Father's Day Blog

This is my father.








This is my father with me (this photo was taken a long time ago).





Most people know my father like this.










I know my father like this.

When I was in college, a friend once told me that she envisioned my father relaxing on weekends sitting in his study in front of a fire, reading a classic novel and sipping a glass of red wine.



Well, the fire part was correct, and he does like to read classic novels. But while he enjoys a good fire, more often that fire is outside at the farm, and Dad sits in front of it wearing his overalls and his Smurf hat, sipping on a cold malt beverage just before frying the fish he's caught in the pond.

Those disparate images of him remind me of other aspects of my dad few people know. This is how I know my father:





1. He can play a mean harmonica, which he learned on his own.

2. He has a dent on his index fingernail, which he got when he was in high school as he tried to break into the high school gym. The window slammed shut on it.

3. He likes to serve kids Ritz Soda (see my earlier posting).

4. Most people either put on both socks and then both shoes, or they put on a sock and a shoe, then a sock and a shoe. My dad puts on his socks, then his shoes, then his pants.

5. As a result of number 4, he has to have his pants mended a lot.

6. He used to go barefoot all the time. In fact, when Stephen and I got married, our minister told us that when he was a teenager, he and Dad had a double date with two young ladies, and when he drove up to Dad's house to pick him up, Dad emerged from the house wearing cut off dungarees and bare feet. To this day I feel sorry for the girl my dad took out, whoever she was.

7. He did not fulfill his foreign language requirement in college. He started out taking Spanish, which he found too difficult. He took all but one of his required Spanish courses, and then a friend suggested he take Latin, which was much easier. So he signed up for Latin I as his fourth quarter of foreign language. The Emory registrar didn't catch the gap in his transcript and he still graduated.

8. When my mom would go out of town, he would feed me, Sabra and Harley corn flakes and tell us they were roosters.

9. Once Mom asked him to take me, Sabra and Harley downtown to B.C. Moore's and buy us some new shoes. He bought us little hiking boots. I don't know if he thought they were cute or practical. They sure were, well, farmy.

10. Whenever he uses an ATM (which I think is seldom), he reads all the directions carefully with a furrowed brow as if he's never seen one of those machines before.

11. The best time to catch him on the phone is on a weekday morning when he's in his car on the way to work.

12. Sabra, Harley, and I always groaned when he was in charge of our hair cuts. He would take us downtown to Mrs. Womack's barber shop. I don't know where Mrs. Womack ever learned to cut hair. Let me rephrase that: I don't know if Mrs. Womack ever learned to cut hair. She would pull out her scissors and start chopping away. Harley used to weep when he had to go to Mrs. Womack's because he knew he'd come home looking like a displaced person.

13. Dad enjoys the novels of H. Rider Hagard and Lydia Bailey, by Kenneth Roberts.

14. Before e-mail, Dad used to correspond with me, Sabra and Harley by writing triplicate memos on NCR stationery. Upon receiving them, we would call each other to find out who got the original copy. It became a game to us. Getting the original version was like winning. Getting the yellow copy, which was the bottom copy, was like coming in last.

15. When Davis was a baby, he had a stuffed bass in his crib. When my dad came to visit, he took a shine to that bass and took it home with him. He nailed it to the wall next to bass he'd had stuffed at the taxidermist. To this day those two fish hang on the camp house wall.

Sometimes perspective is everything. Happy Father's Day!