Sunday, February 22, 2009
I am my own grandpaw
My grandfather was a Jazz musician and a contract killer. When I was six years old I spent the summer traveling around northern Iowa with him. I saw him kill seventeen communist potato farmers and a Canadian pimp. That summer had a profound impact on me. When I was thirteen he introduced me to Dave Brubeck. When I was twenty he was arrested. When I was twenty-six he was put to death at a federal prison in Kentucky. My mother attended his execution but not his funeral. My sister attended his funeral but did not cry. Dave Brubeck cried at the funeral and got drunk at the wake. My grandfather had killed some fifty people and recorded three gold records. After he died a reporter from the New York Times Arts and Entertainment section came to my house to interview me. I slept with her. It could have been better. As a child I had always admired my grandfather though I never committed a murder or a song to magnetic tape. I did however burn down a hotel for money once. I guess it all wasn’t wasted.
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2 comments:
Frankly, your inclusion of such exotic settings as northern Iowa and Canada (is that even a word??) makes your story less believable. I mean, I believe the core story about you and your talented grandfather, but you should have used the more general "New Spain." I also quibble with your use of the word "murderer." I don't quibble with the moral associations of "murderer"--I mean, come on, there are worse crimes out there, people--but with its semantic limits, as it were. Perhaps your grandfather was less a "murderer," as you put it, and more of a roving judge, bringing down just punishments. Perhaps he was something of a performance artist. Maybe these "murders" were a cry for help; maybe they were his way of protesting grain prices. After all, murder is a form of social protest.
No he just did a lot of cocaine.
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