The Ides of March

Today was my grandfather's birthday. Had he not died at the age of eighty, he would have been ninety-three today. I will shortly raise a glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in his honor -- it was his favorite.

He was a welder, and eventually the owner of a body shop and service station catering to long-haul trucks down in Knoxville. He was the kind of man who would, and more than once did, disarm a man of a knife or a gun with his own bare hands. Oh, he had a gun -- never until he was very old was he without one. He just didn't feel the need to resort to it.

His given names were "Jackson Theodore," which tells you enough to know that my politics are honestly inherited. He didn't go by that mouthful. The world knew him as "Jack T." My father, even when he was fifty years old, still called him "Daddy" when he talked about him. He called him "Sir" when he talked to him.

You all know by now that I wear his Stetson a great deal of the time. It's a big old thing, in a color called "Silver belly" by the folks at JB Stetson Hats. [UPDATE: Yeah, that hat.] Almost everything I know about being a man I learned from him. Much of that was filtered through the stories of my father.

It's a fine day, the ides of March. Once it saw the end of a tyrant; once, the birth of a brave, free man. I hear a few other things have happened too: but surely that is enough for any day.