My dad, I am certain my dad was one of the most unique men on the face of the planet. Most of my life, even though he had an office job at the phone company for 47 years, he was a hardworking homebody at heart. He loved being at home working on something. He enjoyed his livestock, his extensive garden, his mechanic shop and he loved just sitting under the tulip tree near our house on a hot summer day. Any time something broke, his motto was “if man made it, man can fix it” and he somehow had time to repair and fix any item we had in and out of the house.
He was an avid reader, he always read the newspaper, magazines (I think all of us get a subscription to Kiplingers) and his favorites were Readers Digest, the Bible and Car Manuals. And these car manuals were not the kind that come in the glovebox of your vehicle. He would purchase entire series of manuals from the car manufacturer that included every detail of how to take the car apart and put it back together, just like it was a giant Sudoku puzzle. Within just the last year I gave him a book to read called Love Does by Bob Goff, I knew he would enjoy it but he really believed books weren’t his thing. I sat one day and read him one story from the book to grab his attention, he laughed so hard he read the book the next day. Gus just played a voicemail he had kept from my dad, who was retelling a story in the book and he was laughing so hard on the voicemail you can barely understand what he was saying. I’m going to miss that laugh.
There are so many stories about vehicles that we could tell you about my dad but there are two that he loved to tell! The first one would involve my brother Todd. Todd was about 16 years old and my dad had purchased an old car that didn’t run for parts. He needed my brother to drive the pick up truck to Monticello and then they would tie the car to the back of the truck and my dad would sit in the car and steer to make sure it stayed on the road (it also had no brakes) and my brother would drive the truck. However, my dad didn’t give my 16 year old brother a lot of instruction regarding what would happen to the car behind each time he turned a corner… I can just see my dad, flying through the air as my brother took each twist and turn from Monticello to home without paying a bit of attention to the car and the man inside and attached to him. Needless to say, I believe after my dad cleaned up his shorts… my brother was given a stern lesson in centripetal force.
The other story he loved to tell was teaching me to drive. My birthday is in January and before he would allow us to get our license we had to be efficient at driving every type of vehicle including stick shift, tractors with trailers on them, and be able to back them up to a livestock loading shoot in rain, snow and ice. This one winter day he decided he was going to teach me about driving on ice. I had already successfully executed this task as we drove down the road having a verbal war of words. All the way down this country road covered thick with ice my dad said “now punch the gas and then slam on the brakes” I would continually tell him he was OUT OF HIS MIND crazy if he thought I was going to do that and so it continued, “punch the gas and slam on the brakes”, “no” and on and on until we reached the end of the road and turned around toward home, he wore me down and I did just that. I punched the gas and slammed on the brakes but instead of doing the fancy 360 he thought we would do and I would get the awesome experience of pulling out of it… we instead spun around and then gave a big ole “yeehawwwww” as we soared through the sky, narrowly missing a telephone pole and Duke’s of Hazarding that car right in the middle of a field, snow covered the windshield and he said “Huh! I didn’t think that would happen” he loved to tell that story!
Any time Todd or I or even his grandkids had an idea, if he could make it happen he would! I loved to swing on my old metal swingset but if I went too high, the leg would pull out of the ground no matter how far he buried it. I told my dad I wanted to swing so high, I could see over the roof of the house, so my dad got 2 telephone poles… taller than our house and buried them in our front yard and hung a single chain with a little wooden board with notches cut on the side for the seat. I would spend hours on that swing. I would indeed swing over the house, the only problem with that was, every so often when you swung that high, the seat would lift off the chain and fall off!! The only solution was to use all of my arm strength to hold myself on the chain and scream until someone came to stop it for me. He build my brother and I a two story clubhouse complete with a balcony and fancy doors. I wanted a firepit so he brought me a load of bricks and cement and let me go (needless to say it didn’t last long), we had every pet we ever wanted except a horse (because his childhood mule would run him under the clothesline and try to knock him off so he insisted we didn’t really want one of those).
When I was in high school we had the typical theme week and one of our days was Farmer day. Instead of being the typical farmer with overalls and cap, I thought it would be fun if some the members of the volleyball team dressed in pink like pigs and I would bring a load of piglets to school for each of us to take to homeroom!
My dad LOVED this idea! So he loaded up the pick up early in the morning and I drove it to school and met my friends in the parking lot and passed them out to each one. When we got to our homerooms you can imagine the fun and chaos that ensued. Shortly after we heard, “anyone with a pig in their classroom, report to the office” over the loud speaker. They needed our picture for the yearbook before sending my pigs home. The most brilliant part of this plan my dad said was that the Superintendents daughter was on the team and had also taken one to her class so when her dad called my dad to say, “come get these pigs” they had a good laugh as well.
When I was in college he bought an old 4th of July parade car for the parts and I begged him to let me keep it since it still ran! We called it the Star Spangled. It was an old escort that the top had been roughly chopped off and then painted with Stars and Stripes for a 4th of July parade. My friends and I drove that stinky, musty old thing around like it was the best thing ever! He helped Gus build his own tree fort with swing at our last house and He hung swings from my walkout deck for us all to enjoy. He was always up for any creative adventure we could think of!
My dad was incredibly intelligent and always had a unique sense of ingenuity. One Saturday afternoon he and his farm help came in for lunch and there was a rat in the attic that decided lunch smelled so good it would just join them via the ceiling over the table. My dad saw that rats little nose through the hole and quickly got his rifle and stuck it right up that hole and shot it! Lunch could now continue as planned. Another time my parents tried a real Christmas tree instead of the artificial ones we always had. Every morning they would wake up to the tree having fallen over. My dad finally just nailed the tree stand to the floor right through the carpet! He told us that was what the holes in the stand were there for.
He was the toughest man you will ever meet. He never complained about aches and pains. In the late 80’s he fell off the roof of a building and broke his back, he was supposed to lie flat for a month, the next day my dad was on a ladder wiring in lights on the front porch he was building, working over his head. He would go on to break his back many more times with rarely a complaint. During the last year he had fallen while at Bickford and I met the ambulance at the ER, the Doctor came in to tell my dad he did have a slight fracture but also that he had actually never seen a spine with so many breaks and he wasn’t sure how my dad could even walk. My dad just smiled. There was never a pain to great for him to bear, if he fell he wouldn’t be down long, even just this last week he fell, there was blood on the wall and his arm was completely torn up but never a complaint about it. When Doctors told him there was nothing more they could do for the injury he had obtained to his heart his sister Wanda (who yes is still alive even though I completely left her out of the obituary… still sorry Aunt Wanda) got him into Mayo and we made the trek up there to see what could be done. They decided he would indeed die if they didn’t try something, and he was up for the experiment so they proceeded. After 2 weeks they were sure he wasn’t going to make it and were preparing us for hospice, my dad kept saying if he could get home, he could get better. My mom and I were just talking about that drive back home. We aren’t sure how we even got him home from MN. He had no strength, we had no wheelchair and yet the Lord somehow made a way for us to get him home. And once home… he started to improve! So much so that he went back to Mayo for a new fancy pacemaker! When he got there they weren’t sure how he was even there but slowly and surely he continued to make improvements! Just this week we told him we hadn’t seen him this tall since he broke his back all those years ago. He was walking inches taller because of his desire to walk better and sweet Hannie, the physical therapist at Cedarhurst was working with him every single day and it was paying off!
That was on Sunday, on Monday I went to Cedarhurst to meet with one of the Doctors on staff there and as I walked down the hall I saw him sitting in the sunshine, looking out the window and reading his Bible. I thought to snap a picture of him and how precious a site it was. When I sat down on the bench near him, I asked him what he was reading… he said it was about Samuel. He then told me he missed his friend George, he missed him really bad and he wished he could just pick up the phone and call him and talk to him about what he was reading in the Bible. To have that conversation with him and now know that less than 24 hours later his soul would be present with the Lord and George gives me great joy among our sorrow. His hope was in Christ, and as much as he was determined to live as many years on this earth as possible, we know without a doubt we will see him again one day and there is nothing better than to rejoice over that.
My dad has left an impression and a legacy I don’t think he ever thought possible. He wasn’t afraid to try anything and fail, he knew that by trying and failing, nothing was really ever a failure because you learned something by the experience. He could laugh at himself and never took things too seriously. He was a gentle but firm father who wanted only the best for his kids and grandkids. If he ever had a conflict with mom, Todd or I he would follow us around until it was resolved. He wasn’t afraid of confrontation but could never let the sun go down without resolution. I will miss my dad greatly, but I will cherish the many lessons he taught me and the investment he made in each of our children and the lives of others and try to do the same.
oldmommadenew 