Now and then while watching a TV show that is not all that engaging, I will unconsciously begin to twiddle my thumbs, first clockwise then counterclockwise. It’s a habit I picked up from my Danish grandfather who, in idle moments or when he was sitting at the table waiting for a tardy dinner guest to arrive, would begin to slowly twiddle his thumbs.
Another habit, however, that I did not acquire from Morfar was smoking. I remember how when he was smoking his morning cigar he would close the glass-paneled doors to the dining room and open a window so the smoke would not invade the rest of the house. The dining room would soon be filled with a cloud of smoke. Upon finishing his cigar Morfar would place what remained of the stub into his pipe, light it up, and smoke it until there was nothing left. I don’t doubt that seeing and smelling the smoke-filled room discouraged me from taking up the habit, for I have never experienced the slightest desire to light up a cigarette, cigar, or pipe.
“Å, hvor det logter” my grandmother would remark (“Oh, how it smells.”) as she briefly cracked open the dining-room door before she and my mother began preparations for our lunch.
Apart from his smoking, I derived many interests from my grandfather: his appreciation for nature (early-morning walks along the fields of his farm to observe how the crops were growing), his fascination with the history of the earth (books he borrowed from the local library and fossils he had collected), his interest in the checkered story of the human race (preserved skeletons of slain monks in a museum built over what remained of a tenth-century monastery).
But one more thing sticks out in my mind. In 1968 my mother and I made another trip to Denmark. Before my father arrived two weeks later, I brought up with my grandfather a TV show that we enjoyed watching back in the States, called Bullfights From Mexico. It was narrated by the American bullfighter, Sidney Franklin. The series presented a positive image of the sport of bullfighting. But Morfar would hear nothing of what I had to say. Bullfighting, he declared, was nothing but “Dyr plageriet.” I had never heard this particular expression before but I did not need to ask my mother to translate what my grandfather had said: “animal torture.” I immediately comprehended what Morfar had meant, although I was at the same time a bit surprised, for I knew that he had been trained as a soldier in 1916, as his father, Peter Buus, had been trained a generation earlier. Fortunately, Lars never had to serve in combat, but had been fully prepared to kill a man in the heat of battle should the need have arisen. And what about the animals he had slaughtered for their meat on his farm? As Morfar explained to me during our conversation, there was a considerable difference between quickly and humanely killing an animal for food and torturing the same animal for sport––which might take a half hour or longer. I had to agree with my grandfather and I never confused the two again. I would henceforth recognize bullfighting for the cruel “sport” that it was.
Looking back at the significant role that Lars Buus had on my outlook on life, I can appreciate that he must have played a similar influence in making my mother the exceptional woman she turned out to be.
