It was in August, right before his 74th birthday, that I finally sat down and asked my grandfather to tell me about his life. I knew some bare facts already: he'd served in the Navy during World War II, and afterwards wandered the country, wife and three small children in tow, doing an assortment of jobs that were vaguely hinted at in my grandmother's stories, but never explained. I knew he was proudest of the Navy, though, so that's where I started.

In the Navy, my grandfather was part of Division L on the USS New Jersey. The men called it the "Gray Ghost." Division L was made up of lookouts, whose job it was to spot the kamikaze planes as they came in. Seven or eight men would sit up in the crow's nest for a six hour shift, using huge binoculars to scan the area from the horizon to the deck of the ship. According to my grandfather, nine times out of ten they would spot the planes, and the Gray Ghost was never hit while he was on it. When I talked to him, fifty odd years later, he was still proud of being part of Division L, and of the ship.

"We had Nimitz come on board," he told me, his eyes glinting behind his glasses. "And Admiral Halsey. They woulda signed the treaty with Japan on the New Jersey, but Truman, he was the president, he was from Missouri, so that's where he had it signed, on the USS Missouri."

I asked if they had planes on the New Jersey. "We had two scout planes," he said, "the New Jersey wasn't a carrier, so instead of usin' the deck as a runway, they'd launch 'em off with huge catapults. When they came in, they'd land in the water behind us, an' get picked up by a big hook." Suddenly he laughed, struck by a memory. He adjusted the oxygen tubes in his nose, and went on. "They'd save up beer for us til they had six cans for every man, then when we went on shore leave, they'd give us those six cans. I remember when I stepped off the boat in Tokyo... do you know what the first thing I saw was?" He laughed again. "The first thing I saw was a little boy standing behind a lamppost, peeing."

The whole conversation was like that. I asked a question, he'd answer, and his answer or my question would remind him of some small detail, something he wanted to share. I asked him what happened after the war, when he left the Navy.

"They dropped us in Oregon. Didn't none of us know anybody, we barely had any money, just our seabags an' the clothes on our backs. We looked around us a little bit, an' then we all waddled away in different directions like baby ducks. I went to Idaho an' worked in the mines there a while. D'you know where Sun Valley is? It was the next valley over from that. We mined gold, silver, and lead there. Then I got a job with the Union Pacific Rail Road, an' started workin' my way east to get home.

When I was back in Kentucky I got Billy, Bobby, an' Richard jobs on the railroad, too. [Billy and Bobby are my grandmother's brothers, Richard was her uncle.] They didn't last but a few weeks, an' they used to stand behind me while I drove spikes, yellin' 'Knock the handle off 'er, J.D.!' See, those big hammers, they was so heavy that if you missed your spike, you'd knock the head right off'n the handle. You'd have two men on each spike, an' you'd have to have two right handed men, or two left handed men together. One of 'em would hit the spike, then the other one, til they drove it in. The railroad had a driver, but they didn't wanna use it, they were worried it might break."

I raised both eyebrows, and he nodded emphatically. "What did you do after the railroad?" I asked. He chuckled and slapped his hand on the table.

"Baby, I've done a little bit of everything. I worked on the oil rigs in New Mexico, I was a roughneck. I worked tugs on the river, hell I even bootlegged for a while. And I'll tell you somethin. You can learn somethin' from a book, an' you know it up here." He tapped his temple, watching me intently. "But if you learn somethin' by doin' it, you know it all over." He spread his hands out in front of him, still roughened from years of work. "It's common sense in you after that. I've done just about everythin; I could go out an just learn to do things. I traveled, too. I'd start out here with thirty-nine cents in my pocket, an' get me a ride, an I'd get out to Idaho or Colorado an still have thirty-nine cents in my pocket. People would just pick you up, feed you, an' give you a ride. You'd eat good, too, good stuff. Steak an' all that, not other stuff. You can't do that now."

He stood up slowly to go inside and escape the heat of the western Kentucky day, gnarled and wasting away, weakened by disease, but still standing straight. "Baby," he said again, "I tell you, I've done a little bit of everythin'. You might not believe it to look at me now, but I've done just about everythin."