I was 7 years old when he died.

I found out in the long skinny kitchen of a post-war track home.

My Grandmother, Tess, was sitting at the yellow top metal kitchen table,

and she was crying.

So, I cried too even though I didn’t know why I was crying but,

when Grandmothers cry they shouldn’t cry alone.

My Grandmother was the only adult I ever cried with,

that counts as love from a 7 year old.

“Donnie, come here please.”

I was Donnie back then and forever in Tess-land,

I was 20-something and married,

but for Tess, I was still Donnie,

even when she was mad, but mostly when she was,

sad.

“Clay is dead Donnie…”

I’m told I didn’t react, just looked at her.

Then…

“…um, Grandpa is dead…Donnie.”

I remember it as if it was yesterday, I still tear up writing this, it was the first time my world turned upside down…

…age 7…

…I jumped off my Grandmother’s lap, ran down the hall into Gram & Gramp’s room, jumped up on their bed…

…and smothered my face and tears on his pillow…

…somedays I can still smell it, even now.

A couple weeks later, after the wake, funeral and relatives coming by with food and sadness, my grandmother took me into her room, reached up high in her closet and brought down a green metal box….

“Here Donnie, Clay, er Grandpa wanted you to have this…”

And when I opened it there were a few fishing lures, some of which Grandpa carved himself.

I want to tell you the stories of when Grandpa took me fishing…

…at a pond at the farm in Canada where he met my Grandma…

…and at the foot of Niagara St in Buffalo, NY…

…where I caught my first fish…

…and where family lore tells of me breaking down and crying…

…while apologizing to the fish…

…for letting me catch it.

He told me he drove a “Choo-Choo Train.”

I was 5 or 6.
I don’t think so, but he did own striped bib overalls.
He told me he was part Indian.
I was 5 or 6, I asked him what parts.
He may have actually been partly Canadian First Nations.
He could pull an egg, spoon, or once a cigar out of my ear.
I was 5 or 6 and giggled when he did it.
He had big hands that he could hide lots of objects within.
He carried me on his shoulders, held me upside down, got down on all fours so I could ride him like a horse, let me sit in his lap when he drove to the store, blew up balloons for me that smelled like cigars when they popped.
I was 5 or 6.
All that is true.

Clayton Robbins was born in Cayuga, Canada in 1885, 1886, or 1890…

…depending on who was asking and for what.
My Grandmother, Theresa Long, also from Cayuga, Canada was born in June of 1897.
They married in 1923 when Gram was 26 and Clay was 33 or 38 or 39.

At some point they moved to Buffalo, NY and signed up to be American.

They had 2 girls, Helen (my mother) and Rita…who once old enough fled Buffalo to the tropics of Miami where Tess and Clay visited every winter.
(That’s Helen and Rita on a pony in front of their house in Buffalo, NY…I’m not sure which one is my mother and which one is Rita…the pony was called “Tony” and owned by the Italian guy a couple blocks over)

Clay was my first best friend.

He was there to make me laugh and to wipe away my tears.

He showed me how to play a Ukulele as badly as he played it, he was teaching me how to play poker until Grandma came into the room, he despised Hopalong Cassidy and once gave me a tomahawk to prove it until Grandma came into the room.

He only drank water if it was in beer, on the farm in Canada he never ate any meat from a farm animal he made friends with and he loved to fish in a small pond in the large pasture, mainly because Gram couldn’t see him drinking…water.