GRANDPA BENNETT LOWELL BENNETT WORE A COWBOY OUTFIT IN

Grandpa Bennett

Grandpa Bennett

Lowell Bennett wore a cowboy outfit

In the countryside of France

Until the day he died.

He spoiled his French with a horrid American accent

Deliberately, for over fifty years.

He spent afternoons on his ride-on mower,

His flossy white hair floundering backwards in the breeze,

A leather bolo tie swaying limply across his chest

As he hit a bump in the lawn—a groundhog hole perhaps,

Or his sleeping collie.

He spent nights behind his living-room bar with

Cigars and salted peanuts

And cynical remarks about French television.

Lowell’s myna bird repeated his favorite saying:

“The damn French!”

And imitated Lowell’s hacking cough

Even after his death.

I try to imagine his pose as he parachuted into Berlin back in ’41,

Landing on a lakeshore, met hospitably by Nazi rifle barrels aimed

At his dashing, young face.

“What better place for a war reporter,” he must have snickered,

“Than behind enemy lines!”

I see him in his P.O.W. cell

Behind bars but also

Behind his bar.

Cursing the French as usual, (he loved the French),

Taking a moment to ash his Davidoff

And call out to the SS guard, whose rigid stance

And solemn frown seem laughable:

“Hey, while you’re up,

Fetch me a bag of peanuts, would ya?”

Charles F. Meyer III