Gup, Spiders, & What Might Be Next…
Gup saw his life as one giant Jiffy Pop treat with its foil frying pan and Kodachrome cover-photo of smiling kids erupting into brilliant, popped-up kernels of corn. My maternal grandfather possessed a keen mind and a sharp Irish wit and stood five six on his tippy toes. When my sister was petite, she couldn’t pronounce the term Gramps so it came out GUP so everyone agreed on it. GUP had a fading, slicked-back Brylcreemed hairline and worked undercover for the IRS with a shiny badge he liked to show off, and each breath he drew was a half chuckling, half wheezing gig. A pack of Camels kept him healthy as Captain America, he’d say with a wink. He was unique with the most fluid, creative stories and his elastic-like memory was astounding. His recall was spotty at the end of his life, but he’d zoom back half a century to the Depression, where he sold soap for a penny in Boston as a five-year-old. Ideas flew in and out of his mind, “like when the popcorn kernels were leaping and popping everywhere.”Beside Camels, Aqua Velva, the Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox, Gup’s favorite pop totem was Jiffy Pop, created by Frederick C. Mennen in 1958. It’s still sold today in nostalgia aisles in grocery markets all around the country. Pre-microwaves, of course. Gup took me and my brothers and sisters camping every summer to Cape Cod’s Nickerson State Park. We’d sit by the fire, and Jiffy Pop would be percolating in the foil and Gup would ask if there were any mere mortals who wish to be popped in his studio audience tonight. A game show was always brewing and Gup was the affable, jocular host, playing to invisible cameras, or doing the soft shoe to entertain his family. A simple, black Goody comb was his only mic. To me, he was more in the line of a Jack Paar kind of host, or at least so my eldest relatives insisted.“Anyone up for the hot seat?” he’d ask us.
My brothers and sisters would shout for it passionately ever since we were three, “Pick me for this Gup, okay Come on, Gup, choose me for once, okay?”“On this superb summer evening, we’ll examine a memory together, you and me,” he’d begin. “Toss it up high and explore it along its peaks, valleys, and grooves.”“And?” “We’ll consider the melancholy only briefly tonight,” he said. “For we must focus on lightness and beauty and wild fun, for those are consistently the worthiest truths. Now who wants to start popping with Gup?” * * *Before we arrived at the hotel in Truro, Aimee and I had passed through New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old whaling port that’s now filled with cannabis distributors and old textile mills. We were flying past in our 2016 Cobalt-blue Ford Escape although I imagined it was a throw-back wagon with exterior wood paneling, something perhaps borrowed from The Brady Bunch in the seventies. For some reason I heard the words Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! in the sky, in the sea, above us, below us, swirling and whirling left and right like we’d each somehow submerged ourselves underwater to take part in an officially sanctioned classic sitcom/LSD trip. As if the old Merry Prankster himself, Dr. Timothy Leary, had sprung up from deep down in his grave to guide us through a sweet and safe ride.