Editor’s note: for the next two weeks we’ll be running the best of our This Ordinary Day pieces. We’ve enjoyed working with so many great writers and wonderful people and felt it was high time to take a look back at some of what they’ve brought us. If you’d like to see more pieces, please take a trip over to our archives page — it’ll be well worth your time.

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My grandpa is awesome. Ten things you should know about him:

1. His name is Ennis Hugh (or E.H.) but nobody knows him as such. Ask anyone in tiny Elkhart, Kansas (population: 2,200), and they’ll say, yes, of course they know Shorty McCarter. He’s almost certainly fixed a sink, a driveway or built an addition to the house of just about everyone in town, all without any of them knowing that “Shorty” isn’t his God-given name. Nobody knows how it got started, but it stuck. He introduces himself as Shorty, he answers his phone as Shorty and his private contracting business is operated under the title of E.H. “Shorty” McCarter.

Bonus fact: Shorty despises the name Ennis with the sort of venom that most people hold back for terrorism, taxes or childhood bullies. Nobody knows why.

2. He met my grandma playing pinball when they were 17. How sickeningly sweet of a cliché is that? And to top it off, she beat him and he fell in love. I grew up reciting that story. Now that I know what I know about teenagers (despite the era) I’m convinced it was probably not as innocent as it sounds, but I’ll keep the charade going. They met playing pinball. She beat him and he fell in love. Nice story.

3. From his five kids, he has12 grandkids and, to this point, eight great-grandkids. They all call him Papa Shorty. And every one of them feels special every time they see him. He’s always had this way of sounding pleasantly surprised when one of us calls him that makes us feel like we’re each his favorite. He’s always found small ways of surprising us individually — doing nice things that we’re convinced he doesn’t do for the others. Each of us thinks we’re his favorite, and I’m pretty sure we’re all right.

4. He’s spent all but a handful of his 84 years living in the southwest Kansas, Oklahoma/Texas panhandle area. Those few years were on the West Coast, which I’ll explain later. He defines that area and that area defines him. He’s never been a man who needs a lot to get by, and high society is lost on him, a trait I adore. He’s not country, but he fits in a small town. He’s the type of person that everyone in town knows, respects and depends on. If he’s done any work on your house in the last 20 years and you have a problem, you can call him any time of day and he’ll be there to fix it. For most of my life, I’ve walked into hardware stores, cafes and grocery stores and seen first-hand the sort of clout he carries in a town where hard work and loyalty still means something.

5. He’s a hardcore baseball fan. He’s kept a running baseball bet with my Uncle Kent since the mid-70s, and neither of them are sure who’s winning. His favorite sports teams are the San Diego Padres, Atlanta Braves and Green Bay Packers. His favorite athletes of all-time are Fran Tarkenton, Brett Favre and Greg Maddux. He respects toughness above all else, and he’s not afraid to pull for an underdog. His prowess as a sports fan in general heavily influenced the way I’ve watched sports and cheered for teams. He says Maddux is the best athlete he ever saw.

6. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War in the 1950s, but up until two years ago, had never talked about his service to anyone in my family. He wasn’t ashamed of anything he had done, and he wasn’t scarred by the experience. Most of his service was uneventful sailing and he didn’t see a lot of conflict, but he lost a few friends and always considered himself lucky to make it back. He never saw the point of talking about it — it was a responsibility he had, and he performed his duty. End of story. He spent almost three years away from his family and wife, Fayetta, and the sense of community he felt while he was stationed in San Diego is what makes him a Padres fan today. He’s never forgotten that, even though he hasn’t been back since.

7. He stopped smoking the day he learned his oldest child, my mom, was pregnant with my sister, making him a grandfather for the first time. In exchange, I never started. Well, there were lots of reasons for that, but his dedication to stop helped me make up my mind. It’s a small choice in life, the decision not to smoke, and I don’t look down on anyone who does, but when someone you grow up admiring does or doesn’t do something, it makes you want to do the same. More than the decision not to smoke, I think his action inspired me more to value the well-being of family more than anything else.

8. He retired from a natural gas company in the 1980s and started a business doing the thing he had always been best at: building and fixing things. The man can fix anything. He can drive around Elkhart tell all sorts of stories about who has lived where, what they did for a living and where their kids live now. Between the time I was four and 14, my favorite place to be was out on a job site “working” with Papa Shorty. Of course, that mostly consisted of keeping myself busy cleaning up supplies, exploring the area or occasionally helping out by measuring boards for him. As I got older, he gave me a little more responsibility, but never more than I wanted. Being out there with him was never about work, but about having an OK time and keeping him company.

The summer after I graduated from high school, I went to work for him as an actual employee. He treated me as such. Told me what to do, got mad at me when I messed something up, and didn’t talk to me any differently than any of the other workers. The only difference was that at the end of the day, I was the only one he was talking to when he’d walk over and say, “How about dinner?”

Now I wish that after a hard day, or when things aren’t going great, I could go out to a job site and help him in whatever way he needs it.

9. He’s still as awesome as ever. I went out to Elkhart for Thanksgiving and I took my niece and nephew out to his job site. He worked in a bitterly cold storage shed that was 5 miles away from anything else, wiring a 30-foot garage door. I was proud and a little ashamed that it was something I couldn’t have done in a million years, and yet there he was, at his age, getting it done.

10. He’s my idol. In that summer that I worked for him, he taught me a tough lesson about manual labor and what it means to work hard. He told me at the end of the summer that he hoped I would never want to go back and work for him. I knew then and I know now that he didn’t mean it as a slight against my abilities or my work ethic; he just wanted to see me get through with school and make something of myself.

Occasionally I feel guilty about the fact that I went to college and got a desk job in academia. It’s so far removed from the blue-collar roots my grandpa raised me from. But anytime I start to think anything like that, I think of how proud of me I know my hero is, and that keeps me going.

Whatever his motivation is, he keeps his priorities in line. When my grandma got sick and needed to relocate for dialysis treatments, my grandpa began commuting two hours each day to keep his business afloat. He took care of her every need and never complained. He put family first, and continues to do so now that she’s been gone for 10 years. It’s the little things that make the difference. For example, there’s nothing he’ll ever be able to tell me that will make me believe that the excuse he used the day after Thanksgiving this year, that he needed to run to town to get some parts, was legit. He could tell his great-grandkids were getting bored and were ready to go home. With a fake look of disgust that I recognized from my own childhood, he came down from his ladder in the freezing shed and asked us an old familiar question:

“How about dinner?”

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