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I have few recollections of my paternal grandfather, J.B. Stilwell. My grandparents already seemed so old when I was a wee lass. Pardon me. I just dove into my Ancestry DNA origins page. I’m more Scottish than any other heritage, so I’m channeling the words of my people. Was that too feeble of an attempt at humor? The crickets in the background agree. Anyway, whether they were old in age or simply old-fashioned in their habits, probably a bit of both, I didn’t interact with them as often as I did with my mom’s parents. Still, I recall my Gramp dressed to the nines all of the time. He operated a barber shop in the parlor of his modest Wilmer, TX bungalow. There’s nothing like the smell of a barbershop. Give me a whiff of 3 Roses Hair Tonic, some “mixed on the spot” shaving cream, and a bit of Brut aftershave and I will go on for hours about this legend of a man. He wore a barber smock each day: pristine white, zipper up the front, embroidered flowers down the lapels. I recall the white color was blinding. Granny Stilwell once told me she never used bleach, just lemon juice and sunlight. I still live by those words. There he would stand with his horn-rimmed black glasses and his perpetual perfectly trimmed flattop haircut, sporting a crooked smile and a twinkle in his eye. My memory has trouble differentiating between Gramp recollections and those of my own father. That is how closely they resembled each other. Now, my grandparents had 5 children. Many of those children had 5 or more children. I was one of many grandkids. My privilege existed in the fact that I was the youngest granddaughter. Also, there was the fact of my eyes. They are, what is still recognized as the primary family trait, Stilwell eyes – dark brown, heavily browed, and slightly downturned at the edges. This was a fact never unmentioned by Gramp. If we visited on Sundays, he’d be in dress slacks and glossy black wing tip shoes, even though church was never his thing. He wouldn’t so much as step off of his porch without his signature Fedora. He’d get in the floor with me and act like a bear, making growling noises and swiping at me with his “gramp-paw”. I would shriek with laughter and he would sit back on his knees and laugh with me. As his Alzheimer’s took hold, the bear game stuck with us until the end. I was seventeen when he passed away. I remember thinking how ironic it was that all his late-in-life speech attempts sounded like his sweet, cuddly bear alter-ego. That sums up all I knew about this adorable old guy. It’s funny how we don’t realize that our elders had lives and adventures and tragedies of their own, that we are only chapters of a much larger story.