deadline, ignored, another deadline, missed. I gave him an extension. I had tearful moments of self doubt. I waited, I cajoled, I tried to encourage, I had fucking status update meetings, but in the end, it came down to a bunch of boxes on the porch. Taking back keys, throwing shit out. It came down to three weeks of cleaning the house, countless dumpsters full of broken fax machines and AT keyboards, bins of worthless specialty cables, dozens of disassembled power supplies. It came down to staring in awe at the garbage dump my life had become. To letting my anger overpower my compassion.

And I figured it was over. He had gone back to Arizona, and it was over, right? Nobody sane would become homeless and then go on a vacation. Nobody would take that trip and then come back. Nobody would take a worthless road trip when gas is five bucks a gallon. He had to just be moving back. It made sense, I guess, to go back where he was comfortable, where he hadn’t burned through good will. But then I caught him cleaning himself in my front yard. I had doubted, until then, that he would make it, but I was wrong.

And he brought me a gift. A trinket. He asked to use the bathroom. I stared, in awe. What the fuck are you supposed to say to that? What are you supposed to do? There’s not a self help book for this sort of thing, it’s not the sort of thing people give you advice about, because who the fuck even acts like that?

And it didn’t end there. It’s an ongoing thing. The angry emaills where he insults me and then asks to be my friend all in the same breath. The presents left on the porch. It’s maddening, because I think I’ve been pretty clear in all this. The messages about the status of the house, the emails, the texts. And there’s just no number of ways I can say it to give it meaning. It’s over. Fuck you, it’s over.

Say you are a manager at a McDonalds.

A customer walks in and walks up to the front counter and asks your employee for a McTaco value meal. You think for a moment. The employee says that there is no such thing as a McTaco value meal, looking at you for confirmation. You shrug. The customer becomes irate and asks for you. You walk over and immediately apologize to the customer, and tell them it will be no problem, that employee will head straight to the back and fix up your McTaco.

What have you done? If you take a common understanding of customer relations, you have just served the customer, because they are always right. You just saved the day, because that customer saw how quickly and decisively you put your employee in their place, and got that McTaco made.

In all reality, what you have done is fucked over your only customer. As a manager, your only customer is your employee. They buy their paycheck from you with their work. Much like a Value Meal, there is more to it than just the pay. There is the benefits (the drink) and the support of his decisions (the fries). That employee is now in the back trying to dream up what a McTaco could possibly be, and resenting you, they are no longer going to work as hard for you, because you’ve already demonstrated that you’re not gonna back them up. You, in turn, are a customer of your manager, you buy your paycheck from him with your work, and the extras on your value meal are again, the support of your decision and the resources to do your job (the money you can pay your employees).

Every manager offers a paycheck, every manager offers benefits to whatever degree. What separates OK managers from GREAT managers are the fries. Nothing is a worse feeling than having a manager so desperate to prove themselves that they shit on you in the process.

And that is how I spent my Wednesday - trying to fake up a McTaco, for an irate customer, while my manager defended his actions to me by trying to explain that by making this Taco just this one time, we could prove that we _never_ make Tacos.

I installed MobilePress on here so it should now load all speedy and have better navigation on various smartphones and other mobile devices. It is apparently very ugly. I don’t know what to tell you except I love you all and respect you.

I also installed Lighter Menus which you guys will never see, but it has made the Wordpress admin area so very much nicer.

And I finally updated to WP 2.6.3, because I am lazy and slow.