DAZE WORK: Oh, Gramps, we hardly new ye

For some reason I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandfather lately.

It’s probably due to a combination of several things. First, my sister called recently to advise that she and I have inherited four cemetery plots in Elmhurst, Ill., near where we used to live.

What should we do with them?, she asked. Neither of us plans to need a cemetery plot very soon and certainly not in suburban Chicago since she lives in Southern California and I’ve lived in Greencastle for nearly 45 years now

Talk about having to confront your own mortality.

Interestingly the four plots are part of six that my Grandpa Grassman -- Oscar by name and more familiarly Gramps to me -- had purchased for $350 in 1945. My sister has paperwork that shows he paid $10 a month for the plots in the cemetery’s veterans section, beneath a big flag and stone monument, under a mature tree and next to a nice walkway.

Why six lots? And why are he and my grandmother buried in lots four and five? In 1945 there was just my mother, an only child, and her young daughter. So you can’t really credit Gramps with planning ahead.

But all that left me thinking about Gramps and what little I really knew about him, which is sad because my grandparents literally lived two blocks away and I saw them virtually every day while growing up.

I knew he lied about his age and joined the Marines in World War I. Because he could ride a horse and spoke a little German, he rode at the front while tramp, tramp, tramp the other boys were marching.

He was gassed at the Battle of Belleau Wood and spent time in the hospital because of it. All that is secondhand information, however, since he would never talk about the war, no matter how much my seventh-grade history teacher begged.

I know he had his own wallpapering and painting business and even worked at a couple Frank Lloyd Wright homes in suburban Oak Park but lost most of his savings with the 1929 collapse. That’s why he always kept money hidden in a hollowed-out place behind a mirror at his home.

When I was growing up and attending a K-8 school in Broadview, he was building and grounds supervisor for the school district. I saw him every day at school, and he liked to call me “Professor,” I imagine because I was pretty smart back in the day.

When I became a grandfather, daughter Nicole and I discussed what I wanted to be called. Never a fan of “Papaw,” I suggested simply Grandpa. And that would have been great but little Macy (now 12) couldn’t say Grandpa early on, and it came out “Pa” instead. So Pa it has stayed.

The grandkids -- there’s grandson Mack now, too, and he’ll soon be four -- recently lost their grandfather on the other side, whom they called “Paps.” That has made we wonder even more about what they really know about me.

I’m not sure what my grandchildren know, other than I work for the newspaper (they’ve been up here to the office), am a big Cub fan (on my refrigerator I have a homemade birthday card from Macy with “Cubs fan” on it to prove it) and that I had a little West Highland Terrier dog (Chopper) that neither of them was very fond of.

Other than that, they know Greencastle for Marvin’s and the Dairy Castle, two spots we tend to frequent when they are visiting (more for their mother than for them).

Beyond that I’m not sure they know much about me at this point, although I certainly don’t have any neat stories like lying about my age to join the Marines or slapping a coat of paint on interiors designed by an architectural genius.

But then again, I do own four cemetery plots in Elmhurst, Ill., which we put on eBay as a last resort after the cemetery wouldn’t buy them back.

So I’ve got some work cut out for me. I need to reintroduce myself to my grandchildren -- hopefully before I really need one of those dang plots.