Tribute by Clyde Grammon

I was riding ahead in the "98" Olds with dad, pulling the 8'x40' Pan-American house trailer(!?!), (by the way, that rebuilt wreck, that was realy a "truck" under it's automotive skin, was another of those "unbelievable" tall stories that are, every one, TRUE).The rest of you were a few miles back, Grandma Smith driving, in the Chevy coupe with the utility trailer behind . I remember the look on Daddy's face when you didn't show up in Laramie, and the l-o-o-o-ng ride back. I remember our crushed sled symbolically being "sent", (in frustration--no doubt), over the edge with the other unsalvageables. I was to repeat that same back-tracking process years later, when Mama didn't show at the top of Cape Horn, (the week Carrol Anne and I were married). All of these were, in retrospect, Heaven's interventions. (If we only knew how MANY times the Lord had a "future" for us that trumped, in that moment, the laws of physics and nature--not for our convenience, but for His Glory! If we had a glimpse, we would tremble in WONDER.)"Can't" was not in Daddy's vocabulary. It has been both his greatest strength and weakness, to have such abilities--and to depend on them. I remember being the "apprentice" at age 9 & 10, helping Daddy build a camping trailer--from the welding of the frame up--Saturdays and many late nights, outfitting it with sleeping space for eight + a trundle bed for Lois, that later became a rolling toy box when she outgrew it. I learned how to build a lightweight but strong frame, and to "form" the masonite around all of the curves; how to form and crimp each joint in the external sheet metal. Granted, it was mostly by watching and being the "holder", but I never thought, after that, that there was anything I couldn't do. Thanks Daddy, for expecting the impossible from a little boy--somehow it's turned out for my unbelievable blessing. Amazingly, I now have a son, who not only understood and laughed at Daddy's special brand of humor as a boy, but now with that same creative genius, builds guitars and wires amplifiers and speaker systems like there was never any doubt that he could. (But he SINGS...and plays them incredibly well, too!) "To God be the glory, great things he has done!" P.S. We actually LIVED, for a month, in that 16-foot camping trailer, while waiting to take possession of the house on the farm in Wapato. Just to write it out seems to hint of insanity, now, does it not?
Clyde Grammon
Jan. 28, 2008