Grandfather Tales: Hank's Last Wish

I have told this story so often that I was surprised that I hadn't posted it on this blog.  A friend asked that I do so, so here it is:

One of my grandmothers had a long-term relationship with a man named Hank.  He was a good man, always kind to us kids, and I genuinely wished she would marry him so I could call him granddad.  However, for reasons of their own, he remained Hank until the day he died.

Hank was a dump truck driver for a local quarry.  Every weekday he would be driving on Route 18, back and forth with gravel, passing close to grandma's house with each trip.  When he died, grandma had him cremated and saved some of his ashes for his last wish after interring the rest in a corner of the garden.  (She's very "green" in the modern sense of the word, in her own way.)

Grandma decided to give Hank his last hurrah about a month after he died.  The weather had cleared (overcast and foggy- a good Spring day for Pennsylvania) and she had her sister Irene drive her to Erie, about 45 minutes north, for a large shopping trip.  Grandma had never learned to drive, you see, but she always pitched in with the gas.

So here we join these two ladies in their van driving toward the city of Erie at about 6:30 a.m.:

  'Millie, why'd you roll down the window,' asked Aunt Irene.
  'It's a beautiful day out,' replied Grandma.
  'It's okay, I guess.  I rather like the fog.'

  (Long pause)

  'Now what are you doing?'
  (Grandma is busy tipping the contents of a sandwich baggie out the window.)
  'Hank's last wish.'
  'What?  What have you got there?'
  'Hank's last wish.'
  (Grandma, finished with the empty sandwich bag, places it back in her purse.)

As they drove on, grandma told her sister how Hank had wished for his ashes to be spread on the highway where he had spent so much time. She explained that the bag had contained the last of his remains and she had purposefully waited until she next went shopping to give the road it's new coating.

Unfortunately for Hank, the wind and fog had the last laugh.  When they got to Erie the ladies found Hank spread all over the side of the van, plastered there by the mist.  He ended up being given a burial at sea, so to speak, by being washed off in a car wash.