Gran Turn
While I sit in one of the coffee shops near my home in Los Angeles, I’m occupied with these thoughts
It’s something I've been meaning to write about for quite some time now. Rather than something, it’s someone.
Turner Suter is a throwback to the days when a man could build and fix anything with his hands and drove a truck because he needed it.
A day when family was number one and providing for them was always the priority, no matter how back breaking the work.
A time when men shot guns, worked the land, hunted, smoked, and drank, not because it made them cool, but because it served a purpose in the world they lived.
Their bodies tough and hands callused, and if they didn’t have nothing nice to tell you they wouldn’t tell you anything at all.
If there was a problem that needed to be solved, they solved it, man to man, and went on about their business. No grudges. No guff.
Gran Turn isn’t quite the same as he used to be. He doesn’t enjoy his Wild Turkey and he’s long since stopped smoking his pipe.
His grey GMC pick-up’s been sold because he doesn’t do much driving these days and the most pressing issue on his agenda is “what’s for supper”.
Time has inevitably taken its toll on the man, but no matter the effects on his body, his mind remains the same.
He lives in a barn he’s converted into a house on property his family has owned for the better part of a century in Joelton.
Its acres upon acres of untouched land, minus the converted barn Turner lives in with his eldest daughter, Suzanne. There’s a suburban looking home his middle daughter, Lauren, built across the way.
There are a few four wheelers for riding around the property and both homes are accompanied by above ground pools. You have to admit, nothing says the South like an above ground pool.
There’s a horseshoe pit, beanbag toss, and a few clubs and golf balls lying around for killing time. But my favorite part of the property is the pond and the rickety dock we sit on for hours at a time and cast aimlessly. Not really saying much and mostly catching the same fish over and over again.
There’s something captivating to me about the drive up 65 to the Joelton exit. Its ethereal and majestic, with rolling hills, rock lined highways, grey sky’s and forests of barren trees as far as the eye can see. It paints a vivid picture that I can only describe as Winter’s Bone. At least at this time of year.
It’s not often I get a chance to visit Gran Turn, but when I do he greets me with the same warmth and excitement as the time before. I can’t say I’ve ever seen another human being express a calmer, more contained excitement. He doesn’t bat an eye and doesn’t flinch a muscle, but the look in his eyes lets you know exactly what he’s feeling without saying a word.
He’s sitting in his cubby. Rocking slowly in his recliner with his dog Max, who runs back and forth from the living room, to his lap, out the doggy door and back. Turner’s cubby has all a southern man could desire: a toilet, a bunk for sleeping, a TV, a guitar, pictures of his grandkids and great grand kids, a jar full of peanut butter crackers, a homemade shotgun that he’s converted into a hand cannon, a collection of amazingly dapper hats, a few canes, a small collection of ornate stained glass window hangings and an oddly placed wooden Pelican that Gran Turn carved himself out of one solid piece of wood he picked up one day while taking a walk. That Pelican now sits on the nightstand by my bed and is one of my most prized possessions.
No matter how far apart my visits are, as soon as I take a seat next to him, he points to a bookshelf to his right and says “ there’s something over there for ya boy”. It never fails, he’s got an assortment of gas station cigars waiting for me. It’s one of the vices I still maintain, and one of the little things I look forward to most when seeing Turner. It’s a little something that only we share. Apparently he know’s I like cheap cigars and cheap women.
I can’t say I talk very much when we visit. Mostly I just listen. I listen to the way he talks, the straight forward manner in which he thinks, observes, and addresses any number of topics. But more than that, I listen to him tell me stories about his life. Stories that remind me men like him knew a little something about everything and almost everything they learned was self taught or just plain common sense. There’s no preoccupation with status or material possessions, but rather being happy and spending time with your family and friends. Luxury to him was the day they got electricity.
I guess you could consider Gran Turn’s an escape for me. A place I can go to get away from the constant ringing, buzzing and dinging of my de”vices”; a place without all the big city distractions.
But more than an escape, it’s a reminder of who I am and where I’m from, what really matters, and what I can do without. A reminder that the type a man I strive to be doesn’t really exist anymore, that it’s ok to turn off my phone and enjoy doing absolutely nothing with my family, and most importantly, that cool isn’t something you strive to be, its just something you are when you’re being yourself.
The greatest piece of advise Turner Suter ever gave me was “Where your own Hat”, and that’s exactly what he did
.