Chapter 11: The Origins of My Species

Grandpop — never Grandpa — was the only grandparent my brothers and I ever knew. Andy, as he was called, was born Andrés in Spain in the momentous year of 1898. He moved with his parents to New York City as a boy, but never lost his Spanish accent. What made him most foreign to me, however, was that he lived in Pennsylvania. My parents talked of leaving Pennsylvania the way friends’ grandparents talked of escaping shtetls in Lithuania.

“Grandpop’s coming,” my father would announce. This usually meant that my parents were going on vacation, leaving us kids behind in the care of the short, elderly man who had long ago raised my father and his brothers.

One of my earliest memories is of having a stare-down with Grandpop when I was about two years old. I had been bellowing about something, but — rather than coddle me like the toddler I was — he simply glared at me until I glared back. Both of us bullheaded, we met each other on equal terms, and I honestly don’t recall who won that particular match. But I do remember that Grandpop was always a source of much curiosity for me.

For starters, there was his right hand. It only had three fingers.

How this came to be was shrouded in some mystery. My mother always said it was an accident with a fan. She was a smart woman. I grew up in an era in which industrial-style cooling fans were common in homes, and I took this as a warning that little children should keep their hands away from fan blades, no matter how mesmerizing, no matter what the dare. But my brother Drew, being seven years older and privy to more family stories than I ever was, speculated that it was a different kind of warning, perhaps from an underworld bookie or someone Grandpop ran moonshine for during Prohibition.

When I got older, I could have asked my grandfather how he lost his fingers. But by the time I became a bellowing teenager, I was too self-involved to inquire. It was my loss. Grandpop was a raconteur, and I am sure I could easily have coaxed the colorful details out of him.

Like many a good Diaz, Grandpop liked to pepper his stories with superfluous verbiage. Grandpop’s particular verbal tic was, “I mean uh . . .” but he would import a Spanish tilde so it always sounded like “I meeña.” He was also known to exclaim “jeekers crickers” — his own portmanteau of a phrase, presumably from jeepers creepers and Jiminy Cricket. My father had a scholarly bent, but he never once corrected Grandpop. After all, Grandpop was the only polyglot in the family — he could speak four or five languages — and he was entitled to a little creative license when it came to the turn of a phrase.

My relationship with my grandfather was fraught with competition. As a stubborn and strong-willed child — traits I likely inherited from him — I tested my grandfather many a time. I have no doubt that I tried to get away with things when he was babysitting that I would never have dared try on my parents. Neglect to pick up my toys? Of course. Run around in my pajamas and refuse to go to bed? Certainly. My brothers tell me that I once even locked Grandpop out of the house. He and I were engaged in our own Spanish–American War.

But I quickly brought my behavior in line when Grandpop walked into the kitchen. It was there that Grandpop — an excellent cook — lovingly prepared a culinary treat deeply embedded in his Spanish roots: potatoes! These were not my mother’s Irish boiled, baked, or mashed potatoes (though I loved those, too). Grandpop, with his sleeves rolled up to expose his strong forearms and dressed in my mother’s flowery apron, cut his potatoes in large smile-shaped wedges and fried them — twice — in a big cast-iron pan until they were golden brown. Tourists scour Spain in search of potatoes like his.

It was only recently that I learned how much family history went into Grandpop’s potatoes. When he was a child, his parents owned a boarding house and restaurant in Manhattan, and young Andrés was forced to peel a couple of bushels of potatoes each morning and wash as many as 200 dinner plates before going to bed at night. Soon he ran away to the Hudson River docks, lied about his age, got a job as a mess boy on the White Star Line, and worked his way back to Spain.

Eventually Grandpop went back home to New York, and ultimately moved to Pennsylvania.

I think about my Grandpop often now that I live in his homeland. And as I stand in my Madrid kitchen frying potatoes, I wonder whether I will ever return home to New York.

©2020 Kay Diaz