Bill Cosgriff's temper

Me Pops had a reputation for not losing his temper. That wasn't quite accurate; as a son who many  times (and quite deservedly) felt it, he had a temper. But what he did was control it. That's the important thing. It's not only good manners, it gives your temper greater impact when you do let it loose.

One day as we were visiting my parents my oldest son, who was maybe seven at the time, came up to me clearly stunned. He looked up and said, as incredulously as a seven year old might, "Paw Paw yelled at me."

"Well, you shouldn't have done what you did," I responded simply. To this day I don't know what it was that brought it on, but it made an indelible impression on my son.

Pops himself insisted that he had a bad temper. One day I asked him, given that his dad, me Grandpa Joe, had a very bad temper, how the two of them got along so well, how Dad was able to check his anger when dealing with him. "I figured he was here first. I was the one who had to stand down," Dad explained. Now, Dad would still get mad at his Dad. I worked with and around both and saw it a time or two. The interesting thing was Joe would back off when he saw Pops was that upset.

Seeing as Joe, who did not take care of himself at all, made it to 86 I always assumed Dad would make it farther. But so it goes.

Happy 84th birthday Pops.

Dad and Jake the Snake (not the wrestler)

Me Pops could hold his temper very well. He held it often when he would have been within his rights to lose it. Still, when he let it go, you were impressed. He let it go once on a guy known as Jake the Snake. And not the wrestler.

I'm not sure exactly how Jake earned his moniker, but I have a suspicion. He argued everything. If a part was available in red he wanted to know why it wasn't scarlet. If told cables were readily available in twenty-five foot increments he'd cry he had to have one thirty foot long, nothing else would do. Yet most of all he argued price. He argued price until the day Pops was sick of it.

Jake came in for some ten dollar part. "Ten dollars," Dad told him.

"You give it to me for seven," Jake countered, demanding rather than asking.

That set Pops off. He slammed the part back into its bin and yelled, and I mean yelled, "Get out of my Shop. I don't want your business!"

"You throwing me out?" Jake asked, appalled. "I can buy you out ten times over!"

Pops barked back like a drill sergeant, "The Hell you can, 'cause I'm not selling. Now get out of my Shop!" Jake stomped out, and Dad stomped into his office.

You could get away with a lot with Pops. But you could still push him too far.