The Founding Fathers Won't Leave me Alone (PART 2)

 I returned to work on Wednesday still curious as to what our Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and Constitution seeking patron, Grandpa Sam, was really up to. Unfortunately, Mrs. A had no new news about it.

"Have you called, MR. ROB?" I asked. Seemed a good idea, since the gentleman had initially mistaken me for the college librarian Mr. Rob when he first phoned us.

Mrs. A phoned Mr. Rob and learned that Grandpa Sam had indeed called and asked for those documents. Mr. Rob had told him he would make the appropriate copies and have them waiting at the desk for him. I doubt Mr. Rob would even have charged the man, but Grandpa Sam never came to collect them.

Beyond that, the only news was that most of the local libraries were gathering the materials in advance of Grandpa Sam's appearance just so they'd be ready. He'd really put the fear of God into them over the matter. In some ways, this is probably good, as it's always a good idea to be on guard against folks actively trying to find fault with you. However, from all indications, Grandpa Sam wasn't finding any fault with anyone, so he was just making up fault at his whim and lying about it to Arkansas sentator's offices and who knows how many other such places. It made me angry.

We still had no further clue as to who Grandpa Sam was, exactly, but what we did have was the contact information for his church. I decided once again to use it, hoping to get in touch with the church's minister so I could alert him to what was going on.

I phoned the chuch's number but no one answered. I did get an answering machine, so I left a message for the pastor to phone us at the "liberry" when he received the message.

Hours passed with no call.

Around 4, I began to get antsy over this. Being a Wednesday and the church being a Baptist church, I thought it was pretty likely they would have a Wednesday night service or prayer meeting. This would probably be Grandpa Sam's earliest opportunity to start spreading more of his false rumors. I didn't like the idea that these rumors would go uncontested, so I got out the phone book and decided to phone the pastor at home.

When the pastor answered, I explained who I was and apologized for phoning him at home. I told him that I wanted to alert him to a situation involving a member of his congregation that I thought he might need to know about. Then I told him the story of what had occurred on Tuesday afternoon, making sure to point out the gentleman's claim that he was an associate pastor and bus-driver for this pastor's church. When I finished, the pastor thanked me for bringing this to his attention. He asked if the gentleman we'd dealt with was a tall gray-haired man and I confirmed it. He then told me the man's name and said that, from what he understood, this gentleman was now suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's and that this was pretty typical behavior from him. The pastor also pointed out that the man was no longer the driver of the church's bus, nor had he actually been to a service in quite some time.

Now it all made sense. I know, from having had a grandmother who suffered from Alzheimers, how confused and forgetful that disease can make a person. For instance, my grandmother entirely forgot most of her close relatives, once threatened to blow up a hospital if they didn't let her leave and even punched her doctor full in the face. And much like Grandpa Sam, you could hold a perfectly normal conversation with her for quite some time and would never have known anything was amiss unless she dropped something into the middle of it that didn't make any sense or called you by someone else's name. I could easily see how Grandpa Sam could phone all of the libraries and then somehow delude himself into thinking they weren't helping him.

I apologized once again for phoning the pastor at home, but he assured me it was not a problem and that I was right to call in this case.

The situation still made me sad, though. Was it really better to learn that Grandpa Sam had hassled us and made us look bad not from malice or some kind of hidden agenda, but because he was delusional? At least from the malice angle, we would have had something to rail against. But delusion? That's just too sad.