My Grandfather

At 80 years old and about 5´ 8¨, my grandfather is my hero. Even though he is up in age and shorter than me, he is wiser and knows how to get stuff done. A hero in my eyes has knowledge, can acquire what is needed and is calm and can wait for long periods of time. My grandfather was a mechanic when he was in the army for his required time of service. He has a lot of patience when it comes to managing people and equipment, he is a very seasoned person, and he is very resourceful. My grandfather exhibits all of the criteria it takes to be a hero in my eyes.

My grandfather has many traits, but one of them is resourcefulness. He uses what is on hand unless he absolutely has to go to the store and buy it. For example, he is building a shed/workshop, so he needs poles and support beams. He is using old, wooden telephone poles and is connecting several pieces of wood planks together to form a 30 foot long board. My grandfather uses other items he already has for something else; for example, he had to put a locking mechanism on a door, so he welded together a pipe, spring, lever, and a 2 x 8 inch steel plating to create it. He will never get rid of something if he thinks that it will be useful in the future, and he has been correct several times. Also, he had saved several pieces of steel and he has had to weld them to his bush hog so it won’t fall apart because they can be very expensive to buy or repair properly. They are many more examples but these are just a few that show he is a resourceful man.

Another one of my grandfather's traits is that he is a man full of a variety of experiences.  He was born just about a year before WW2 and was drafted during the Berlin crisis. The government was making all men a certain age and higher serve unless for some reason something stopped them from going into service. When he was in the Army, he almost had to go into battle twice. Once he was on the C-30 in the middle of flying when it was called off. The second time he and several other guys were unloading the planes one after another, when the next week they were told to come back. Once he and a couple other guys had to unload a C-30 then drive the vehicles back to the base. Well it was one of the hottest days and he had to drive a 10 ton wrecker back that had 16 forward gears (those are not fun to drive in a town with a bunch of places you have to stop at). He did not have too much fun with it. He is 80 years old now and continues to do many things people in their 80s would have stopped doing by now in addition to, he raises cows to keep the tax on his land low. Taking care of the 6 to 10 cows is easy, he just has to give them feed everyday and put a bail of hay every other day in the pasture. He also has to go to livestock sales a couple times a year and buy or sell cows to meet the requirement. He has also been found climbing on top of a building with no roof (a good height of about 15 yards tall or more)  to do work or install a sheet of tin. This can be very dangerous and it is not the only thing he does that is risky. He also has me lift him up while he is sitting on the bucket of the tractor. There are more reasons as to why he is a very experienced person but these are just a few.

Another trait of my grandfather is that he has lots of patience. He does not get angered to easily when it comes to someone breaking something or something going wrong. For example, one day we were cutting down a redwood tree when the chainsaw got stuck and the tree started to twist on us so my dad had to move quickly to get out of the way and my grandfather's chainsaw broke. Also it came towards the tractor and almost hit it. He also does not get frustrated when he tries something and it does not work; for instance, one time my grandfather had to get his big blue tractor running. He tried to jump it with his truck but that did not work, so he tried a couple other ideas, then he finally just decided to start charging the battery. He is also patient when it comes to something taking longer than he plans on it. Also, we are building a shed/workshop and we have been building it since the summer of 2017. He had planned on it taking no more than 2 ½ years, or something close to that, but it’s not going to happen. These are just a couple reasons as to why he is a very patient man.

In life, heroes can be obvious or hidden, they can be old, young, tall, short. The hero could also be from the past or the I already know how to do just a different way from my grandfather and I could learn more if there was enough time for it. There is so much that you can learn from older people. It is insane, whether it is how to do something or about history. Seeing my grandfather do the things he does makes me want to do something just like it and he is that once he decides to do it he does not change his mind, nor regrets hardly anything. For me, a hero needs to be ingenious, experienced, and have a high tolerance level, and this is exactly why my grandfather is my hero.