In January 2010, the poster known as Will Someone Feed the Cat issued a metals open call, all posts, whether poetry, fiction or personal narrative, to be on metals or a metal of the poster's choice.  Many great posts resulted from that call which were read and acknowledged by an author friend of WSFTC's, who later selected his favorites.

This was my entry in that open call, a post about my grandfather who lived next door, entitled "Copper." It received honorable mention as one of the runners-up in Cat's call.  I think it captures my grandfather well.  I'm reposting it here in tribute to his memory:

The original post can be found here:  Copper - Kathy Riordan

More posts from the metals open call can be found here:  Metals Open Call (Will Someone Feed the Cat)

My personal favorite of all the entries in the metals open call was a poem by scupper, which can be found here:  One Silver Vandoren Optimum Ligature - scupper 

Grandpa was the first person I knew who kept a gallon jug of Tabasco on his kitchen table, checkerboard oilcloth tablecloth pushed up against the wall, painted bright yellow, and if you turned your gaze to the east you saw the copper sunrise over the Wind River mountains from a perch by the kitchen sink.

Grandma was gone since third grade, a horrible time, a horrible thing.  Becky lived with us for a while, their youngest of ten, my dad's youngest sister, just a year older but in the same grade, but then she went back next door to live with Grandpa.  Her dad.

It was a spelunking thing, I figure, going into Grandpa's house.  Spelunking.  I didn't know what archeology was yet.  Or anthropology.  Or even geology, really, but Grandpa was into all three, and knew his stuff.  No, to me it was just a big deep secret cave, his house next door.  A big cave.  And when you first walked in, there was every National Geographic ever published.  We'd sneak over there to look at the pictures of natives in various states of undress to get our prepubescent education.  Books everywhere.  Every Zane Grey novel ever written.   Deep bowls of popcorn, and Spanish peanuts, and red licorice, there for the taking.

Adele Davis books on the shelf.

In the bedroom, a cigar box, filled with rattler buttons, cut off rattlesnakes Grandpa had shot over the years in the sagebrush.  Another, filled with arrowheads he'd found.  Geodes on the bookshelves.  Fossils.  All dusted in dust.  

Grandpa wore a copper bracelet, but I never knew why, never put the Adele Davis books and the wrist together, never figured that out until later.

But copper he had, to ward off whatever.

*******

It was a big mine, a big open pit mine.  The world's largest excavation open-pit mine.  Kennecott.  The lights at night from the city, wondering who worked there, who toiled in the mine to bring home pennies.

Kennecott.

After my mother was widowed and moved to the city we could see it from her house, at night, and point off those miles in the distance, still wondering.

The copper made the pennies that bought the candy.  That's all I knew.  The kind of pennies Grandpa gave us.  The kind of candy Grandpa had.

*******

Across a country, a man toiled to put bring pennies home to his own table, and those pennies bought stock.  Stock in Kennecott.  The big open-pit copper mine a world away.

Where men toiled.  Men like my Grandpa, those before him, those after, men of the soil, and the land, who knew the value of a penny.  And the love a penny could give.

*******

The man made windows, and gave them to his bride, to see out into a world.  A world of arrowheads, and rattlesnakes, and sunrises.  Topped with a copper roof.  Bought with pennies that came from the stock, stock that came from the people who made the copper that made the pennies.

A copper bracelet. 

for grandpa 

Harold Elmer (Hal) Lawrence

March 1, 1911-November 25, 1987 

Grandpa loved Tabasco, and Zane Grey novels, and National Geographic, and things from the earth.  And wore a copper bracelet.