We've got our first proper snowy day of the season in Cedar Falls today. Walking home I was enjoying the pleasant juxtaposition of a warm from walking body with a slightly snow numbed face. About half way home I caught a wiff of pipe smoke from a car waiting at a stop sign. This all combined to make me think about my Grandfather, Joseph Ebeling.

I was taken back to my days as a college student at NIACC when I would often go to my grandparents house for lunch. I'd always been close with my grandmother, but felt distanced from my grandpa. Not that he was a cold person, in fact he could be one of the most outgoing and friendly people in my entire family. It was just that I often felt that, as a kid, I simply wasn't all that interesting to him. However, by the time college rolled around, I began to have interests that coincided with his and in those last few years of his life I felt a connection beyond anything I had ever thought I'd have as a child.

He would have loved a day like this. His grumping love for the change of seasons made him the penultimate Iowan. Add in the fact that the news is filled with terrifying, yet interesting stories and you have the perfect day for the perfect lunch and conversation.

That lunch would be a very German fried potatoes and sausage with sauerkraut, which Grandpa would wash down with a nice big mug of strong black tea. The conversation would rage, and I would alternate between listening intently to his passionate opinions (even when they veered into the really strange) and voicing my own (often strange) perspectives. The sharing of this family food and this excited discussion of the state of the world brought us together. Sometimes he would play some old swing, jazz or big band records, other times I would patch my CD Walkman into their stereo and give him a taste of whatever it was that I was into at the time. He seemed most fond of the early techno, particularly 808 State "because it's got horns... aint music unless it's got horns!"

So I made this lunch and enjoyed it greatly. My political leanings have certainly moved away from those of my grandfather in some ways, seeing as I am more or less a Libertarian and he professed to be Democrat through and through. In the end, he was an entirely different breed of liberal than what we have today. He was far too American to even dabble in socialism, with a rugged individualist aspect that made him seem Reaganesque at times, though I NEVER would have mentioned that to him.

So I sat and read some essays on the Cato Institute site and a bit on Reason, and thought about how much I wish I could spar just one more time with my grandfather, to share this food again. Our politics may not match much anymore, but I have no doubt that he would still love to talk about it all, and that he would still be proud of me for always trying to understand things a bit more.