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Pete Anderson. Born 1924, Carthage, Texas. Veteran of World War II. Husband of Joyce. Father, grandfather, great-grandfather. Salesman. Storyteller. The man who never talked about himself — until now.
Chapter One
I was born in a town so small it didn't make most maps. Carthage, Texas. 1924. We didn't have much — and that's not me being modest, that's just the truth. Dirt floors in the house I grew up in. My daddy worked whatever he could find and my mama stretched every dollar until it hollered.
I didn't know we were poor until I got old enough to notice other people weren't living like us. By then it didn't matter much — we had each other and we had pride and those two things will get you further than money ever will.
I want you to know that. Whatever you have or don't have — pride costs nothing and quits on nobody.
He died when I was eleven. Farming accident. One morning he was there and by supper he wasn't and nothing was ever quite right after that.
I don't say that for sympathy — I say it because it's the truest thing about me. Every decision I ever made, I was either trying to make him proud or trying to fill a hole he left. I never fully figured out which one.
What I know is this — if you have a father, you tell him what he means to you. You don't wait. You don't assume he knows. You say it out loud while you still can. I never got that chance. Don't you waste yours.
I enlisted in '42. Eighteen years old and I thought I knew what the world was. I did not.
I won't go into everything I saw over there — some of it I've never spoken about and some of it I've tried to forget. What I'll tell you is this: the men I served with were the finest human beings I've ever known. We were just boys from Texas and Georgia and Ohio and we held each other up when there was nothing else to hold onto.
Most of them didn't make it home. I think about them every single day. I think about why I got to come back and they didn't. I've spent my whole life trying to make that mean something. I hope I have. I hope what I built here — this family, these lives — I hope that's what it meant.
Chapter Two
I came home from the war in '45 and went to a church social because my mama made me go. I didn't want to be there. I was sitting in the back trying to disappear and this girl walked in wearing a yellow dress.
Her name was Joyce. She had dark hair and she laughed at something her friend said and I thought — that's the sound I want to hear for the rest of my life. I sat up straight for the first time in three years.
I introduced myself that same night. She told me later she thought I was too forward. She married me anyway. Best sale I ever made.
Our first was born in April of '49. A boy. They put him in my arms in that hospital and I just stood there like a fool crying. Joyce was exhausted and I was the one crying — that tells you something about me.
Here's the thing nobody tells you about becoming a father — you realize immediately that you have no idea what you're doing and you realize it doesn't matter because you'd die for this person you've known for thirty seconds. That's it. That's the whole job. You'd die for them. Everything else is just figuring out how to show it.
I didn't always show it the right way. I was gone a lot. The road was my office and sales was my calling and I believed — I still believe — I was building something for them every mile I drove. But I missed things. I know I missed things. If I could do one thing over, I'd have been home more. I'd have been there more.
I'll tell you the secret to sales. You ready? You actually have to care. That's it. That's the whole thing. Most salesmen are performing. They've got their pitch and their close and they're running a play. People can feel that. People aren't stupid.
I cared about every person I sat across from. I cared whether what I was selling was going to help them. And when it wasn't — I told them. I walked away from more sales than most men ever made because I wasn't going to sell somebody something that wasn't right for them. And then I'd come back a year later and they'd buy twice as much because they trusted me.
Trust is the only thing in this world you can't manufacture. You either have it or you don't. Spend your life earning it and you'll never go hungry.
Being a grandfather is better than anything. You get all the good parts and none of the worry — well, that's not true, you still worry, but it's different. With your kids you're so busy trying to keep them alive and do right by them that you miss half of it. With grandkids you slow down. You actually look at them.
I used to sit with the grandchildren on my lap and just study their faces and think — this is what it was all for. All of it. The war and the hard years and the long nights out on the road. The dirt floor house. The daddy I lost too soon. It was all for this.
Every one of you. It was all for every one of you.
Chapter Three
Not money. Money runs out. Not advice — nobody takes advice anyway, you have to live your way into understanding things.
What I want to leave behind is this: I want you to know where you came from. I want you to know that the people who built this family did it with their hands and their guts and not much else. We came from nothing and we made something and you are what we made. That's not nothing. That's everything.
I want you to know that hard times don't last. I've had some hard times in my life that I was sure were going to finish me. None of them did. You come from people who don't quit. Remember that when it gets hard — and it will get hard.
I loved your grandmother every single day from the moment I saw her in that yellow dress until the day she left me. Fifty-three years. We had our hard times — don't let anybody tell you a long marriage is easy, it's the hardest thing I ever did and the best thing I ever did, and those two facts are not unrelated.
That kind of love is possible. It's not luck. It's a choice you make every morning. You choose to show up. You choose to stay. You choose them even when choosing them is hard.
Don't settle for less than that. Don't you dare settle for less than that. Find someone who makes you feel like I felt standing in the back of that church social in 1945. The world is hard enough. Find someone who makes the hard parts worth it.
Four sealed envelopes
Pete recorded these separately — not as part of his interview, but alone. For specific moments he knew his family would face. Each one sealed until it was needed.
I knew it. I always knew it.
From the time you were small I could see something in you — a stubbornness, a fire — that was going to do something remarkable with this world. Whatever today is, you earned it. Every bit of it. Don't let anybody tell you different and don't you start thinking it was luck. It wasn't luck. It was you.
Go celebrate. You come from people who know how to celebrate.
And call your mother.
Listen to me.
I lost my daddy at eleven years old. I went to a war I didn't choose and saw things I'll never speak of. I came home and built a life with nothing but my hands and my word and the woman in the yellow dress. Hard times and I are old acquaintances. I know what hard looks like.
And I know this: it passes. Every hard thing I survived, it passed. Not always quickly. Not always without scars. But it passed.
We don't quit. That's not what we do. That's not who we are. We get up. We get dressed. We go back out there. That's all there is to it.
I love you. Now get up.
There are things I saw that I never told you I saw. Let me tell you now.
The time you were small and you stood up for that other kid when everyone else walked away. I heard about that. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to make a fuss. I should have made a fuss.
The way you handled yourself when things fell apart that one time. The way you kept your chin up. I watched that and thought — there it is. That's the thing I was trying to put in you. It took.
The time you called me just to talk. No reason. No occasion. Just to hear my voice. I want you to know what that meant to an old man who spent too many years on the road and not enough years at home. You called and I answered and we talked about nothing and it was the best conversation I ever had.
I am so proud of you. Not for anything you've done — for who you are. There's a difference. And you are something.
Pete designated his son as Chronicle Keeper — the person who holds the Seal Word and decides when the If I'm Gone recording is released. The Keeper received the Seal Word in person, spoken quietly, the afternoon Pete finished recording.
When the time comes, Pete's son will enter the Seal Word and Pete's voice will arrive — all at once — to everyone Pete loved.
This could be yours
Ten minutes of guided questions. A lifetime of stories. Everything you'd want the people you love to know — sealed forever. There's no wrong way to do it. There's only doing it or not doing it.
Grandpa's Chronicle is a demonstration. All recordings are written for illustrative purposes.