When I was a little girl, Grampy lived with us.
He'd had a very hard life. During the Great Depression, he lost his wife, his job, his home, and his child. My dad went looking for him shortly after he and my mom married in 1939. Dad found him at a Soup Kitchen on Thanksgiving Day.Can you imagine your elderly grandfather standing in line for a handout on Thanksgiving?
Dad took him home to live with Mum, Dad, and Baby Sandy, who was born three weeks later.
From then on Grampy lived with us. He slept on a cot in our dining room and had a job at the Bradley Fertilizer Plant.
When Grampy came home from work in the afternoon, he'd shake the powdery dust from his shirt over our vegetable garden. Our tomatos were the size of grapefruit. 
I love this picture of Grampy and me. He always had his pipe with him (you can see it in his left hand). I wonder if he was a "lefty" like my son, Tom, my brother, Rich, and me.
For as long as I live, I'll remember our morning walks with unmitigated joy. My mother always slept late, so Grampy gave me whatever I wanted for breakfast before we started off up the road. It was always the same -- sugar water and toast slathered in butter and sprinkled with sugar. (My first tooth was pulled by the dentist at age 2.)
[photo missing] This picture was taken in North Weymouth, Massachusetts, the year before Grampy died. Every morning Grampy and I would take a walk to Boyle's store for milk, bread, (Grampy's All Bran, "little sticks," I called them) and anything else we needed.
Mr. & Mrs. Boyle and their mentally handicapped son, Ambie, ran the place.Ambie was about 40 years old. Mrs. Boyle would tell him to fetch paper bags, and Ambie would take off in a brisk trot.
Then came the best part. We went across the street to visit Grampy's friend at Chick's Bar. I'd sit on the bar eating my Walleco bar (it was something like a Peter Paul Mounds bar) and Grampy and Chick would have coffee and chat. After Grampy's death, Chick sent ice cream to our house every October 14 (my birthday until we moved away to Florida).
Grampy married my grandmother, Mabel Woodman, on 16 June 1916 in Portland, Maine. Hard times during The Great Depression caused the marriage to fail. He never remarried, but my grandmother did. Grampy and his brother, George Irwin, had the same father, but their mothers were sisters.