T is for Tinker

As I continue editing Rivers of Stone, I remember my grandfather's hands. He could fix anything. Watches. Cars. Tents. He invented a switch he could use from his chair that turned off the sound on the television, long before remotes were available. 

He hunted, fished, and hiked in the wilderness. He didn't sew. That was women's work. And he didn't sing. But he loved books and anything to do with the environment, which he was convinced we humans were ruining as fast as we could. He would have loved global warming as that would have proved his theories.

He would have fit right in with a fur brigade, for that tinkering was a survival skill. 

The ability to 'make do' probably was influenced by him growing up dirt-poor on a farm in Missouri (he called it 'Miz-rey'). He ran away from home when he was 16 to become a cowboy, out west.

Frank and Sigrid Henry
About 1920 in Montana

Then he met my grandmother. They married, and he became one of the first forest rangers right around World War I when the Army wouldn't accept him because one of his eyes was flawed.

He took me, a girl, hunting. I learned how to find my way in the woods, how to skin out a deer, and how to tinker, though I mostly tinker with words.

I thought today I'd write about voyageurs, but instead, I wrote about my Grandfather. He lived to be 100.

Have a good rest tomorrow. Next week we polish off the April A to Z Blogging Challenge. And next week, I will write about the voyageurs. How did your grandparents influence you?