My grandfather was a combat vet. He rarely spoke about it, and carried the scars both physically and mentally, but kept them to himself. He came home from the war, and built a life for himself. A car, a wife, a house that he built, and finally his boy, my father. He taught all of us to never take shit from anyone. Stand your ground, make your voice heard when needed. He was proud of all he acquired, and the fact that his boy had grown to be self sufficient father, and could navigate the world with ease. Today being Mother’s Day, my mind tumbled back to granny and the last time I saw my grandfather, alive, in his full form. We were celebrating granny’s big day on the back porch, and my grandfather was taking some liberty, while talking, with some good old moonshine. His conversation soon quieted, as he listened to a ruckus coming from the house across the fence line. God damn druggies have broken into the old Dillard place again. My grandfather shouted across the way to quiet their shit down, and to remind them that there was a lady present and that they were trespassing. The druggies shouted back in full form, hooting and hollering, with a few fuck offs thrown in for good measure. Grandpa, finishing his drink, stared thoughtfully into his mason jar, and then stood up and walked off the porch and into the barn without saying a word. No more than 10 minutes passed, when we suddenly heard the ungodly roar of his 1940 Caterpillar coming to life. Grandpa came roaring out of the barn, ripped straight though the back fence, and made a beeline towards the old Dillard place. He lifted the tractor bucket up high enough for a shield, and proceeded to annihilate the the druggies makeshift gathering on the porch of the formally empty and abandoned house. Grandpa mowed the Dillard house down to the ground. The druggies scattered, wide-eyed and terrified, leaping like like antelope on the prairie, never to return. After he was finished with his destruction, he returned to the porch with his family, and filled his mason jar once more. Grandpa died that summer. I think of him often. He would have been a great Anon.