Daddy

I called him Daddy and he is always in my memory. One of the earliest actual memories is of Daddy telling Mary, Linda and I a bedtime story, probably one of Aesop's fables or Goldilocks and the three bears. Mary was still in the crib and after a long day working at the junk yard, I think now, that he was probably weary and trying to finish up the day, he perched on the mattress in Mary's crib. The crib broke! Of course, there was laughter and chaos and excitement for a bit but Mommy soon had things sorted out. Mary was tucked in the lower bunk in the boys' room with me, Linda put to bed in the girls' room and Daddy moved back to the living room, to his chair, to watch the news and soon after, to bed for the night.

I remember that we "three little girls" would sit on Daddy when he was at the house for lunch and taking his noon nap. We'd pinch his nose when he snored or maybe just cuddle up with him while he slept for a few minutes. Then he kissed his wife and went back to the "shop" to finish the second half of the day. He'd work 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., six days a week and if he had a personal project going like building a fold-down camper from the wheels up so that the family could vacation all over the U.S. two weeks of each 52, building a room on to the back of the 3-bedroom home already housing 2 adults and 9 children or mixing the "mud" in the small cement mixer for the new driveway, he'd get up after supper and work another 2 or 3 hours. He'd work Sunday afternoons, laying up the bricks on the new patio or adding another bay on to the junk yard. I remember one evening watching him cut a car windshield out of a big piece of glass. (In those days, they would order an actual size pattern, lay it on a big sheet of glass and cut it out with a glasscutter.) I was fascinated! It took patience and a steady hand; I wanted to try but didn't ask. It looked like an art to me. I'm not sure there were too many things my father didn't try to do at least once. And he mastered quite a few.

There were plenty of Sundays that he didn't work and the folks would load all nine of us up in the car and haul us off to see relatives or sightseeing. I remember, barely, a trip to the St. Joe or the Kansas City zoo, a trip to the Grotto, various state parks, the tower at Winterset or just a drive through the countryside past houses and farms that Daddy once knew -- Del's place, Bertha and Virgil's farm, Great Grampa Wilson's homestead. If Daddy didn't have a project going on Sunday, we knew that we would end up visiting somewhere or seeing something -- even if it was just up the hill to Gramma and Grampa Austin's or stopping and looking when the original Interstate 35 was being built. One of the early station wagons that Daddy drove had a bumper sticker proclaiming "NO VACANCY" on the back window which caused many a smile from passers-by. Sometimes the folks were asked, is that a Sunday School class? Not thinking we might all be one family. That made Daddy laugh. The folks made it fun though, being a crowd, and Daddy usually had some funny story to tell about raising a large family.

I don't remember Daddy as a farmer but I've seen the pictures of the lean, fit, small-framed man who arose before dawn to start the fire so that when his wife and children got up the house would be warming, who milked morning and then again at night. Who picked corn by hand, tossing the ears into the horse-drawn wagon until his hands were raw and bleeding. He picked in the early morning frost, in the snow, if need be, or in the beautiful, crisp autumn afternoon. It might take until Thanksgiving or, as he recalled in one of his newspaper articles, practically up until New Years the first year he was married, to get the crop in. Daddy sometimes worked a part-time job in addition to taking care of the farm and the livestock. He said that in order to build the Peru house, he supplemented the farm income by working at the newspaper in Winterset. He also wired houses for electricity when the rural electric came to Madison County and I think he laid some "block" basements too.

I've heard the story of how, before I was born, Daddy breathed the life back into Virginia when she was overcome by gas fumes. The pilot light went out on the Arco plant in the "new" Peru house. Mommy had a headache and the children were lethargic and cranky when he came home, smelled the fumes and moved his family outside for fresh air. This must have been a very scary thing as I never heard Daddy tell the story and I didn't hear it told until I was an adult.

Daddy liked farming with horses, liked the cows and didn't care much about hogs except at the breakfast table. He liked a good dog and had one in Ring, the collie trained to bring in the cows on the farm. Daddy moved Ring to Afton with the rest of the family and, living on the highway, it wasn't long before ol' Ring was hit by a car. Daddy welded together a fancy headstone and buried Ring in the sideyard and man's best friend was remembered. Daddy (and Mommy) adopted "Spike", the black lab when Uncle Chub moved his family to Texas and didn't think two adults, four children AND a lab would survive a trip from Afton to Dallas / Ft. Worth. Daddy loved to tell the story about one Sunday morning when he checked the "shop" to see what was going on and Spike had a full-grown man cowering atop his car. We children sat on Spikes back, pulled his ears and Mama cat glared and ate first at the "dog pan" while Spike stood back and remembered his "place". And later there was "Shorty".

Daddy would sometimes get after the boys for wrestling or pestering and he would say "I'll never have two boys together, again" -- this after 9 children -- as though he might have it to do over or there were more children to come! And although I remember him being occasionally gruff with "the boys", or threatening to "stop the car" if they didn't quit pestering, I remember only once him raising his voice to the "three little girls". We were playing loudly in the back of the Ford Econline pickup while he was was trying to visit with someone. What a shock when he got after us! I remembered that for a long time and I'm sure it was an incentive to remember my manners better when Daddy was visiting with a customer or a relative.

I remember Daddy's concern and tenderness when he batted the softball that hit me right between the eyes. I should have caught it! but Daddy was sorry and sympathetic and I probably sported the the large goose egg with pride -- after the pain subsided.

I remember after Mommy telling us girls "no" that, we "three little ones" would contrive an opportunity to look very sad in front of Daddy, or to sit and cry silently and when he found out the "problem", he'd say, Mommy, can't they do that? Don't you think they could? And sometimes, Mommy would relent and sometimes, not. But it was always heart warming when Daddy would say, "oh, Mommy, can't they?"

This entry has become much longer than first anticipated but one memory written, spawns another. Perhaps on another day, I will record more of my fond memories of my beloved parents and the days of my childhood.

In remembering and honoring my dear Daddy, I hope that I have brought through his warmth and love, his sense of humor and his responsibility to his family. How hard work was no stranger to him but that he yearned to be an artist with wood, rebuilding an automobile, laying a basement and even later, throwing pottery on a handmade wheel. My Daddy loved his "good wife", his children, a good story, a good memory, and a good time.