This is one of my favorite pictures of my father. I think that it really captures his spirit – quiet, simple, hard-working, love of the outdoors, pragmatic. This is on the front porch of his house, taking a late morning rest after a lot of yard work. My guess is that the yard work was weeding the flower beds. It’s a high-maintenance yard. You have to rest.
Our family has lots of stories about my parents. We tend to tell more about Mom because she was the extrovert, and she had such a great way of mixing up words. But, in honor of Pop’s birthday, let’s have a few Pop stories…
…he got in big trouble as a teenager for driving his car down the frozen Shenandoah River. As I recall there were 2 or 3 of them doing this. The fun was not just driving on the frozen river, but doing doughnuts – you know slamming on the brakes and hanging on as the car spins in circles.
…he and mom started dating after he was assigned as her high school math tutor. He was a whiz at math; Mom…ummmm.. not so much.
…as a teenager he worked at the Orkney Springs Hotel. He had a number of jobs (pretty much all at the same time, I think) which included sweeping the ballroom every morning, setting up pins in the bowling alley (I think he was paid 3 cents a pin, but that may be high), and writing out the lunch and dinner menus because he had such beautiful penmanship.
…as a senior in high school he was the May King. I have a picture of him and a bevy of girls, all in long white dresses, around the May Pole. Pop is in a white suit.
… Pop was often chagrined to be dating Mom because she was always in trouble in school. Probably less so in high school than elementary, but she’d play tricks on people (dipping the pig tails of the girl in front of her into an ink well…). He would tell stories of having to stay after school waiting for her because she was so often in detention writing sentences on the blackboard!
…Pop and Dr. Edmund Woodward, Shrine Mont’s founder, were a team from the beginning. Dr. Woodward took Pop under his wing and taught him theology, Bible and his vision for Shrine Mont. Pop had lots of hysterical Dr. Woodward stories. Many involved taking Dr. Woodward to Richmond. One trip was to meet with the President of one of the banks to ask for a loan for Shrine Mont. They got to the front of the bank, and the doorway was a revolving door. Neither Pop nor Dr. Woodward had ever seen a revolving door. They watched for a minute, and then Pop said to Dr. Woodward, “I’ll get in one space and push, and you get into the space behind me.” Pop stepped into the door, but unfortunately Dr. Woodward stepped in the same space with him, scrunched up against Pop. So around they went, taking little baby steps, and when the door opened into the bank lobby, they both fell out on their faces in the bank lobby. Pop said it was a less than auspicious beginning to their request for money.
…Pop loved winter, I think because it gave him more free time from work and more time with his family. I know that winter was my favorite season as a child because I got my father back. When we’d have big snows, he would take an old tire, and build a huge bonfire at the bottom of the “school-house hill.” Then after dinner, everyone in Orkney would go out sleigh-riding. There would be marshmallows by the fire, and everyone (and I mean even the adults) would trek up the hill and sled down. We stayed for hours, it seemed.
…I sat on his lap every night as a child and he would read me stories. Every Christmas Eve he read me the Christmas story from Luke. Our favorite thing to do after dinner was to watch Gunsmoke, Bonanza or Perry Mason. On Sunday nights we watched Lassie. Mom and I, on the other hand, watched Peyton Place ( an early version of Dallas)! In the summer, we liked to go across the street to Jake’s store and have a chocolate nut sundae.
…he sometimes put sugar and vinegar on his sliced tomatoes. He’d eat an onion straight out of the garden just like you’d eat an apple. He didn’t like chicken, rice or pasta. He loved dogs and cats, except for the puppy some Shrine Mont dishwashers fobbed off on Mom. The puppy ate one of our nice wing chairs. The puppy was fobbed off on someone else about 3 weeks later.
My father was born May 13, 1917. He died January 13, 2004. It was a very good life.
I am so blessed. Thank you, Pop!
