Grandpa Walter & Joyce's House

I used to ride my bike past my grandfather's house with Pam wondering if he belonged to the Yacht Club so I could go to the dances she went to; he didn't. Once George and I stayed there when Mom's house had too many visitors to overnight for the holidays.
The house used to be an old store and Joyce's uncle next door gave it to her when she came over with her four children to avoid the War in England where her husband was a British bomber pilot. He died after the war in the Pacific at age 40yrs on his way to a conference in Australia. His youngest son, Bob, would die in the same ocean at the same age off the coast of the big island while on the Holoholo ship that the University of Hawaii hired for their oceanographic trips.
Joyce liked my first husband Bob alot, and she used to make old fashions for us to drink in the living room at cocktail hour. She told us stories about her father being an Oxford donne and her making a foe par about the black hole of Calcutta when she spoke to one of his students. Joyce went to Mount Holyoke as did her daughters; Walter went to Dartmouth where he met my grandmother Cindy who was a nursing student. Cindy had daddy and Walter got a silver trophy for having the first grandchild of the class of '29. Now I have the trophy, it's hidden somewhere in a drawer as it is sterling silver.
My grandfather didn't talk much to me; I wondered if he even knew who I was. After dinner at his house, he congratulated me on my nomination to the National Honor Society. He said he knew how hard it was for our side of the family to measure up to his second wife, Joyce's family.
He used to bribe me to stop smoking but that didn't work. I stopped when I was much older and diagnosed with bladder cancer.Pam and I were in a car outside of the old brick Duxbury High school when someone offered me a cigarette. That was one of the worst choices I made in my life. Smoking that cigarette in the car in the parking lot at age 14yrs.