Love and Mischief

Tomie dePaola hit a homerun when he discussed his grandmothers -- but he had great success with grandfather stories, as well.

"Tom" shows us dePaola's Irish grandfather, who works as a butcher. "We were named after each other," says Grandpa (bizarrely). "So you will call me Tom, and I will call you Tommy."

This is a symbiotic relationship. Tom gets noisy--this is easy to imagine--and his wife becomes exasperated. "Tom Downey, you are louder than all the Irish," she says, and this is Tom's cue to retreat to his man-cave, a room in the cellar. Little Tommy offers him admiring company.

In turn, Tom teaches Tommy how to sift ashes in an old-fashioned furnace. Tom also teaches Tommy about patience: "If you bury this chicken head in your garden, then wait three days without looking, you'll get a full chicken." Tom knows that the three-day part will be impossible for Tommy, and so.....lessons learned.

The gentle story builds until Tom offers severed chicken claws to Tommy. "If you pull on the tendon, the claw opens up." Inevitably, Tom takes the claws to school, paints them with nail-polish, then waves them crazily at his teacher (who responds with a Time-Out session).

There is no major moral -- except that Tommy clearly feels thankful to his grandfather for getting him involved in such an outrageous endeavor. We see the two scheming together, once again, as the screen fades to black.

This is just a love note to a nutty man, and also a miraculous way of "exhuming" a childhood memory. You're right there, with Tommy, as he smuggles his chicken claws into the school.

Great writing.

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