Share Something Your Dad Liked to have a Chance to Win a Book

Everybody needs a dad. That somehow is not the same as a father. A father is something we all have. But somehow when you say Dad it changes that father into someone you can run to when you skin your knee or when you need your bike handlebars tightened or to give you a boost up into a tree. Or to take you on a ski lift when you're five. I don't really remember the ride, but I love the picture.

My dad was a farmer. He worked hard, growing crops and tending cattle. We had hogs, cows, sheep and chickens. Dad sold cream before I can remember and then later milk in metal milk cans. Mom traded eggs for groceries at the local country store. We made our own sausage and salted down our hams and cooked our lard. We had a freezer full of beef and a cellar full of potatoes and canned vegetables and fruits. 

I remember Dad on a tractor, feeding the cows or taking care of whatever needed doing at the time. He built a barn by himself. He repaired the roof when it leaked and sawed our wood for the stove. He liked to play cards and was serious about winning. He pitched horseshoes and was hard to beat. He played clay court croquet in a league. He went on a motorcycle to Oregon when he was twenty-one. He didn't marry until he was almost thirty. He was a good dad and I miss him.   

The Flower Mystery


None of you guessed that the flower last week was a wild rose. And I thought you'd all figure it out. But I'm glad a few of you threw your name in the hat for a book. The odds were really good for you, but of course, I still only drew out one number. Linda Mc, you were my lucky winner this post. I'll be in touch to find out what book you'd like to have.

New Game - Tell Me Something Your Dad Liked

Not really a game this time. But if you leave a comment and tell me something your dad liked then I'll throw your name in the hat for this post's contest. Deadline is Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST. And then I'll have one last blog book giveaway game posted Wednesday night. We'll have a new flower game of some kind maybe. Remember, you have to be 18 years old to play.

Contest to Celebrate The Innocent

I also sent out a newsletter with a contest to celebrate the release of my new Shaker book, The Innocent. If you'd like to throw your name in that hat, check out the Shaker prizes and how to enter at www.annhgabhart.com/events.html. But meanwhile back here at the farm, er blog, you can make a comment to have a chance to win your choice of one of my books. 

And as always, thanks for reading!

Stories Never Told in Words

"Life is a journey; photography is thy shepherd." (Destin Sparks)

On my Facebook page I have certain things I do on different days of the week. Mailbag Tuesday. Shaker Wednesday. Sunday morning coming down when I give my Facebook friends a glimps of the world I see outside my window. Friday, I do my best to post smiles all day long. And Thursday is Throwback Day when I, along with many others on Facebook, post old photos. That has me looking back through old photo books and snapping pictures of pictures. The one above is from my mother's first photo album. That photo album is about the size of one of the bigger paperback books and has a wooden cover attached together with leather strips. The front cover has a piece broken off it. It's been that way ever since I can remember. 

In the album, Mom has attached the pictures to the pages with those black corners. She has photos of her dating days with Dad and also shots posed with other friends from when she was in school. It's a stroll down her memory lane. Those are memories she has lost now, but there in her photo album, they live on in the pictures and in the notes she wrote under the photos. 

This picture is my dad, years before he met Mom. He was 21 years old and had ridden his motorcycle all the way across country to Oregon to visit cousins there. Mom would have been 11 or 12 when this photo was taken since she was almost ten years younger than Dad. She didn't meet him until she was 18 and he was 28. They met when he was on a date with a friend and she was with a different fellow. She used to say that she took one look at Dad and knew he was the man she was going to marry. I don't know how long it took her to convince Dad of that, but they did start dating right away. And they did get married the day after she graduated from high school. 

"Look at the people in the very old photographs! They are gone forever but they still can give us messages with their eyes, they still can touch our hearts with their looks and they still can give us courage with their standing upright!" (Mehmet Murat ildan)

I look at Dad in this picture and I see a young man I never knew. A man willing to take off across the country with a map and a little money in his pockets in spite of his mother in tears begging him not to go. He went. He slept on the ground, shivered in the cold, sweated in the heat, and made it to Oregon. It was a highlight of his life and I wish I had asked him more questions about that journey. It was a journey off the farm and toward independence. He came back to the farm after his summer in the west, but I daresay he was never the same boy who rode away on that motorcycle. 

There are things that I can never know about how my parents were when they were young, but I can see glimpses of them in those old pictures and imagine how it might have been for them. I'm sure it is the same for my children. Stories never told in words, but only glimpsed in a face staring out of a photo.
  
"When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure."

Do you have treasured photos that make you remember? 

Do you wish you'd taken more time to talk about back when with your parents and grandparents before it was too late?

Dad - Before and After Me

Happy Father's Day to all of you - those who are dads and those of us who have dads. There's nothing like a dad, but it's also true that our dads weren't always dads. They used to be boys and then young men looking to the future, trying out their wings, finding their independence. This picture is my dad on his motorcycle long before he became my dad. The year was about 1931 and he was getting ready to take off across America all the way to Oregon.

What a way to see the country! What a way to say I'm ready to be on my own now. His mother wasn't happy with him. I've never heard anybody say what his father thought. Maybe that he wouldn't make it. That he'd turn around and come home before he got a hundred miles down the road. Or maybe he was proud of him for wanting to do something a little daring. Or he might have been worried he'd never come home. Lucky for me, Dad did come home and meet my mom some eight or nine years later. 

But that trip was Dad saying I'm old enough now to do what I want. His parents weren't happy about it, but he went anyway. All the way across country on a motorcycle. I've always thought I got my grab hold of a dream or goal and keep on keeping on spirit from my mom, a very determined woman. But now that I think about my dad and this trip, I'm seeing he had plenty of that perseverance and focus too. He wanted to go, so he did. And all his life, it was something he looked back on with pleasure and pride. Riding by the Grand Canyon. Nearly running out of water in the desert. Eating nothing but cantalope for a couple of days because someone was selling them cheap by the side of the road. So many adventures.

I look at the young man in the photo above. That was before I was even a thought he might imagine. He was young, footloose and fancy free and he took advantage of that.

Years later when he was almost forty, I came into his life. His last child after two other daughters. I remember the motorcycle. It sat in the corner of the garage for all my childhood years. Dad didn't ride it. I think it needed repair. But he kept it for many years. A symbol of freedom. Of independence. He finally sold it and I think regretted the sale almost immediately.

I can't imagine what it must have felt like for a farm boy like Dad who had probably never gone farther than Louisville (about 60 miles from here) to just take off. To shut his ears to his mother's pleading for him to give up such craziness. My mother remembers Dad saying his mother even offered to give him money she'd hid away for a rainy day if he would stay home. In her heart it was storming for sure.

Now I wish I could hear more of Dad's stories about the places he went on that motorcycle. I wish I knew the Dad before there was me. And I wonder if my children ever wonder about the girl before the mom. I think that's sort of what we all want - for our loved ones to see us as we see ourselves. Unique, one of a kind, our own person. 

That's what writers need to do with our characters too. To know them is to breathe life into them. And some of them are fathers. Like Victor in Angel Sister. Victor was a yearning to be better father in spite of his flaws and troubles.

My dad wasn't perfect either. But then who among us is? But he was a good dad and he surprised some people by buying a motorcycle and heading west. Maybe himself most of all.

Hope you had a good dad who made your life richer and better. What's one of your favorite things or memories about your dad?

A Tribute to My Dad

Hope all of you had a wonderful Father's Day! And that you were able to give your dad a hug and maybe some little gift that he pretended to like. Well, maybe he really liked whatever you got him. My dad never was into gifts that much. He liked for us to come over and make homemade banana ice cream in the crank freezer. That was always fun. And yummy!

My dad passed on in 1987 from pancreatic cancer. It wasn't an easy passing. He didn't like being sick. Worse, he knew he wasn't going to get well. It was a hard time for all of us. I'm sure many of you have lost your dads too. If so, I hope you spent a few minutes remembering him today and thinking about some special times you had together. My dad was a farmer and we spent a lot of time helping him in the fields. He liked to play bridge and rook and solitare. He was a whiz at math even though he never went to high school. He started driving when he was ten. Back then you didn't have to have a license or be a certain age to drive. He loved to travel and always wanted to go to Alaska, but he wouldn't fly. So he never made the long drive there. He got a motorcycle when he was twenty-one much to his mother's nervous distress and took a summer trip to Oregon on it to visit some cousins who had traveled west to settle. He went out there several more times after that in a car.

When I was five, we drove out there in a green Studebaker. There were five of us. I was the youngest kid. My sisters were eleven and seven. A great aunt rode back with us. I wonder now how she survived being cooped up in that little back seat with three little girls, I don't remember her being cranky. Just old. Now I also wonder how old she really was. Probably not nearly as old as I thought she was. Perspective on age changes as you get older and turn into a great aunt or granny yourself.

Dad loved to play horseshoes. He was very competitive and would pitch horseshoes every night when he came in from the fields until he had thrown whatever number of ringers he set as a goal for himself. After he got older, he started going to horseshoe competitions which he enjoyed, but he was already past his prime in throwing ringers. If he had competed when he was younger, he would have been a champion, I'm sure. He also liked to play pool and clay court croquet.

I named my first son after him, but he didn't really want me to. His name was Johnson and he didn't want me to shorten my son's name to Johnny which I did anyway. Dad wanted me to call him by his initials. J.W. A lot of people called my dad by his middle name, Hanks, and some called him J.H. That's how he signed his name. But I stuck with Johnny for my son. Now my son's a lawyer and a lot of people call him John, but Johnson looks good on his letterhead.

Best of all, my dad was a good father and he loved us. And I wish we could have put some ice in an old gunny sack and mashed it up with a sledge hammer to use with lots of stock salt to make that delicious banana ice cream. The kids always had fun spooning in the salt and taking their turn cranking the handle. When Dad determined the ice cream was hard enough we'd take out the dasher and put the cork in the top before we drained out the salt water on some patch of poison ivy perhaps. Then we'd pack new ice on it, salt it down, and wrap it in a quilt so that after supper we could all enjoy some yummy ice cream. Talk about brain freeze.

So give a dad a hug today and celebrate all the dads you know. I wish I'd hugged my dad's neck more often while I had the chance.

That's it for this week. I'll whine and cry about my computer dying on me yesterday next week. Have a good one.