RED!

'RED' was one of those woefully ambiguous topics. Sure, I don't like ulta-specific topics, but any color name is just so vague. From the nearly-infinite number of choices I decided to try to draw my paternal grandfather from memory.

His real name was the same as mine and my father's but, he was always called 'Red'. This was very perplexing to me as a child because for the entire time I knew him (with the exception of the chemotherapy) his hair was snow white. It wasn't that old man yellow, it was very, very white. We would visit my paternal grandparents monthly or so until the early 80's when they switched coasts. Red was by no stretch of the imagination an unkind man, but he was very intimidating and unapproachable. He wasn't a jerk at all, I just think that he had his life and it never really had room for a new person. Plus, like my father, I don't think he really got into kids. That being said, he seemed to take great joy in having us over for dinner; it was nearly always some kind of roast which he carved and ate with relish (he also ate the fat with relish, which never failed to gross me out). Most of the memories I had of him when they lived nearby were of him watching golf and changing channels with an ancient 'clicker' with two buttons that actually went 'thunk' when pressed.

He died in 1998 of lung cancer; he never smoked, but worked as a construction foreman in the 60's and it was likely something related to asbestos. In 1995, he and my grandmother drove across country to visit me at college. We had a nice dinner and a nice talk, but he died without me having known him much. I really think he regretted that. One nice thing that did come out of Red's death was that my father and I have become friends.

So, here's Red. This is from memory and it really doesn't look much like Red. It's close, but Red really didn't look like Ted Knight's brother.