Grandpa was a Carpenter

I heard a song yesterday that I hadn’t heard in a long time.   It was John Prine singing “Grandpa was a Carpenter”.    This is a fantastic song!   I must say that I’m somewhat partial to it because my grandfather was a carpenter.   It’s the same with Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”, because I am the son of a preacher man.   Both are just great songs though.   I really love the lyric in “Grandpa” that says, “He voted for Eisenhower ‘cause Lincoln won the war”.   That is just an awesome lyric; the entire song makes you think about old times.   Like when people chain smoked cigarettes and put pennies in burned out fuses.   It evokes memories of old people in church and a time before television so people listened to the radio.   I love the way songs can make you remember things.   

I always think about my Grandfather when I hear that song.   My Grandfather could build anything.   He built some grandfather clocks later in his life, one of which I own, although I don’t actually have it.   It’s at my Parent’s house.   I’m planning to get it pretty soon.   A lot of the stuff my Grandfather built has been lost over time, which makes the remaining pieces all the more valuable to me and my family.   The legacy of someone continues to widen over time which also causes it to become sparser.   As the children have children and those children have children the memories began to fade and the artifacts become more widely distributed.   We end up with small pieces of people to help us hold on to our memories of them.    I’m glad that there are songs that can also help pull those memories to the forefront.

Listen to:   Grandpa was a Carpenter