Where does he find the energy

Yesterday was quite the day for Grandpa. He not only had time to mentor his grandson, but also saved the life of our neighbor, Mrs. Maggie Renner.

Let's start with the mentoring first. After church, Belinda made a wonderful spaghetti dinner -- complete with individual Ceasar salads and crunchy garlic toast.

For Grandpa, at least, the toast must have been a little too crunchy. Or at least one side of his toast seemed a little too dark. So, like the Depression-survivor that he his, he didn't throw away his toast. Instead, he salvaged it by taking his knife and scraping away some of the crust that he determined was too dark for human consumption.

Now, I know it's probably been years since many of my faithful readers have seen anyone scrape toast, but let me remind you that it's a messy job. You can imagine dark crumbs flying just about anywhere.

I could see my bride sitting across the table doing a slow burn as her father-in-law made a backhanded compliment about her cooking. While 99.9 percent of the meal was great, he made a not-so subtle point about the toast.

A couple of minutes later, much to my chagrin, I saw Grandpa's principle student -- one Scott Willis -- do the same thing. He took his knife and scraped his toast, making probably more of a mess than his Grandfather -- as Scott is a rookie when it comes to toast scraping. In fact, I venture to say that Scott had neither seen anyone scrape their toast nor had he ever done it before. But seeing his mentor scrape his toast was all the impetus Scott needed to scrape his own.

And so a tradition has now been set. In 80 years when Grandpa, Belinda and Steve are all dead and pushing up daisies, Scott will be carrying on the tradition by scraping his toast in front of a grandson who will then think, "Wow, what a novel idea...why don't women think of these things."

However, Grandpa's day was really just beginning. A couple hours later and Grandpa was taking his walk in the 11-degree temperature afternoon down the middle of second street to the highway. On his way home, he encountered Mrs. Renner, who is a couple of years his senior. It seems she heard the water running in her toilet and thought that it was going to run over. So she left her house to get some help.

However, like other people about her age, her eyesight is dim at best and her memory isn't quite up to snuff. So she left the house and thought she had locked herself out. Now what to do?

Never fear, here comes Grandpa sauntering back up the street to save this freezing damsel in distress and escort her to our home.

Belinda -- the lady in the kitchen who burnt the toast -- was ready to spring into action. Did the neighbor need an ambulance? No. Water? No! She just needed to get a hold of someone who can get her back into her house and maybe shut off the water, if it's still running.

Well, the daughter who lives with her works at one of the darn box stores where you can call all day but you can't get a hold of a live person, only voice mail. So through Belinda's persistence, Maggie coughed up the name of another daughter who was called and responded to the emergency.

About an hour later, the second daughter called. Her mom was back in her home and she wanted to thank us for the hospitality and also to maybe get a better idea of just what transpired.

My answer was..."You probably need to ask the angels because I don't think either of the two primary parties are going to remember what happened."

This answer, however, was eclipsed by the one that 88-year-old hero (and part-time mentor) Willis Burns Van Dyke uttered. "Women have a harder time than men when it comes to getting old."

Chivalry isn't dead. Here's a toast to old men!