Some days it seems the tall buildings you are expected to leap in a single bound have reached impossible heights. And try as you may to see the forest, the trees keep blocking your view.
I’ve been feeling like this a lot lately. But when the darkness starts to creep in, something always happens to reveal the tiniest pinpoint of light. At first it’s just a glimmer, but if you stand in just the right spot, the light grows and brightens.
My dad is that source of illumination for me. When I go to see him, I don’t really notice how much I need his strength to restore my resolve. But after we visit and I’m driving home replaying our conversations and the stories he shared about his life, that level of need becomes quite clear.
As he talks, I’m a little girl again, reaching up to take his hand, struggling to meet his stride and keep up his pace. I look up to watch his face as he speaks and almost lose my balance, like standing on the sidewalk looking up to the tip top of a skyscraper – the ground starts to move and unsteadiness sets in even though your feet are firmly planted on the ground.
To me, he always seemed larger than life - my protector and hero, a status I did not bestow lightly.
Recently, he’s talked a lot about his childhood. I love this not only because it enables me to understand how he came to be the man that so influenced my life and the values I embrace, but more so because I can clearly visualize him as a small boy in the familiar landscape of his youth.
He talks of spending summers with his grandparents on the farm in Chico, Texas and how the things we take for granted today were outside the realm of imagination at that time. That time? Well, this month Dad celebrates his 89th birthday. So cipher back 80 or so years to the mid-1930s before video games, computers, microwave ovens, cell phones or even touch-tone phones. Think party lines. Wringer washing machines with laundry pinned to an outdoor clothesline. Being too busy working for today to aspire for tomorrow.
“When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
“I don’t remember ever thinking about that. Things were different than they are now.”
The conversation moves on, but he circles back.
“I had a hero.”
He goes on to tell me that his hero was “The Duke” (John Wayne).
“But that would have been when you were a bit older and got to go to the movies, right?”
This is not really surprising to me. Much of my childhood was spent watching westerns on television – Maverick, Rawhide, Bat Masterson and Death Valley Days. There aren’t many John Wayne movies we didn’t see at the local drive-in, or downtown at the Majestic or the Palace – always on the big screen and usually in Cinemascope.
“I did want a saddle and a horse to ride,” he said. “I actually made a saddle out of tow sacks, baling wire and corn cobs.”
This intrigues me and I stay silent, waiting for him to continue.
“On the farm there were plow horses but those aren’t the same as riding horses. They just plod along.”
Chico is north of Bridgeport in Wise County. As a boy, he took the train from Fort Worth to visit. And although I have never seen what the farm was like or even the town nearby, I have a pretty clear picture in my mind – like the many tiny towns and farming communities I’ve visited in north and west Texas.
“I raised a calf one year and she always let me come right up to her, even in the pasture. She let me saddle her and get on but she wouldn’t go anywhere.”
I can easily see this scenario play out. This lanky, toothy boy with thick, wavy auburn hair – a head-to-toe mass of freckles, hoisting himself up onto the saddle constructed of found objects. Slipping bare feet into corncob stirrups and likely scratched up from contact with the baling wire, smiling with satisfaction and enjoying the view from his elevated position even on the back of a cow that refuses to move. The dusty earth now well below his feet and overhead, the wispy clouds sweeping across the blue summer sky seem closer and the sun feels warmer on his bare arms.
It is a world of imagination – he is the boy in the saddle on the pony drenched in sunlight - the possibilities are limitless.
Imagination was my salvation growing up and Daddy, more often than not, was my source of inspiration. In the spirit of found or recycled items, he provided the props that transported me to faraway places and exotic occupations. The rotted-out rowboat that became a sand box set the stage for sea-bound adventures. The old black Underwood typewriter hammered out my stories before I could spell. A glass jar filled with thumbtacks provided percussion for my one-girl band. Throw rugs became the stage for my evening performances. And he patiently sat through it all.
There was a second-hand bicycle given a new coat of red and silver paint, upon which my older sister and I got the feel for balancing on a two-wheeler. A few skinned knees and elbows were definitely involved, but with Dad’s encouragement and a hand on the fender to steady our wobbles, we figured it out.
I spent hours watching woodworking in progress. Daddy sliding boards across a screeching table saw and me sitting Indian style on the cool concrete in a cloud of sawdust that settled on me like snow on an early-spring flower. His movements were deliberate and the work meticulous. I was amazed at what he could create out of random pieces of wood.
He said he misses that at this point in his life – just puttering in the shop or pulling up stakes and taking to the open road on another of so many adventures.
“Sometimes I just look through the pictures of all the places we traveled to.”
And travel they did. By the time he retired from the post office, I was grown with a family of my own. So hearing those stories now is like experiencing each step of the journey with him and seeing it all through his eyes. From winding highways and snaking rivers to mountain top vistas, the world he describes is bathed in light and color – and mine looks so much brighter.
