Retrospective

As the night closes in on March 3, my mind wanders to a face I’ve missed so much – particularly in recent years.

It is hard for me to believe that nine years ago this evening, I lost one of the most special people in my life suddenly, without warning. I guess that isn’t exactly true. He did warn me once.

One night as I sat on the old, cream and green floral couch at my grandparents’ home in Fort Wayne watching Jeopardy, my grandfather poked me in the shoulder, tipped his head sideways peeping over his bifocals and said in almost a whisper, “You know, I’m gonna kick the bucket one day.” Tears filled my eyes and I got angry with him and said, “Don’t say things like that. You’re fine.” He wasn’t fine really, but I didn’t know that and it was probably better that way. We went on to have a few more good years, my grandfather and I.

James Blackie Main, born in Paisley, Scotland, grew up during the war in Europe. He was rationed, his town was bombed and at a very young age, too young to fight in the war, he was sent to work in dangerous mines. Despite was must have been horrific, he enjoyed telling me stories about what it was like growing up in Scotland during the war. Two stories stand out as favorites: the time he fell in a hole in an open field (where he had been warned not to go) and found himself looking at a bomb that for some reason had not detonated. Remember those cartoons that show legs that look like spinning wheels beneath the body? He alleged that is what he looked like as he was running in the opposite direction. The other story that I’ll never forget was the one where he was supposed to have gone to work in the mines one evening and just had the nagging feeling he didn’t want to be there. His mother insisted he go – that it was his duty to work in the mines for the war effort. Somehow, he convinced her to let him stay home. That night, the mine caved in and several of his fellow workers were killed. Had he gone in there, he would have likely been killed and what came after would never have transpired.

An engineer by trade, the kind that drew intricate drawings and carefully lettered across large sheets of paper, he came to America in search of a better life for his family. I asked him once why he came here – only knowing a cousin in Fort Wayne and having no idea what to expect here. He said it was because he was tired of the rain in Scotland. The might be partly true, I suppose.

He raised two daughters in a modest post-war era home in Fort Wayne. He was an avid reader, a great historian and wrote the most witty and wonderful poems and stories. He wrote sharp editorials. At one point in time, for a publication I was working for at the time, he wrote the most excellent food critic reviews of his various haunts in Fort Wayne. In reading over them a few years ago, it occurs to me how little they were about the restaurants or the food, but more about social commentary. He taught me various things – drafting with pencils and rulers, how to use a micrometer, how to properly read the poetry of Robert Burns, pride in our heritage and to better understand British humor. He made the best “chooky eggs,” drove with a lead foot, always had a secret stash of DeBrand’s Chocolates and could answer any question on any game show with enough accuracy and speed that the contests on the show looked like idiots. When I smell freshly cut grass and a certain type of after shave, I think of him. I also think of him in the fall when DeBrand’s sells chocolate covered caramel apples – he loved those.

He was one of two people I always called first to share good news with and whose opinions mattered most. I think he would be tickled to see how we all turned out with so many years passed now.

I remember looking at him through tears the night he died and thinking what a tragedy it was for such a brilliant mind to have gone silent, for those amazing wheels to no longer be turning. I hope I can build even a portion of the vast knowledge he had, to think the craftiest thoughts and to have his wit.

And, I hope some day my grandchildren might look at me with even half of the adoration I had and still have for him.

Photos: At top right, my grandfather looking rather dapper as he walked down the street of his hometown in Paisley, Scotland, before moving the the US in the 1950s. This is my all-time favorite photo of him. At right, below, Grandpa proudly holding his first grandchild - me - on his lap in 1977.

Jennifer Zartman Romano