The Blue Cowboy Hat Summer
A grandfather's love touches the heart of his grandson one summer.
A funny thing happened on my way to owning a motorcycle. I learned a secret about my grandfather’s tragic loss and his hidden heartfelt love for me.
At age 14, I broke out with mini-bike fever. I dropped lots of heavy hints to my father — he really needed to get me a motorcycle.
Then Dad surprised me one evening at supper. He said, “Son, your mother and I were thinking about your motorcycle problem.”
He was? They were?
“We’ve spoken to your grandfather . . ."
Oh man, Granddaddy’s gonna buy me a motorcycle?
“. . . and he offered to let you work . . .”
Wait a minute. Did he just say “work”?
“. . . with him this summer, building a house in Sedona . . .”
Did he just say “WORK”?
“. . . and by the end of summer, you should have enough to buy a motorcycle.”
So began my summer with Granddaddy, a.k.a. Willard Hardcastle, my mother’s father — perfectionist, carpenter and, for 11 weeks, my boss. I hadn’t known him that well before, since we saw him and my grandmother only on holidays and an occasional summer weekend visit. I was about to get to know him far better than I expected.
The Monday after school finished in Phoenix, my mom drove me to Sedona, Ariz. “Out here the sun comes down through a funnel,” Granddaddy said, and we went downtown to buy a hat for me. I imagined a cool-looking Stetson.
Instead he picked out a dorky, bright blue cowboy hat, size 7, complete with a cheesy chin string. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had just bought a baby hat for a 14-year-old man. So I wore it when we were working way out in the northern Arizona woods and conveniently left it hanging on a nail in the toolshed when we received a delivery of lumber or when visitors came by to see the progress on the house.
I thought I was there to earn money for a motorcycle, but I soon discovered I was there to learn how to drive a 16-penny nail into a stud in only four strikes. I was there to learn that it’s not a good idea to haul a full gallon of paint to the top of an extension ladder. And I was there to learn about forgiveness: Granddaddy told me he liked the freshly painted beige boulders that resulted from the spilled paint.
As the summer wore on, I also learned to appreciate that the grandfather I used to think of as “a picky perfectionist” was actually just dedicated to detail. He taught me that “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,” and that “if you do it with excellence the first time, it’s a lot less expensive than if you have to come back later and change it.”
I also learned from watching my grandfather’s interactions with other people that kindness is a boomerang. The more effort you put into giving it away, the more it keeps coming back to you.
By the end of summer, I also learned that it takes hard work — lots of it — to earn enough money to buy a motorcycle. But two years later, I learned something far more important than all the other lessons Granddaddy had taught me.
My mother told me about the uncle I never knew I had. She told me that shortly after my grandparents were married, they had mourned the loss of a baby boy. Mom then let me in on a secret that only she and my grandmother had known.
She said, “The day after you came back to Phoenix, your granddaddy went back to work on the house. He walked into the toolshed and saw your blue cowboy hat hanging on a nail. He sat down on a bucket, held that hat and cried.”
He cried, partly because that summer had fulfilled a life-long dream of having a son and partly because he missed the grandson he had gotten to know so well.
To me, the secret was far more valuable than any motorcycle money could buy. I learned that love comes in a blue cowboy hat.