Son of a Son of a Mailman

I never knew any of my grandparents except my father's mother. Esther, or "The Great Stoneface of Kansas" as we referred to her, became the epitome of what my previous generations had to offer. She was my link to "the olden days."
My father's father, Ira the mailman, was a series of veiled references from my father's youth. He was the cad who left his family to go to Chicago to watch the Cubs play in the World Series. He was the absentee father who had his son come out to Kansas to visit in the summers, who had the misfortune to marry a woman named "Athel." My father and his cousin would hold their tongues and say her name, mostly to be cruel. The one thing that I remember hearing about Ira that amounted to praise was this: After years of walking his route in Salina, he developed calves like canned hams
My mother's father, Ralph the druggist, always seemed much more heroic, somehow. He ran the only drug store in Granby, Colorado - Little Drugstore On The Prairie, except that they were high up in the Rockies. When he and his little family moved down to the expanding metropolis that was Boulder, he was poised to become one of the community's leaders as the pharmacist of the newly established Medical Center. Then one afternoon, as he was bringing a rack of soda bottles up from the basement, a blood vessel in his brain popped. Down went the bottles. Down went Ralph. And I never had a chance to meet him.
My mother's mother and I almost got to know one another. She battled cancer for years, perhaps with the intent of meeting all her grandchildren, but that plan wasn't enough. She was the crazy one. She used to drive all around town, chasing my mother's high school friends in their cars - including my father. She was the antithesis of Esther.
Sadly, I have only these romanticized versions of what their lives must have been like. No videotape or home movies. Memories of stories of how things used to be.