My Dad is gone. I owe so much of who I am to him. My memory is not the best, so I thought it best to capture some key memories I have of him.
First, he was a machine, a man of keeping a schedule. I remember the automatic coffee pot firing up around 4:00 am. The sounds and smells would drift into my bedroom, which was just off of the kitchen. He was off to work early, so that he would be home by 4:00 pm. Dinner was generally at 4:30 pm. After that, he was off to work on the farm. By the time he settled in to his recliner to "watch some tv", he was exhausted. I don't know that he ever saw the end of any show that wasn't over by 9.
Back when I was young, you didn't bug Dad at work. But I knew what time he would be home, and I would often start walking down the road, just so he would stop and pick me up on the way. It wasn't until I was an adult, and had found my career, that I found out he was a computer analyst for Hill Air Force Base. I walked into the same line of work that he had for decades.
His work often took him on TDY. I still to this day am not quite sure what it stood for, but it meant he would be gone for the work week to another base. The top destination was Wright Patterson Air Base in Cincinnati, which he referred to as Right Pitiful. He did bring me back Reds gear, and that was my baseball team growing up. He also would put all his change in his toiletry bag, which he would let me keep. I still remember the smell of his aftershave coming out from that bag.
We fished, hunted and camped. Our favorite camping spot was on the Hayden's Fork of the Bear River. Not in a forest service campground, but just off a dirt road that led down to the creek. We caught a lot of fish in that little creek. He also loved to camp at Spirit Lake. That trip was always a week long, because of the distance.
We didn't have much, but one thing we always had was either a camper or a trailer. Every night, Mom, Dad and I would play Hearts and Spades. His favorite phrase was "Faint heart never a fair maiden won". I think that was his way of saying to take risks in games.
We took a few longer trips. One was up to see my sister Patty in Montana. I have a few great memories from that trip. One was the route we were taking. If we cut through Island Park in Idaho, we would shave a lot of time off the trip. I don't know if you've been on that road, but it takes a pretty steep climb at several points. At one of those, it was snowing hard. The truck in front of us came to a halt in the snow, and so did we. Then we started to slide backwards. Dad executed some sort of race car move, the truck spun a perfect 180, and we were headed back down the road, rather than sliding off the cliff. We lost time and added miles, but we ended up spending the night at Flathead Lake in Montana. Dad decided to make the most of it, and we rented a small fishing boat for the next day. Mom hooked a big lake trout. As she reeled it in, she didn't wait for the net. Somehow she hoisted that monster into the boat without breaking the line.
We also took a trip to Disneyland, camper and all. I don't remember much about that trip, other than I'm sure it gave me a life long love for Disney.
Deer hunting was a lot of fun. We would lay out all our gear on the kitchen table the night before the season began. I'll bet Mom loved that. Open up the back door, walk up the hill behind our house, and you were hunting. I remember one season we came upon the first draw with some trees and brush. Standing in the clearing right below were two bucks. We counted to 3, each hit our mark, and were dragging out the deer that morning. That was a quick season! Dad would process our own meat, using the old stone building behind our house and sometimes a table in the basement.
We would go to the "duck runs" in Weber county for duck season. If the weather was right, we would easily go through several boxes of shells in one outing.
Pheasant hunting involved walking across the street and down toward the Weber river. It was a unique, wonderful place to grow up.
On one hunt, our dog ran into the biggest, meanest raccoon I've ever seen. She was losing, and there was too much movement to get off a shotgun blast that wouldn't injure the dog. Dad grabbed that raccoon by the neck and took it out with just his pocket knife. This was one of many times he seemed a bit larger than life to me.
Every spring, we worked with all the local men to clean the irrigation canal. Man, that was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
I remember from a very young age being able to help with hay hauling. My "job" was to pull up on the hand clutch when I was told, then push it down when we needed to stop moving. I wasn't allowed to turn the tractor and wagon at first, but eventually I was old enough to do that. And soon after that, I was tossing bales and Grandpa was driving. I loved pulling into Grandpa's dirt driveway. The wagon would pass under an apple tree, so I'd be on top of the bales to grab a green apple early in the season, or an even better one if we were doing 3rd crop.
Directions for backing up the trailer consisted of "uphill", or "downhill". I never really understood the difference, but Grandpa and Dad sure knew what they were doing.
I was big time into boy scouts, and Dad was right there with me. He served as our Scout Commissioner for years.
We did a lot of fishing up at Soldier Creek with Dad's best friend, Max Searle. We would leave so early in the morning, but it was ok, because we would stop at the cafe in Heber for breakfast. I swear that place had the best breakfast anywhere. We'd still be early enough to have the boat in the water before sunrise. Triple teasers or Needlefish lures on leaded line was how we rolled. And the fishing was incredible.
I don't remember my Dad ever getting mad at me. I think maybe my sisters maybe set the bar pretty low for me? Who knows, maybe it was just the luck of being not only the youngest but the only son.
Dad could fix anything. Well, he would at least try. He spent many hours battling the pipes downstairs. He often had to repair the leaky porch roofs. He claimed the only thing holding our farm machinery together was grease. He also was of the opinion that you can fix anything with duct tape and bailing twine.
Sometimes, his ideas weren't the best. One year he decided our front lawn needed to be burned to get the dead grass out. It took the lawn a full season to recover. Another time, he decided to make his own dandelion wine. The good news for him was that his concoction fermented. The bad news was that every bottle exploded.
One of our favorite treats was to get root beer and soft serve ice cream from Pendleton's gas station. You could take a rinsed out milk jug and get them to fill it with root beer. Good stuff.
We had a large garden, which he worked hard in. We had a lot of raspberries, and a go-to treat was fresh berries covered in sugar in a bowl of milk.
One time we were hunting, and he told me the only thing you can do with gloves on is pee your pants. I'm not sure what inspired that nugget of wisdom, but I think a good pair of gloves is appropriate for many circumstances.
When Mom and Dad moved to Ivins, Dad went out of control in the backyard. He and Mom would grow driving and bring back plants. No, not from the store, just random cacti and other plants they dug up. Pretty sure they broke a few laws, but I digress. The key thing is that the back yard was out of control. Huge trees and plants, with no real order. It was very much like a jungle.
I remember one of the first times he met Lori. Somehow, we had him going to church with us. That was a rare treat! He offered to drive, and as he pulled up, he decided to turn on the windshield washers. They weren't aimed exactly right, and he ended up dousing Lori in windshield washer fluid.
One time, there was a fire on the other side of the valley. We went to help. It was then I realized we didn't really know what we were doing as far as brush fires go. At one point, we were surrounded by flames. We were fortunate enough to have a man on a bulldozer come to our rescue.
Mom had a lot of back problems, and another thing I learned from Dad was service. He went to great lengths to care for her and make her comfortable. He built a platform in our family room and put a hospital bed on it. He installed a phone line in there just for her.
He may have not been a religious man, but he taught me service, the importance of family, and how to work hard.
