Things I Remember About Our DadWritten 2-6-96
Dad died in 1936 when I was 17 years old. I was a Junior in high school at the time. The things I remember about him
happened in the early part of my life, mainly before I left home at age 14 to attend high school.
Most of my memories about him are positive, but the one thing that I remember about him that was negative, was imprinted on my memory. When he went outside to work, often the cats were sunning themselves on the porch. He would take the broom and sweep them off the porch, non too gently. I am not a lover of cats now, as I am allergic to them, and they cause me all sorts of misery. However, this type of treatment did not agree with my way of thinking.
At other times, I really enjoyed our dad. At night after chores, he often played ball with us. We were really amazed at his ability to swing the bat and actually hit the ball way across the field. We didn't mind at all chasing after it. We just used a flat board so we were able to hit the ball, but he used a regular bat! Often this game got so interesting and we enjoyed it so much, that we played long after dusk. When we could no longer see the ball, we'd tie white strips of cloth around it and play until we could no longer see it. Sometimes the strips of cloth would come off and we would have to stop and retie them. We played as long as we could.
Sometimes he would jump rope with us. We envied him when he jumped "peppers", wishing we could jump that fast. We had to be satisfied jumping to the tune of jump rope rhymes which were much slower. But our goal was to see how long we could jump without missing.
After dark, when the day's work was done, Dad would relax by lying on the hard linoleum floor, with his head propped up against the mopboard, with no pillow. I suppose this felt good to him after a long day's work, and since we had no couch, the floor had to do. He would smoke his corn cob pipe and we kids would romp and play on and around him, -a picture of complete satisfaction.
One day in Saturday school, it was impressed on us just how important it was to always tell the truth. Our pastor told us that if we told a lie, we would have to tell 100 more to cover that one up. I tried to figure this out, but since I wasn't able to, I just believed what I had been told. I had lied to Dad about something. I can't remember what it was, but I decided I'd better confess so I wouldn't have to tell 100 more lies after that. I followed him around every day for at least a week, trying to find a way to tell him the truth. I often wondered if he didn't get tired of me traipsing after him, or if he didn't wonder why I was following him around. I never did get up enough nerve to tell him about my lie. I don't know if I ever had to tell the 100 lies to cover that one up, but eventually I forgot about it. During my years of teaching at Trinity, I tried to impress upon my pupils the importance of telling the truth. I often related this incident from my youth. I hope they got more out of it than I did!
I remember Dad playing with my youngest sister, Mildred. He would toss her up in the air. One time as he tossed her, he didn't remember that we had a gasoline lamp hanging from the ceiling. He tossed her so high that her head hit on the bottom of the lamp.
That put a quick end to that!
Then there was the time of the milk strike, when all of our milk, which was our livelihood, had to be dumped. We used the cream and made butter by shaking it in a jar, and we drank a lot of milk. Dad drank too much cold milk one night and ended up in the hospital for surgery, after suffering a gall bladder attack. So by trying to use up some of the milk, we encountered more problems.
Of course I remember helping Dad in the fields with the never ending jobs of picking rocks out of the furrows as we plowed, as well as shocking grain, picking rocks before he planted, and hauling in hay. There were many other chores we did with him on a daily basis, but 1936 (the year he died), is a long time ago, and these are the things I recall presently.
When Dad died, we were in the drought years during the depression, making everything more difficult for us. At least we were all fairly grown. Our ages at the time were 12, l5, 17, 19, 21, 23, and 25. Some hard years followed.
It was a sad day for all of us, but most of us have survived and are still here to talk about it. Mother is gone and two of my sisters have passed on too. Up until today, many things have happened in our family, which I have related in "The Story of My Life".