To start this all off, the porsche thing below is a saved draft from 2 weeks ago. On July 3rd my grandfather passed away and since then I haven't felt much like updating. I am now in San diego, in a coffee house that my dad worked at IN THE 70's and I decided to update, seeing that thing about porsche there I felt bad for not updating in quite some time so I finished it. The Panamera is porsche's attempt at a sedan... A SEDAN!!!!!!?????? What the FUCK is Porsche thinking?? Are they trying to get into the niche market of really really rich white guys with many friends and no sense of taste??? FUCK!
There is an update somewhere deep within me, but first, I want to say this to the world at large:
WHAT THE FUCK IS PORSCHE THINKING???
I am in la jolla right now, it is saturday and I'm amazed by this trip. The drive on thursday night flew by, mostly because I had awesome music and the flow of traffic was just about 85mph. Tomorrow's train ride should be interesting because I'm bringing a flask half full of rum and enough reading material hopefully to last me the 15 hours it will take to get to Davis.
My grandma and I have been going through all of grandpa's old stuff and being the sensible lady that she is she says that there is no point in keeping stuff around that she is not going to be using, that in mind she decided that I should take his pants since they fit me so perfectly, his belt, his old watch which hasn't worked for a while, a pocket knife, a very cool ruler, a harmonica from the 30's, some sheep's skins that she's never going to use, a thing for melaine that I will not talk about here until she has seen it, a sewing kit, my god my grandpa had a bunch of stuff!, and some other things that she had no use for. I felt awkward at first but she was very forward with this stuff and she insisted that I take it since she was just going to take it to the resale shop otherwise. Oh I also got his old Zippo lighters which I will cherish always and will remind me of the caliber of person my grandpa became over the years.
So I came to San Diego expecting a mourning woman and found a very busy woman who made me do yard work and take a bunch of stuff away in a military duffel bag with GEORGE G SHOR stencil written onto it.
Now, the story of how they met....
My grandma and grandpa were soulmates of a very singular kind, they were married 59 years before he died and they met under peculiar circumstance:
My grandma's father was a mine leader in the Black Hills in South Dakota, where she was born and raised. She expected to go to preparatory school in the east and complete college in New York but her plans changed. Her father was offered a job at Cal Tech in Pasadena, where my grandfather was finishing up his BS in mechanical engineering after his service in the navy during the 2nd World War. My grandfather was very interested in geography, so he spent lots of his time in that department, which is where my grandmother's father was appointed as a professor. This department had many social functions and at the time it was customary to bring family to this sort of thing so my grandmother attended many of them and in doing so met my grandpa who at the time thought that she was a bit too young to date.
His thoughts changed, of course, after he was offered a position in Nowheresville New Mexico, and after accepting the position realized how lonely small towns in New Mexico can be. In an act of lonely desperation he sent christmas letters to everybody he could think of including my grandmother, through her father's office at Cal Tech. She was in New york around that christmas attending college and got the letter 2 days before the holiday and responded 2 days after. They corresponded for quite some time and he said that he would come up and visit during his first summer break.
The car ride from the airport involved a conversation somewhere along these lines:
Grandma: How is your new job?
Grandpa:Oh it's going alright, it's just boring out there is all.
Grandma:Well you must get lonely out there every now and then.
Grandpa:Yes, I suppose I've got my work to keep me busy though.
Grandma:So what are your plans after the summer?
Grandpa:We're going to be married next June.
Grandma:.....................
Grandpa:.....................
Grandma:.....................
Grandpa:... So now that I've assumed you've accepted my proposal
Grandma: YES!
That is my guess as to how the conversation goes, the beginning part is irrelevant of course but that is just the kind of man my grandpa was, straightforward and to the point.
I will never forget the few times I got to spend with Grandpa George and I hope that someday I can emulate his boisterous, if a bit rough around the edges character and his positive attitude; in this case I don't mean positive necessarily in the sense that he was a great optimist, but positive in that about everything he knew, he was positive about it.
I'll miss you Grandpa, you were a man of the sea and a man of greatness.
This september we will be scattering his ashes at the ocean near the Scripps institute of Oceanography in La Jolla.