Weekend Write-In Story Collection

Grandfather

In 1,000 words, tell a tale that incorporates these themes: paper, celebration, skyward. Written for the Weekend Write-In prompt themed "Paper". 14 - 16 August 2015

Warm thoughts of my grandfather...

Frank S Walsh

In 1955, for my eleventh birthday, my grandfather gave me a cigar box part-filled with old coins.

Looking back now on that gift, sixty years later, I see myself as a young boy so overjoyed with the coins that I ignored what else was in the wrapped present. I see myself as a child who didn't understand what Grandfather was saying. Grandfather was patient. He had earned his patience.

Frank S Walsh, no period after the S thank you, the middle name is S as in S. No, the S doesn't stand for anything; it's the middle name I was christened with. He had a lifetime of this, ninety-nine and three-quarter years of it. His patience continued after he had lost all of his shirts in the fallout of the 1929 market crash. Through the 1920s, he had owned and operated the men's clothier and haberdashery in downtown Moncton. He had foolishly listened to a flamboyant client and invested in the market.

With his Irish tenacity, he clawed back through the early thirties, buying and selling second-hand goods. He liked the second-hand business and set-up a store in a rented building on Lewis Street, in the heart of the slums. He was patient. By 1937 he was driving a Packard again and had put my father through a science degree at Saint-FX and a post-graduate degree in Agricultural Sciences at Guelph.

Grandfather was patient as he watched his eldest, my father throw his education over his shoulder, go into debt to buy a hundred-forty-foot Lunenburg schooner and head off tramp sailing down the coast to the Caribbean and back, taking what loads there were to determine his next port. He knew his son would settle down. Grandfather was patient.

He was patient as he watched the Canadian Government take my father and his ship in secondment into the Merchant Marine early in the Battle of the Atlantic. He was patient as he read reports of U-boat sightings and ship sinkings in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and listened to his son's harrowing tales of shilling as a fishing schooner while transporting munitions for the convoys. I was conceived aboard, mid-war.

When I first consciously met Grandfather, he was still running the store on Lewis Street. The main floor was sagging toward the mud-floored basement and he had stopped using anything but the peripheries of the upper floor. That would be 1946 or 47, when I was two or three. He was patient, and just before his store collapsed on itself, an older, but much better building became available on Main Street. He moved, rebranded to antiques.

Grandfather was extremely patient as my overly zealous grandmother sent their second daughter to a convent and their second son to the seminary. Grandfather had learned not to question her. He was extremely patient.

I studied the coins in the cigar box, tried to organise them into some logical order, started conjuring stories for the ones I couldn't identify, which was all of them. Grandfather knew I was interested in coins by the way I always closely examined any that came to hand. But these were different. Not like any I had seen.

Grandfather's patience was rewarded when I asked him about the coins. He pointed to the book that was undisturbed in the wrappings. I picked it up and read the title: Catalogue of Canadian Coins, Tokens & Fractional Currency by J.E. Charlton. I opened it and paged quickly forward, amazed by all the illustrations. He picked up a coin, a copper token actually, and turning a few pages in the book, pointed at a drawing. I was hooked. Captivated.

I was so proud when I walked to his store a few days later and told him I had identified every piece in the cigar box, and that I had read the catalogue several times through. He was patient as I explained that just because a coin is old, doesn't mean it's valuable. Newer coins can be much more scarce and worth much more.

I asked if I could go through the coins in the cash register till. He was patient as I combed through, but more surprised that I had found several valuable keepers and showed him their values in the catalogue. I had no money to buy my selected pieces, so I asked him to keep them while I found a way to pay. He patiently gave me chores in the store, tidying and cleaning.

When I had finished, he pulled some rolls from the vault and suggested I look through them. I had never seen rolled coins before and he patiently showed me how to unroll and then re-roll them without damaging the wrappers. I found many more 'keepers' in the rolls and was really hooked.

I asked him what I could do to make money to afford to collect these coins. He suggested I go to the Transcript office to see if they need a paperboy; suggested delivering papers is a good healthy way to earn pocket change while learning responsibility and getting fresh air and exercise.

I started small, but within three years I was delivering the Times on my way to school in the mornings, delivering the Transcript on my way home and delivering the Star Weekly on Saturdays. I spent my school lunch hours in the banks with peanut-butter sandwiches, searching through rolls.

I bought my first car when I was sixteen. I patiently collected through my Air Force and Navy career and on the side, made my first million in my mid-thirties, when a million was still worth something.

I resigned my commission and set-up as a coin dealer and a wine importer. The wine for the enjoyment of its lifestyle, the coins to finance it. I began volunteering, served as President of the Canadian Numismatic Dealers Association and of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association, all because of a patient grandfather and some paper routes.

Whenever I look skyward, I think of Grandfather and celebrate his patient wisdom.