Father's Day

No matter how well – or not – you get along with, or got along with your father, stop today and remember him. Embrace the good times, and try to learn from ones that were bad, if only to not do those things yourself.
Most of my times with my father were good, I was fortunate. Oh, of course there was a rebellious ‘I hate my father’ spell when I was a teenager. But it passed, soon enough.
My father had a quick temper (that I unfortunately inherited). He would yell a lot, but strangely when it was something serious he often took it calmly.
As mentioned in another Father’s Day post, he hunted deer with bow and arrow. This hobby led him to purchase the ‘latest and best’ in bows, and at one time his pride and joy was a ‘recurve’ bow. Of course, one day when there were several of us kids around, we had to try to string it and shoot it and of course we were doing it wrong and broke the bow. We spent the day in terror of what he’d do to us when he got home from work, and we met him with the bad news at the front porch – he stopped, looked at his bow (and no doubt thought of the cost of replacing it, definitely an issue in those days) and sighed and merely said ‘well that’s what happens when you don’t know how to do something the right way’ and went on in the house. Maybe he hoped we’d learn from that to stop and do things the right way – and maybe we did learn it, a bit.
Other things I learned from him were a strong work ethic – the cows had to be milked at 6 o’clock – that’s both 6 o’clock’s every day – I told that to some of the partners and dispatchers when I was driving truck, when they’d comment that I almost always got deliveries on time (unless there was a real reason not to). He worked hard his entire life and I don’t doubt that one how or another I will too.
He never stopped finding new things and I hope I never do either. He always wanted to see new places. He loved back roads, and taking a new one to see where it went. His interests were widely varied - from opera to deer hunting – and he could have a conversation about all of them. He had no tolerance for fools.
One night, when I was a very new driver, I was coming home from a friend’s house up the road, and slid on the ice and went into the trees. No major damage except for breaking all the little squares in the grill of the car. I walked home, he came up with I forget which vehicle and pulled the Chevy out, and then at some point found a way to repair all those pieces. And only said, ‘yep, that ice can be tricky’.
My mother used to say, when someone would call or something would happen to bring him to mind, ‘your father is very close’. He was very close when I had the wreck with the truck: I rarely dream about him (although I often do about my mother, another story) but I had several times for a short while. Then, the wreck happened and although it was bad (and scary) enough, it could have been a whole lot worse. I said at the time that something did the right thing for me, but thinking on it, I rather believe it was someone being close enough to make it happen. After the wreck I didn’t dream about him for a long, long time.
His birthday would have been on Tuesday. I’ll try to have some strawberry shortcake this week to remember him by.
Do something to remember your father by.