'My Grandpa'
By Danielle Pierce
I actually have two Grandfathers; Grampy and Grandpa. But as we can only write about one I am going to tell you about Grampy.
My Grampy's name is Benjamin Franklin Pierce, but everyone calls him Hawkeye. That's after the character in the last of the Mohicans, which was his Daddy's favourite book.
Grampy was born in Crabapple cove, which is a very nice town in Maine. Grampy recons you can leave your door wide open and no one would steal your TV or anything. You can't do that here in Boston. He also says that everyone knows your business, which might not be a good thing, depending on what your business is.
Both my Grandfather's are doctors. Grampy learnt how to be a doctor at a hospital in Boston. He had a girlfriend there. In fact my Grampy used to have lots of girlfriends till he met Grammy. Now he doesn't have any. He says it's because Grammy is enough hard work.
A long time ago in 1950 Grampy says he foolishly opened an invitation from President Truman and had to go to Korea. That's where he met my Grammy, Grandpa BJ and some other people who are still his friends. They all worked at the 4077th MASH. MASH stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. It was called mobile because it could be moved around, but nobody liked having to move because it was hard work packing up the tents and stuff.
In the 4077th there were 5 doctors, 11 nurses, some corpsmen and other enlisted men. Grampy was chief surgeon. That means he was the most important doctor in the unit. My Grammy was the head nurse; she was in charge of all the other nurses. At first Grammy and Grampy weren't in love. In fact they kinda hated each other, and Grammy had another boyfriend, called Major Burns, but Grampy calls him Ferret face.
Then after a while they grew to like each other, so much that after the war they got married and had my Uncle Ben, Aunt Lottie, Daddy and Aunt Molly. I'm very glad they did because otherwise we wouldn't be here.
Grampy never liked being in the army. He hates guns and war and fights (except food fights, those are really fun) Grammy thinks Grampy and Grandpa were the most unmilitary men in the whole army. Grampy hardly ever wore his army clothes (those are called fatigues) and wore his bathrobe or Hawaiian shirt instead. In fact he still wears a Hawaiian shirt sometimes, but not to same one of course.
Apart from making sick people better the other thing my Grampy is really good at is being silly. One day he got an extra box of rubber gloves at his surgery by mistake so he and Grandpa blew them all up and drew funny faces on them. Grammy says they used to do that in Korea too.
Grampy sometimes tells us stories about things that happened in Korea. Some are really funny, like all the jokes he used to play and about one of the people there, Max Klinger, who tried to get out of the army by wearing dresses. One time he even dressed up as the statue of Liberty! That must have been funny.
Others are sad, like when people died or their good friends like Uncle Trapper had to go home (He's not really my uncle, we just call him that because he's a friend of Grampy's) everyone was upset because they would miss him lots. We do see him sometimes though; he and Grampy play golf together.
It seems like there was never a dull moment at the 4077. I recon it would make a good TV show, maybe even a movie.
Even though Grampy can be silly he is also very smart. Which I guess you have to be if you're a doctor. He knows lots about all kinds of things, like fishing. He takes my cousins Nathan and Bobby fishing and they catch really big fish. I could go too, but don't want to because the fish smell yucky. After fishing we all have a big dinner and eat the fish (except Aunt Erin, she's a vegetarian)
Grampy is also very kind and goes out of his way to help people and make them laugh. Whenever Mom and Daddy can't get a babysitter Grammy and Grampy say 'bring the girls round here'. So we go round there and have a sleepover. Grammy and Grampy have a really big house so we get to have our own room to sleep in. Although I like it better when we camp out in the back yard. Sometimes all my cousins stay over at the same time, that's the best.
The very best thing about Grampy is that whenever I feel sad I can always talk to him and he will listen and make it better again. I'm really lucky to have a Grampy like that.
Danielle Pierce
Grade 5 English class
Jan 13th 2006