Fathers Day

I thought a lot about my dad today.

He was bigger then life, a man's man.
Handsome in a John Wayne sort of way.
He would stop you in your tracks with a look.
Many young men I dated hated coming to my door to pick me up
when he was home.
He would just stare at them with his John Wayne eyes.
Needless to say I didn't have a lot of problems on my dates with them.

He was a hunter and fisherman, a licensed gunsmith and his last job before he became ill was as a Security Guard at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

He had worked many jobs in his youth and during the depression,
when there were no jobs,
he and his brother in law Red made bathtub hootch and sold it on the streets after dark.

I don't think there was anything he couldn't do.

My mom told me the story of how they met.

She was a senior in High School and working part time at her dads popcorn stand
This good looking young guy, kept coming over and buying popcorn from her.

She was smitten and a month before she graduated from High School
they eloped.

My Big Brother was born the following December.
They were young parents who struggled for many years before they continued their family, then they added me and my sister.


He was a good dad, strict, stern and sometimes scary.

It wasn't until I had children of my own that I realized what a pussycat he was.

He died way to young at the age of 56 from Hodgkin's disease, a disease they had no treatment for at that time.

I was expecting my 3rd child when he died so he never got to see my youngest son who resembles him so much.

Isn't it too bad that when we are young we don't spend the time talking to our parents about their lives?
They did not have it easy growing up, unlike the pampered children of today.

There is so much I would like to know about him and his early life, that I now have to hear second hand

I hope everyone took time today to remember their dad's in some way.

My kids did and their dad is smiling while he sleeps.