it was 8.30 am and i was having my first beer and second cigar. the first beer of my life and the second cigar. both firsts and both today. I was eight years old and making the rounds in Midland with my father and his father. Not my grandfather, since I only met him once, and this was that time. At least in my memory, and that’s all I’ve got to go on now. The jacket he gave me along with the money in the pocket didn’t make it this far from Midland and the mills and mines of the Valley of Steel.

Uncle Ray never had a beer in the house, though he would drink in the garage or at the barbeque or on the boat. He used to say that “Your granddad drank enough for the whole family. He drank so we wouldn’t have to.” and then laugh. I now take that as if it had been the rallying cry of some ancient tribe describing their fight against or for something grand. “We fight so that our sons don’t have to.” As if we all fight dragons or such. The Pirates From Scotland, landed in Pittsburgh.

I don’t recall his name, he was granddad. In midland he could walk the town and say something to everyone we passed. He knew them, he knew their name, and seemed delighted to introduce me to everyone. ” This is Maddie’s boy” as though I’d been a virgin birth. Praise Jesus. I walked on Main street.

Dad had brought me to visit granddad on our way to Germany. I summoned all my second grade knowledge to understand the visit, but I never did. Even now, when I have the imagination, I don’t have the images. My recollection is a collection of partial recollections. Like the work of Midland. Mills are expanses of dark space that can stretch for mile long buildings with a chest crushing sound from one end, near the forge and furnace. It is at that bright loud end the steel pours and is beat into shape by people like my granddad. The little scotts that worked the mines and then the mills. They made many rich. Journal rich, not just Times rich. They likely thought themselves simple, and blessed to have work.

And on that day it seemed to me to be the best world, the best way of life, this one of men with cigars and bars. Able to talk loudly, grin wide and give away jackets and money to family. To them everyone in the mill or mine was family. To walk along the mill that ran forever along the river. It shrieked and pounded always, day and night. All that under the control of men like my granddad, dead just two years later.

[Maudlin’s boy]