My tree was a stunted mimosa in front of my grandparent's small house, a ceramic bird bath next to the tree and often filled with pink flower clusters.

As a young man Grandpa worked anywhere he could to make do for Grandma, the house, for the children to come.  Living in the Bootheel of Missouri in the 30's, he, strong and lucky, sometimes worked as a logger.  Most of the land was cleared and drained by then, but there were still large patches of bald cypress, oak, and elm.

I say he was lucky because he came out alive.  Workers' safety wasn't even an afterthought back then, and caps and hats were nothing but targets for even small twigs with enough end-weight to bring them down straight from the heights. 

That's what happened to my character's grandfather, an oak branch breaking everything in its path before crumpling the man's body.  Grandpa heard his last words.

Here's the "I am" I wrote from my character's POV as he stands in the room where his grandfather resided in 1930:

     I am in the room where my grandfather slept at night for a summer in 1930 working as a logger in the Bootheel.  Mrs. Slater stands beside me, a good woman, a walking Norman Rockwell painting of a grandmother.  I wonder what she looked like back then, if she was pretty, if Grandfather took a shine to her.  No, Tig would have known, and she wouldn't have married a man with a wandering eye.  Why am I thinking about infidelity?  I didn't know the man.  That's why I'm here.  I wonder how I'll look at this room after I talk with Mr. Slater.  I hope my grandfather was a good man even here.  I don't want to leave with any other thought about him.