Story

It's Friday, it's beautiful outside and it's time to write on the Five Minute Friday word prompt story.


My grandpa was a storyteller. Lest you envision a grandpa on a rocking chair in front of the fire with a wee one on his lap, my grandpa would peck out his stories on the typewriter in his den. He had four grandchildren and for a number of our childhood years, he would create a story at the holidays, primarily Thanksgiving and Christmas with an odd Easter thrown in. The stories would feature some combination of the four of us and were a special delight to receive . They are packed away right now, but I'm inspired to pull them out and enjoy the priceless heirloom of his typed words.

My grandpa was born in Wales and grew up in a tight-knit mining community in Pennsylvania. He wrote a memoir about driving mules in the Nottingham coal mines. My brother served as coauthor on the memoir. I'm not sure it was ever published beyond family distribution, but it was a window into the early years of his life and important to understanding that part of our heritage. In his retirement, Grandpa would write and submit stories to Good Old Days magazine and to his joy, had some published.

You wouldn't necessarily expect my grandpa to be a storyteller. His career path included coal mining, restaurant management and retail sales. But he understood something I'm realizing more each day -- your life is your story and everyone has a story to tell. These stories, our lives, are the best stories ever and can be shared over a meal, on a walk, in a book or on a screen. Grandpa has been gone for close to 20 years, but I like to think that if he were around, he'd have his own blog. Or else he'd still be back in the den, pecking away.