As I rushed into the house, sweaty from an afternoon riding my bike around the neighborhood, I was thinking about supper.  Good smells wafted through the large kitchen that made up almost half of the tiny, narrow house we called home, and Mom was putting the finishing touches on our evening meal.  A freshly made pitcher of iced tea was on the table, where Dad sat thumbing through the day’s mail.
After his shift as a car repairman at the railroad yards, Dad always came home ravenous, a fact he usually announced loudly – and often crudely - as he came through the door.  So supper was always served promptly after his arrival around 4 o’clock.  It was the one time of day when we all – Mom, Dad, my sister, and I – sat down together and talked, although dinner-table conversation, frankly, was not very elevated at our house and rarely very interesting. 
At some point during the meal, Dad announced, without explanation, that we would be taking a trip to our grandparents’ home.  I was delighted at the news.  Summer was nearing its end, and we had already made our annual northwoods fishing trip.  This would be a bonus vacation before school started again.  My sister, who had just turned 12 and was four years my senior, was somewhat less excited.  She would probably have preferred to stay home with her friends, and neither she nor Mom looked forward to the lack of city comforts – like indoor plumbing – at our grandparents’ home in the country. 
Preparations for the road trip began the next morning.  Dad went off to work earlier than usual, seeking permission for this unanticipated time off, while Mom did the packing.  She packed lightly, just a small suitcase and some clothes on wire hangers that would travel suspended on a bar that stretched across the back seat of the car.  My sister and I were each given a quarter and directed to the corner drugstore to buy reading material for the road; I came back with five comic books, my sister with a magazine.  Mom put together a basket filled with fresh fruit and store-bought cookies and a bag of hard candies to suck on. 
Once Dad got home, we were all ready to load our blunt-nosed, blue ’51 Ford and hit the road for the 200-mile journey south.  We timed our departure to arrive in late afternoon.  We would have our dinner at a café in one of the small towns near our grandparents’ place (our favorite spot was called the Sugar Bowl).  That way when we finally reached our destination we would already have eaten, and Grandma wouldn’t need to prepare anything for us.
Grandma & Grandpa lived in a rural hamlet called Bellair.  They were both born there, they raised their four children there, and except for a few years when Grandpa took a job in another small town near St. Louis, they had lived their entire lives there.  Bellair was just five hours away from our place by road, but it might as well have been in another universe.  It was vastly different from the gritty, inner-city, working-class neighborhood where we lived, and for me, it held a promise of adventure that rarely went unfulfilled.   
Bellair was nestled amid cornfields and family farms on the Illinois flatlands where tall prairie grasses once grew.  It consisted of a mere handful of houses occupied mostly by folks with a long history in the place.  Town life centered around the general store, the only remaining business; a two-room schoolhouse; and two churches, the Church of Christ, which was favored by our family, and the Evangelical United Brethren.  Its population was certainly less than 100, although it had been somewhat bigger in its heyday.  The streets were unpaved.  Indeed, the signal that we were getting close to Bellair always came when Dad turned off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road.  There were no signs to guide us, but Dad had a native’s knowledge of the area, and we would kick up clouds of dust as we rambled past fields and farmhouses and over the creaky bridge that spanned the North Fork of the Embarras River.
My grandparents’ house was a two-story affair with an expansive porch that wrapped around three sides and featured a hanging two-seater swing in front.  A heavy overstuffed sofa with doilies on the arms and back dominated the living room.  Family photos decorated the wallpaper-covered walls, and a collection of curios was displayed on a small table.  My favorites were a stuffed alligator brought back from Florida by my aunt and a satin embroidered pillow my uncle had picked up during the war in the Pacific.  In the kitchen, a small hand pump, the only plumbing fixture in the house, brought water from the well outside.  Upstairs were the bedrooms.  The beds were covered with hand-made quilts and blankets (and luxurious feather comforters in the winter); chamber pots were stored beneath the beds.  Dozens of yellowed dime novels were piled in a corner of one room, and mason jars of preserved fruits and vegetables lined a wall of shelves.
Out back stood a leaky, rundown garage filled with tools Grandpa had collected over the years.  He fancied himself a handyman, and his puttering about in the garage kept him out of Grandma’s hair.  The walls and benches were covered with all sorts of clocks, which he loved to take apart and repair.  Cuckoo clocks were especially plentiful, and at the top of the hour they all called out, although each had its own unique notion of when the moment for crowing had arrived.  Further back in the yard was a fenced enclosure containing a chicken house, the inside walls of which were decorated with pictures of 1940s-era pinup girls.  Between the chicken coop and the garage stood the outhouse, a vintage “two-holer.”  Legend has it that the bench had been lined with rabbit skins in the winter to protect the dainty behinds of my two aunts when they were girls.
Grandma Clara was a tall, slender woman who had loved to lose herself on long walks in the fields when she was a girl.  Her hair was gray, tinged with a dirty yellow color as if it were stained by nicotine.  Often she wore it braided and wrapped around the top of her head like some sort of soft tiara.  She was a kind and tolerant woman, quietly religious but not pushy about it.  The everyday difficulties of life for a rural housewife of her time had toughened her.  She didn’t flinch when chopping the head off a chicken.  Yet when I dropped the basket of eggs collected for breakfast, she gently consoled me rather than scolding me.  All her children, including my father, had abandoned their rural roots to find jobs and build families in distant places, and now, having reached 65 years, her life was less hectic, but its pattern was much the same, and she carried on with the daily chores as before.
Grandpa Roscoe was of average height for his generation and somewhat portly by the time I knew him.  He always dressed in rumpled khaki work clothes that he loyally ordered from the “Monkey Ward” catalog.  Suspenders held up his trousers, and his feet were covered with scuffed brown oxfords and skimpy socks that revealed a swath of thick, ghostly white calf when he sat down.  His middle initial was “W,” and he loved to explain that “it don’t stand for nuthin’,” and therefore didn’t require a period after it.  Grandpa never had a real career, but he had had lots of jobs, working in the oil fields, as a filling station attendant, a blacksmith, a mechanic, and in factories and farm fields.  For a time he had even served the town as postmaster.  When I was very young, he would hoist me onto his knee and draw pictures of nondescript four-legged creatures with X’s where their eyes should be – “cross-eyed bulls” he called them.  But behind the joviality was also a mean streak which revealed itself as a quick temper that Clara knew all too well.
A few houses down the road lived Great Grandma Jessie, who had been called Perniny (after her middle name Pernina) by her peers, none of whom now survived.  She and Great Grandpa George, who had died long before my birth, raised their children, including Roscoe, in a simple, two-room frame house that had withstood some 75 years of weather without ever having been painted.  Jessie’s square face featured hollow cheeks and was framed by gray hair parted down the center.  She was tiny, painfully thin, and perpetually clad in dark-colored house dresses that hung almost to her ankles.  Her reed-like voice wasn’t often heard, but she was the family’s recognized matriarch and held its record for personal longevity.
Our drive to Bellair that sultry August afternoon was long and hot but otherwise uneventful.  After a stop for burgers at the Sugar Bowl, we finally made that long-awaited turn onto the old dusty road, eliciting a happy cheer from me and my sister.  Soon we pulled into the drive next to that familiar old house, and Dad blared the horn to announce our arrival.  Grandma and Grandpa were already in the yard, huge smiles on their faces, as we tumbled out of the Ford.  After the obligatory hugs, I dashed off to have a look at the chickens.  Mom and my sister glared at the outhouse, happy to have taken advantage of the bathroom at the restaurant. 
It was still light this late summer evening, so the adults made a circle of lawn chairs and sat in the backyard chatting.  Great Grandma arrived shortly to join us.  My sister and I wandered about the yard on our own separate paths.  She walked over to the well, eyeing the large metal tub we would have to use for bathing if we stayed for very long.  I admired some butterflies flitting about the garden and checked the tree trunks for cicadas, which were calling loudly.  Other insects – biting mosquitoes – soon intervened, and we all retreated indoors.
Once inside, Grandpa showed off his newest possession, the family’s very first television set.  Conversation from then on seemed to center on antenna placement, knob adjustment, favorite TV programs, and other boring subjects.  My sister climbed into a rocking chair and rocked herself to sleep.  After a brief inspection of the downstairs, during which I blew the dust off the stuffed alligator, I curled up on the floor.  Soon Mom roused us both and hustled us upstairs to bed.
Later that night I was awakened by the sound of Mom’s voice in the next room.  She had come to fetch my sister and was excitedly inquiring about girl scout first aid lessons.  I jumped out of bed and followed them down the stairs.  There we found all the lights on and Grandma standing in her nightgown in the doorway of her bedroom, a terrified look on her face.  Dad was inside standing over the bed, furiously pounding on Grandpa’s chest, yelling:  “come on, Dad….come on, Dad.”
Eventually he realized that his efforts were having no effect, and Dad knelt down next to the bed and embraced Grandpa.  Then he walked over to Grandma and whispered:  “Mom, he’s gone.”  Grandma ran across the room, opened the front door, and called out into the night air.  Within minutes, the room was full of neighbors in their night clothes and slippers, all anxious to help.  But it was too late.  Grandpa was dead.
It was the first time that we as a family had had to deal with a death, and I doubt that I comprehended very much that night.  In any event, I was quickly sent back to bed, and I managed to fall back asleep.  The next morning I went downstairs and wandered into the kitchen thinking about breakfast.  I was confronted instead with my grandfather’s naked body, all bluish pale and waxy, lying on the kitchen counter being washed by some neighbor ladies.  That shocking image triggered for me the first realization that the events of the previous night represented a major turning point in our lives.
The next few days were filled with activity.  Dad busied himself notifying family and friends and making arrangements with the funeral home and church.  Streams of people came to console Grandma, many bringing food and flowers.  My assigned responsibility was simply to keep out of the way.  One day we all went into town to buy new clothes to wear to the funeral. 
Mom and Dad and Grandma had so much to do that there was little time for outward grieving.  On the day of the funeral, after the casket had been loaded into the hearse, Mom, Dad, my sister, and I got into the Ford for the procession to the church service.  It was the first time the four of us had been alone together since the trip down.  Finally it all crashed down on Dad, and he broke down and sobbed while sitting behind the steering wheel.  It was the first time I had ever seen him cry. 
After services at church and cemetery, the ladies of the community served a meal for all at the schoolhouse.  My aunts and uncles, cousins and other relatives had all arrived over the last several days, making the event more festive and less somber.  After the funeral, we stayed around a few more days to look after Grandma.  The time soon came, however, when we had to leave her to adjust to her new life, with the help of nearby family and friends.  We piled into the car, said our tearful goodbyes, and headed home to get on with our own lives.  Trips to Bellair were fewer after that and never quite the same.
It was decades later that I finally discovered what had prompted that fateful trip.  I came across a letter my grandfather had written to my father.  Scrawled in pencil and full of misspellings and poor grammar, it went on for some time with reports of trivial family news and then got to the point:

Well here it comes, hold on to your hat.  I am down to my last five Dollars and need a little cash to carry us over till we get our Social Security checks, it will be about a month before we get them I guess.  Now if you haven’t got it to spare say so and I will try to get it someplace else but either way let me know by return mail if you will.  I thot I would have enough money to run us but I had some extra expense so it run me short.

The Social Security check referred to by my grandfather was to have been his first collection from the government pension plan.  It finally arrived several days after his funeral.  It was returned to the government uncashed.

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