This is my mother’s father. And I can see my resemblance. We both have the slightly gawky long arms and legs. And the crazy leer in the corner of our eyes.
He was half Injun, half Canadian French. His name was Clyde Gearwar, but everyone called him “Jim” because apparently “Clyde” wasn’t enough Indian-sounding. Go figure.
His father was a full-blooded Iroquois Injun who used to go loco on the booze and beat up the whole family and terrorize them his shotgun. One day when Jim was 16 his father was threatening to kill his mother. So Jim shot him in self-defense, seriously wounding him. Jim’s sister helped to smuggle him out of the country to Canada because they knew their father would kill him when he got out of the hospital.
Later Jim returned to New Hampshire and married my mother’s mother (good old Nanna — what a miserable old coot she was) and they had 3 kids. Jim continued the Gearwar tradition of going nuts on the booze and terrorizing the family with his shotgun. Often Nanna would have to lock herself and the kids in one of the bedrooms while Jim was on one of his drunken rampages. Not daring to unlock the door until Jim finally passed out.
The Clyde “Jim” Gearwar story finally came to a spectacular conclusion in 1946 when an irate husband caught him screwing his wife. And shot him dead outside a local bar. The End.
Acid Heroes 