My Great Grandfather: The Tester

Grandfather Erwin kept a jar of candy tantalizingly on the top of the kitchen counter.

The sweets inside the jar tantalized the many children that would come to his house.
Colorful hard candy, peppermint sticks, gobstoppers.
Any child's dream
The best part: the jar wasn't off limits

He never handed out a single piece of candy























Erwin Henderson was a carpenter. He and his wife Twila built their own home in Downy, Idaho. A small, cozy, wooden house with yellow wallpaper and a flowerbed by the green door. Erwin had a large woodshed where he would do his work. Tables, chairs, and his signature work- building blocks for the neighborhood kids

He was a practical man who worked hard
With calluses that never softened
With wrinkles that were wooden
With a mind was sharp as a blade

And he would sit in his straight backed chair, a product of his hands And he would watch the jar

And he would watch the children
Silently preforming his test

For candy out of reach is still obtainable to a clever whit

No chairs or stools in the kitchen- yet to the innovative candy seeker a world of possibility of open
For the innovative candy seeker knows that candy out of reach becomes possible when the towel drawer below is pulled out and used as a stool

The innovative candy seeker knows the cloth under the jar can be pulled

The innovative candy seeker gets the candy



Year after year he watched his great grandchildren preform the test.

Some passed. Some failed.

He never told us who.


But Great Grandfather Erwin was gone just before I could be tested. The jar of sweets, locked away

All that was left was the small house, dozens of straight backed chairs, and boxes of wooden building blocks