Grandpa Fred

            There is a family secret about great Grandpa Fred, and it makes me wonder about the world we live in. He made his money back in the Great Depression and days of prohibition as a bootlegger, and God knows what else. He owned the pool hall just off highway 36 in my hometown of Washington, Kansas, and I’ve still got a marked domino to prove it. Man, he made a lot of money! He invested it some of in Dow Corning and Simon and Schuster, but he blew most of it on wine, women, and song.
           My Grandpa Dean ran that same pool hall after great Grandpa blew his money and his mind. But sometime in the fifties, Grandpa gave it up after Grandma said, “It’s that pool hall or me.” And when all that Dow Corning and Simon and Schuster money came down to Grandpa, he turned it all down saying, “I saw what it did to Dad.”
            As for me, I still remember the biggest house in town where they all lived, the same house where I took baths in the same bathtub where the rich doctor shot himself because he had Parkinson’s disease…and now it’s all gone except for the tales and the mysteries.