I wrote a little poem for each one of them.
Excuse me.
And they're very short.
So I'll read both of them.
The poem for Sherman, who was the only grandfather I ever
knew.
And he was the grandfather to all of her grandchildren.
The ideal grandfather.
Just as he was the ideal farmer, he
was president of the ditch committee and all that.
And he had been a marksman in the First World War.
Everybody respected him.
Everybody liked him.
And while he wasn't related by blood, he was my grandfather.
And this is the poem for him.
It's called A Kind Of Glory.
I'm sorry.
Years after the neighbors started using machines,
grandpa still did the milking with his small boned
delicate hands.
But his cows gave better milk than any herd in the Valley.
At night, he danced the Shcottische with grandma,
and always put his little foot right there more gracefully
than she could manage.
He smelled of cow manure and Prince Albert pipe tobacco.
Women found him irresistible.
We knew we would never be famous or anything
out of the ordinary.
But for a while after grandpa dropped his flashlight
into the outhouse hole, we had a glory
that continued to shine straight up from down there.
And our most private moments were illuminated.
I was thinking about the illumination,
which is what they do in medieval manuscripts.
That first letter is often big, and colored,
and fancy, and with gold on it.
OK.