We called Grandpa Lytle Popo.
And Popo could tell the h**l out of a story.
Popo had my height and build. Freckles dotted his fair skin, and his cheeks were usually rosy. He owned a big smile and louder laugh and when you sat with him he had a magical presence that made time cease to exist.
Whenever Popo had a story, he’d sit and smile for a few seconds before starting -- like he was slow-playing letting you in on a secret. His stories were long, and they never started or stopped in the same place. Truth for Popo mattered less than the story’s soul, and he’d laugh a little to himself as he spoke -- relishing the moment and the attention.
Even if you’d heard the story a dozen times, you’d find yourself laughing, too. Then the story would end, and Popo’s big, charming smile would come out.
A friend once told me: ‘I’d sit with your grandpa and he’d start talking and sip his drinks and we’d just laugh and laugh. And then he’d stop talking and look at me and smile. It felt like I was the only person in the world to him. I loved your grandpa.’
Popo was special. And he kept a keg of Stroh’s in his basement.
Life is full of conundrums. One is certainly that this big smiling, bigger laughing, cocktail-loving charmer I called Popo was also one of the fastest men in the world in the mid-1940s.
In college, Popo held the 100-yard and 220-yard sprint records at Bowling Green State University. A newspaper said he ran like the wind. Popo even bested future Olympic 100-meter gold medalist Harrison Dillard in some of their races.
And while World War II plus life’s duties intervened and Popo never tried for the 1948 Olympics, he did once get an “A” on a high school book report.
And it’s his retelling of this book report that ignited my love of storytelling.
Here’s what Popo said about that book report (Quotations, of course, are used loosely….)
“I was in high school, and the teacher said we had to do a report on a book of our choosing. And, well, I never cared much for school, so I just let her ramble and never paid any attention.
A week passed and some kids started asking about my report. ‘Kelly,’ they said (Popo and I share a name, by the way), ‘can we see your report?”
‘You’ll see it when you see it,’ I’d say and tell them to p**s off.
Then I got to class one day and all the damn kids had their damn reports written up and ready to go. Apparently, we were reading them aloud, which was trouble because I hadn’t read a damn thing.
One-by-one the kids started taking their turns reading, and I just sat there and thought: Well, Kelly, you really screwed yourself now. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
“Kelly, you’re up,” the teacher finally said.
I paused in my chair for a second. Then I stood and took my time getting to the front of the class. As I was walking, the teacher saw I didn’t have a report with me.
“Kelly, where’s your report?” She asked.
“The story is in here,” I said and pointed to my heart.
“Wonderful,” she said.
I reached the front, grabbed a piece of chalk, and scribbled on the chalkboard:
“Over the Top”
A Novel by Guy Impy
I turned to face the class. Stared at the floor for a second. Then raised my head. Grinned. And started speaking.
I told them about a boy from Omaha or Oklahoma or the farms outside Chicago. About how he rescued his sister once from a fire in the family barn, and how his mom died from pneumonia while his dad struggled to keep up their small store.
I talked about how the boy came of age in the early 1900’s, laboring with his father to make ends meet. I told them how he went off to the Great War where he sacrificed all of himself. And how his small town remembered him with a parade and a salute.
I looked out at the class when I was done. Wiped my damp brow with the back of my hand and said: “That, my friends, is Over the Top. A novel by Guy Impy.”
The class roared.
The teacher gave me an “A”.
And I never had the heart to tell her I made up the whole damn thing -- the title, the author, the story. All of it.”
Popo would finish talking and smile. Anyone listening would laugh. I remember marveling at Popo and how his warmth captured imaginations and attention. I remember hoping one day to the same.
Friends- the next time I heard this story, the hero survived the war and his mother never had pneumonia.
Like I said, Popo never let the truth get in the way of a real story.
We love you.
And we’ll see you when we see you.
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