Papa

Papa was one of the most impressive people I have ever known or will ever know. He was tall. When he wasn’t wearing a suit, he would wear his starched shirts snuggly tucked into his starched slacks, his v-neck undershirt barely visible. He always smelled of aftershave and he always, always wore boots and a cowboy hat. He was a South Texas rancher. He was a South Texas banker. This was not a 50/50 identity, it was 100/100. There was no part of him that wasn’t a rancher and there was no part of him that wasn’t a banker.
He had jowls. I don’t think I ever notice jowls, but that’s the first thing I remember when I think of his face. His jowls shook when he hocked lugis. He could hock a lugi like no one I’ve ever met. He always had gum. He had a million numbers stored in his head in file cabinets with a sharp-minded personal assistant that could retrieve them at any moment. He slurred his words in a distinctive lisp that he had since he was a child. I’ve always wondered if he was made fun of for it when he was young. I can’t imagine anyone making fun of my grandfather. He made a lisp seem distinguished and almost elegant.
He had a pet leopard, was best friends with a former governor of Texas and once played tennis with Bill Cosby. He called his wife Babe until his dying day, kept a sawed off shot gun hidden under his desk at work and went to Wimbledon and the U.S. Open every year he was able to. He grew up with red hair but it was grey by the time I knew him, his hands were strong and elegant…so appropriate for a rancher/banker. My oldest brother has the same hands. He went to his ranch after work everyday…to feed the leopard and check on all the exotic animals. Driving around the ranch around sunset feels like the movie The Lion King has come to life. One time a Saudi Arabian prince came to hunt on his ranch.
He grew up a poor farm boy, the fourth of five kids. He learned how to work hard. It became so much a part of him that it was a chronic addiction and he required it of all who were around him. He went to the war, returned to his hometown, married his high school sweetheart and made his living from the ground up. He lived to provide for those he cared about. His hard work gave countless people opportunities they otherwise would never have had.