A pepper

Funny how some days I can write two or three posts one right after another and other days I have nothing.  That is how I felt today, until I reached into my coat pocket and got out a Brach's Starbrite Peppermint that I snatched from Grandma Great's stash in her room at the nursing home over lunch.

The second I put it in my mouth, I had an instant flashback of my Grandpa K.  It's the smell/taste, I think, but immediately I could smell my grandpa...which is kind of funny because my brother and I used to always say he smelled like petroleum products of some kind or another.  The man used lighter fluid, diesel, gasoline, oil or grease for just about anything..sort of how a woman uses vinegar or baking soda for several purposes inside the home.

Seriously though, I could have went to him for help with just about anything and his solution would be the same. He would have taken me straight to that white metal cabinet in the basement near the kitchen area and grabbed the lighter fluid, the kind in the blue and yellow metal container.  The man had some sort of petroleum product (as I always called it) on him 24/7.  He should've worn a label that said, "Flammable.  Keep away from flame."

Whenever I would help him outside with the tractor, lawnmower, or whatever, no matter what was involved, he would have grease or fuel all over him.  I'm not sure how my grandma tolerated washing his nasty clothes all the time, but I do recall that she always had Borax in her laundry cabinet...and some lighter fluid (because she, too, used lighter fluid for stains).

Back to the peppers, if you knew my grandpa at all, you knew that he always, and I mean always, had a pocketful of peppermints, or "peppers" as he would say.  He was known for it.  At basketball games he would sit in his chair, along with the other fellas in his 'crew' right inside the door, and as you passed, he would hand you a pepper if you stuck your hand out.  It's a wonder he wasn't nicknamed, "Pepper."

In our family, there is no peppermint like the Brach's Starbrite Mint.  Do not even bother trying to slip a generic pepper past us.  They are not even close to the 'real thing.'  We have learned the hard way that there is no comparison and Brach's are worth the extra money.

At my grandpa's funeral many years ago, I slipped a pepper into his hand.  My guess is that a lot of people that went through the line that night had a chuckle when they saw that mint in his hand.  I think grandpa would've liked that.  It just seemed right, you know...