I never met my “real” grandpa, John Paul McDowell. He died when my dad was 14 years old. (Nevertheless, in the last few years I have felt closer and closer to him.)

The man that my grandma “Gusty May Bennett McDowell Bennett” married after my real grandpa died was the one I met. I always felt that Arthur was my grandpa, and now I think how lucky I was to have three grandpas!

Arthur Bennett was the third grandpa, the step grandpa*. I didn’t see him a lot, because our family had to make the long journey from Pennsylvania to Missouri to see Grandma and Grandpa. We didn’t have a lot of money and my dad only had so much vacation time from work. Nevertheless, Art was my grandpa. And what a grandpa he was!

Art had lived in a small area of the Ozarks all of his life, except for some time spent in St. Louis. It was as if he was part and parcel of the land he lived on. When he walked, the land was walking. When he talked, the land was talking.  When he breathed, the land was breathing. Everyone in the area knew him, and by the time I was a kid, he was respected as an elder of that place.

This type of person has always intrigued me. Someone who has lived in a place fully and without reservation. Someone who has accepted that that place is enough. He/she is married to that place and takes complete sustenance from it. This person may know of other places on earth but that doesn’t keep them from their steady stance in that one place where they belong.

I am grateful to have had my third grandpa teach me something that is now informing my process of integrating myself with place.

* My mother’s father, from York, PA, was Chester Samuel Ely.