[grinnell]

grinnell         Tribute to Frank Grinnell            071022
                        By Ray CLark                        

FRANK --

On April 19, you'd tumble out of your bed too early for
any honorable purpose, and you'd tug on your unfamiliar
Colonial clothing, and you'd gather up your canteen,
gurgling with a brew deadlier than any musket, and you'd
head off for Sudbury Center.

For a while, the exhilaration of it all would keep you
awake: the hangings and the greetings of old friends and
the tastings of the canteens.  But by the time you'd trudged
up to Dakin's Farm, the sleep and the cold had wormed
back into your soul, and truth to tell the stuff that had
tasted so fine a few miles ago was beginning to go down a
little rough.

And there he'd be, waiting for you with his steaming
coffee and his hot chocolate and his store-bought donuts,
and he'd flavor them with his own special profane hello,
and by God it was the best tasting, welcomest breakfast of
your whole year.

We vaguely appreciated him, of course, but not nearly as
much as we should have.  We never thought much about
how he had to load up his truck and trundle down the road
ahead of us (while we had our laughs and our little glory);
how he had to set up; how he tucked the smoking coffee in
our chilled fingers; how, after we'd set off cheered and
refreshed and warm, he'd have to clean up and drive the
dull early morning roads to Barrett's Farm, there to do it
all over again for us.

He suffered the anonymity of the reliable man.  You could
count on him to be exactly where he was supposed to be,
and generally a few minutes early.

He must have enjoyed doing the jobs nobody else wanted,
because he did so many of them.  If there was a ticket to be
taken while everybody else danced; a collection to be
gathered while everybody else told each other improbable
stories; a thankless task to be accomplished while
everybody else patted each other's backs: why, there he'd
be, blunt and craggy and gruff --- and doing the job.  All
you had to do was ask.  (He didn't like to be taken for
granted, so naturally he usually, and unfairly, was.)

Probably a lot of men belonged to the Sudbury Companies
of Militia and Minute without ever suspecting how integral
part of it he was.  Like a vital, irreplaceable gear, he
worked smoothly and efficiently inside a great clumsy toy
soldier, while the people outside cheered the chipped paint.

It's impossible to imagine April 19 without him.

If anyone in this outfit ever deserved a medal, it was Frank
Grinnell.

Damn.  We should have given him one...
[end grinnell]