Usually, my grandfather was away at sea. My sister and I used to greet him on the wharf in Beaumont, Texas. He had the roll of the sea in his walk. If I saw a new tattoo, I got a new story. In Stockholm, in 1899, Erik William Grundberg came into the world and his mother put him in an orphanage. His ear was notched to mark this origin and he was put in a series of foster homes. He completed his Swedish education at the age of fourteen. Erik paid for his passage to America with his labour on a farm in Minnesota. After his debt was paid, he rode a freight train to the Texas coast.
He was jailed for vagrancy in Marshall, Texas at a time when the local cotton crop was ready to be harvested. Mr. Jack Landers, my maternal great-grandfather, was a local farmer and he needed more workers, in spite of his own family of ten. He went to the jail and discovered two strong foreign boys inside. He paid the sheriff and hired the two strangers to harvest his cotton. Landers had a wife with Cherokee blood and he brought the boys to her house.
She admired the cheeky Swedish boy and their bond became very strong. He was two meters in height and his hands were the size of baseball gloves. When the work was complete, Erik left on another freight train with one of Lander’s sons. They joined the Texas Rangers and rode together until Erik went back to the sea. When he next returned to Marshall, he married one of Lander's now grown daughters, Nellie. His wedding ring was three centimetres in diameter.
Next, he began a half century of life at sea. Erik had first learned to speak English by reading pulp westerns. This developed into a very special accent and a vernacular that was a hybrid of nautical terms and cowboy jargon. He studied steam and diesel mechanics and was eventually elevated to a Chief Engineer. Mostly, he sailed on oil tankers. At sea, he read profusely from a wide range of subjects and pondered his Bible daily. From the Sea of Japan to the Bay of Bengal, he was known as Big Hands. He was the kind of man that made his pants from sail-cloth and fashioned knives from recycled spring steel from cross-cut saws.
During World War II, he served as a Lieutenant Commander in the American Navy by commission of the President, who gifted him with a pair of pearl-handled Navy Colt 45 calibre pistols. He never talked to me of war, except for one small vignette which I recall: We see Erik standing watch at the prow of his ship. He is singing Swedish songs and his chants are protecting the ship from German torpedoes. Erik is laughing as the blind steel dolphins of the Kriegsmarine plow the sea around him.
Erik never sought the help of others, but helped any man who asked. The lion's share of my moral character was formed in his company. We fished and swam in the Gulf of Mexico. We worked on different kinds of motors and we had many hours of philosophical and religious discussion. He corresponded with me from every corner of the world. The sea took his only son, but he never lost his love for either. His personal code was simple. A man always did the right thing. Erik acquired much spiritual knowledge during his life. Grandfather, you taught me much.
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