My grandfather, Edward Grady Partin, was a big man with a small part in history. FBI reports say that one year before President Kennedy was assassinated, he and Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa plotted to kill the president’s little brother, US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy by tossing plastic explosives tossed into his family’s home or by recruiting a sniper with a rifle and long-distance scope to shoot him as he rode through a southern town in his convertible. The report says that Hoffa said that if they used a sniper they must ensure he couldn’t be connected to the Teamsters. Less than 12 months later, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by a sniper rifle in his convertible as he rode through Dallas, Texas, a southern city a few hours north of my family’s home. Bobby Kennedy and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover suspected Hoffa, but they couldn’t prove anything and kept most of the 1962 report classified except for the part used to make my grandfather out to be a hero before Hoffa’s trial in an unrelated and relatively minor Teamsters trial.

My first memory of my grandfather was a few weeks after my first memory of my dad. I was four years old, the first year that Stretch Armstrong toys were advertised on color television, and I had been in a hospital, Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, recovering from a head laceration and severe loss of blood after falling from a fence at my foster father’s farm. He, my PawPaw, and my Uncle Kieth had rushed me to Our Lady of The Lake where I stayed for a few days. Before then, I didn’t know who Stretch Armstrong was; but, after watching  television in the kids’ communal playroom- the first time I had seen color television, and the first time I had played with other kids so it was remarkable – I was enthralled by the commercial of kids pulling Stretch Armstrong across him across their chest like an exercise band and laughing when he sprang back to normal size. I had to have one! I must have told everyone I met about Stretch Armstrong, and a few weeks later, my dad brought one to me at PawPaw’s farm.

Andrea and I arrived at her parents house and walked in, barely able to squeeze in the living room because of all of her dad’s partially completed projects and her mom’s collection of things that she felt added decor. Her mom waved from the kitchen, where she was feeding the baby. Alice, Andrea’s younger sister and the baby’s mom, was trying to clear away enough dirty dishes to make room for two boxes of Little Ceasar’s pizza, the one that had commercials with a tiny cartoon Caesar, dressed in a toga and chirping “Pizza! Pizza!” I devoured two slices while watching Alice learn to feed her daughter by helping her mom.

Some time after I saw Stevie Nicks and single handedly helped deliver phone books to all of Baton Rouge, I stayed with Uncle Bob and Auntie Lo for a while, and they took me to Disneyland to see my grandfather. Not Big Daddy, but Wendy’s dad, they said. He was a cartoonist there.