Ted Rodgers was my grandfather.  He passed away this week.  I wanted to tell you a slightly condensed version of who my grandfather was,  how he lived and how he effected my life.
Ted was funny.  He was funny in the strangest way I’ve ever seen.  I learned everything I know about humor from Ted.  He had an easy way of making people laugh and then he seemed surprised by it.  It didn’t matter in what setting or situation, Ted was going to get a laugh.  It never failed.  He was king of the miss-hear.  He would always miss-hear what you said in order to say what he wanted.  It was always funny and sometimes a little dirty.  If you asked Ted anything you would get a good story.  For instance,  as teenagers, we grandkids asked him how he met our grandmother.  The story he told us differed greatly from grandmother’s story but here it is nevertheless.
As a young man just back from the war, he and a partner ran a speak easy out in the country just east of the town Ted lived in.  The place was called The Log Cabin.  One of Ted’s jobs was to supply the liquor.  One of his suppliers for moonshine was in a small town about fifteen miles from the bar.  Ted would use dirt roads to remain undetected from the law.  He was making a moonshine run driving along in the morning sun admiring this cotton field just whistling as he drove.  As he looked over the field he saw this butt sticking out above the cotton plants.  He said it was the most perfect butt he had ever seen.  He decided at that moment that he would marry that butt.  He didn’t care what else was attached to it.  It was a good thing that my grandmother was what was attached.
Ted told us he was known by the ladies around his home town when he was a young bachelor as Ready Teddy.  One of the things you could count on Ready Teddy to do if you brought a girlfriend around him was to snuggle up to her and tell her stories.  It didn’t take him long to have your girlfriend laughing and giggling and sometimes blushing.  He did these things effortlessly.  He made people comfortable around him with his charm and easy going style.  I’ve always believed he was really called Ready Teddy.  I’ve witnessed him work his groove in line at the grocery store, at Walmart, at the bait shop.  It didn’t matter.   He was going to get a laugh and a smile and leave that person feeling a little better about things.  He was forever faithful and committed to  my grandmother until the day he died but he could never resist turning on the charm when the opportunity presented itself.  That’s who he was.  He never deviated.
Another one of Ted’s personaes was being the guy that didn’t understand the simplest things, or the guy that couldn’t see or hear very well.  I’ve personally saw this so many times it makes me laugh just typing it.  An example of this would be when we spent two weeks camping and fishing on lake Eufaula in the spring or hunting in Kansas in the winter, or just about any holiday where we got together and played poker.  Ted would adjust his glasses and misunderstand the rules.  He always acted like he didn’t know what hand would beat another.  He didn’t know what he had.  He couldn’t see what suit he was holding.  He didn’t hear the bet.  He would keep this up until you realized that he had all your money in his stack.  It was always great fun to play with a new player that didn’t know Ted’s tricks.  They never knew what hit them until they dug into their wallet for the third or fourth time and it was Ted who was breaking their big bills for them.  I loved it when they would realize that Ted was changing their big bills with the smaller bills they had lost to him.  All of them had the same look.  The look of a guy who has been abused and has laughed about it the whole time without knowing it.  Priceless.
Ted was my grandfather and he’s gone now.  I’m not.  I employ many of Ted’s mannerisms and machinations every day of my life.  I strive to be the guy he was.  I watched him closely during his life.  A lot of us did.  I want to be like Ted.  I want to be a guy totally comfortable with who he is.  A guy who can get a laugh.  A guy who you want to tell you a story.  A guy who makes life long friends at the drop of a hat.  One of the true good guys.  Yes he’s gone.  As long as I breathe he will not be forgotten.