Chapter 5
TRANSITIONS: 1932-1935
“Time goes by, time brings changes, you change, too....
Never see it coming, the world caves in on you."
Our Town - Randy Newman
i - Goodbye, Grandpap
In 1932, when I was in the fifth grade, the first shock of my life occurred.
Walking up the hill to school after lunch at Grandma Wallace’s, I met my cousin Ruth
Lee who excitedly informed me, “Billy, your grandfather is dead!" I knew she meant
my great-grandfather, Lorenzo D. Rohrer, “Grandpap."
“He is not!" I contradicted. I knew he had had an operation two weeks before
and was doing all right...“You’re wrong! Grandpap’s not dead! He’s not!"
After school, as I approached the house I saw Jeanette on the front porch
cleaning the glass panel of the front door. Just then, Mrs. Koon, the doctor’s wife,
yelled from across the street, “How’s Mr. Rohrer getting along."
“He’s dead!" Jeanette yelled back frantically.
I ran past her into the house, buried my head in a pillow and cried
inconsolably. I had never experienced a death before but I knew it meant...the end,
burial in the ground, gone forever. I wouldn’t have my sweet Grandpap any more.
At first, I did not want to look at him in his casket in the front room. When
eventually I did, I asked why the black lump that I used to see on the back of his right
hand was gone and someone told me the doctor had cut it off when Grandpap was
asleep for the operation on his stomach. (The death certificate says he died of
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