The Psalms of Clem

This is my dear Grandpa and my beloved Gramillo, as I remember them. Grandpa's birthday was this past Sunday, so I've been thinking about him.
Grandpa was set in his ways and had some funny habits.
He did not buy any new clothes after 1960; he got his money's worth because he got 33 years of wear out of them. When his pants started cutting off his circulation, he devised a stretch waistband using a rubber band through the button hole and attached to the button. Of course, this meant his pants could not be zipped up all the way, but buying a new pair of pants was out of the question! The buttons on his shirts were crying for mercy from 1975 on.
He had strong feelings about religion and would yell at the TV and, on occasion, he'd even spit at the screen. After working himself into a frenzy, he'd put a nitro glycerin tablet under his tongue. Why he kept watching religious TV is a mystery, but it made for great entertainment for my brother and me.
Grandpa singlehandedly kept the men's hair oil industry in business.
Grandpa got every speck of meat, gristle, and fat off of chicken bones. After he ate chicken, those bones were glistening!
He served in WWII and helped free one of the concentration camps. He did not talk a lot about his service, but whenever he did, he almost always got tears in his eyes, then promptly changed the subject.
He had a somewhat gruff and tough nature, but he also had a sensitive side. He never cursed around me, EVER, but he did around my brother and dad.
I always felt sorry for the brakes on Grandpa's truck; they were sorely abused. A ride with Grandpa meant a high probability of whiplash.
After Gramillo died, Grandpa started an endearing habit.
He had little handwritten scraps of paper taped to the refrigerator that said Gone to KFC, Gone to Safeway, Gone to the Drugstore, etc.
Whenever he left the house, he would tape one of these notes to the front door, so that if someone came by, they would know where he was. I loved those little notes. And I LOVED the fact that he re-used them. Wouldn't want to waste paper, ink, or tape, now would we?
Grandpa was a very particular man. He bagged all his trash in small, plastic bags, and he cut up all his cardboard trash into small pieces. Each small, plastic bag was tied at the top, then secured with string around itself twice. Each bag looked like a wrapped present before it was placed into the garbage bin.
When Grandpa was near death, he moved in with my parents for his final weeks. Just days before he died, my mother cooked a turkey and asked him if he'd like some. He said, "Just a small slice of dark meat. Be sure to cut it against the grain."
Yep. He was particular.
One of the things our family loved the most about Grandpa is that he used funny phrases all the time. Like if something scary happened, he'd tell the story and say, "I laid a streak of brown!" That meant he messed his undies.
We called Grandpa, Clem Kadiddlehopper.
He'd picked up these phrases over the years while growing up in Missouri.
Not long before Grandpa's death, my hubby sat with him and asked him to recite all of those phrases. My hubby wrote them all down. Some of them were ones I'd never heard Grandpa use, since they were a bit on the tawdry side.
Here are two pages that my terrific hubby typed so we would always remember Grandpa's famous phrases. Enjoy!