Pop Ware (Grandpa)

Grandma and Grandpa Ware, 1963.

Submitted photo

Some people have family connections. They might help you get into a certain college, for example, or get a job. When I was almost 5, I discovered to my happy surprise, that I, too, had connections. They came from, of all people, my grandpa. Who would have guessed a school janitor could have such pull?

Burton Bock

Now, he couldn’t jump the line to get choice tables at expensive restaurants, or wheel and deal at the country club (though he was a country boy). But one day, in early June, he did something amazing. He gave me the best gift I’d ever received in my young life.

Still wearing his work clothes, Grandpa parked his tan Studebaker, and Mom and Dad met him at the door.

As I came from my room to greet him, I heard Mom say, “I’ll bet he’d like those!”

He had a little smile on his face as he handed me something. It was a cigar box, Roi-Tan.

“Cigars?” I wondered aloud.

They all laughed.

“Open it,” Grandpa said.

Inside was something so exciting it might as well have been the discovery of the tomb of King Tut. As I lifted the lid, I saw what turned out to be more than 100 baseball cards, most from the current 1958 season, in three stacks bound with rubber bands. The three cards on top were Dick Groat, Lew Burdette and Minnie Minoso.

Dad nodded, “Those are good ones.”

Grandpa said they were doubles high school boys had given him on the last day of school when he said he had a grandson who would enjoy them.

My janitor grandpa seemed magical that day, a broom-shaking shaman. And I felt sorry for other kids who weren’t as lucky as me because they didn’t have grandpas who were janitors with the connections to get lots of free baseball cards.

Little Burt holding onto Grandpa.

Submitted photo

He was our step-grandpa on Mom’s side, but he was just “Grandpa” to us. Richard Merit Ware. Dick Ware to Grandma and the family, or Richard, a.k.a. Pop, to some. He met my widowed grandma in the early 1940s when he worked as a chef at The Eat Shop (now Katie O’Farrell’s) in Cape Girardeau. After a couple of years, they married and my schoolgirl mother, her sister and their older brother had a stepdad.

Soon my grandparents opened Merchant’s Grill across from the courthouse, a diner with red booths and bar stools.

If Grandpa had his own baseball card of life, it would show steady consistency throughout the years. His batting averages would not be particularly high or low, but he would be known for coming through in the clutch, like when two young girls and their brother needed a good stepdad, or when it was time to get up every day at 4 a.m. to go to work. His card would show him with a broom or maybe a fishing rod resting on his shoulder, and the little cartoon on the back would tell how he had many friends, and few — if any — enemies.

I just wish Grandpa was still around to read this to make him feel good. But that would make him 113, so I guess I should have written this a long time ago. Anyway, I think he knew we loved him.