My Dad Would Have Been 84 On The 17th Of This Month

My Mom wrote to me and let me know that she wants to honor her late Husband (who is also my late Father) with a mass on the 18th and would like to share some memories.

Of course there are lots of things I remember; Trips to see our grandparents, water skiing, huckleberry picking etc. These were not really personal memories though. After-all, my Dad was not specifically taking me on these trips; it was the whole family and as such, most of my interactions were with siblings and others my age, his were with my Mom and other adults.

There were not that many events which had just the two of us, though surely enough that I don't remember them all.

--One time we went deer hunting up North of Spokane. It was far enough that we flew up in his plane and landed in the hay field of his friend we were staying with. When you go hunting with someone, at least for deer, it does not mean you stroll through the woods together. It was more like: You go to the left and then hook around to the right, I will go to the right and slice to the left. We will meet at the top of the hill and hopefully one or the other of us will drive a deer toward the other of us. And by the way, don't accidentally shoot me! It ended well, my dad killed a nice little buck and we had some together-time dragging it back to the farm house.

--Another event a few years earlier was, I think, unplanned. We lived on Ardmore Drive in Spokane and had some family friends who lived in Brentwood--a development. I must have been 8 or 10 at the time. For some reason, just me and my Dad were stranded there--maybe my Mom had to take the car we all went there in, to run some errand, I really don't remember the circumstances. The upshot was that we decided to hoof-it home. We had a bit of an adventure. He thought it might be shorter to cut through the back of the development to the main road, this cut a lot off of the trip. As we got closer to home, we were in areas I knew from exploring and I guided us to another couple of short-cuts that got us home.

--One last event comes to mind. It was really nothing, but somehow stuck in my memory. I had just learned to tie my shoes but every time I untied them, I got a knot. Not an easy one either--at that age, I did everything with vigor and so when I got a knot in my laces, it was a tight one and very frustrating for someone in the lower single digits age-wise. My Dad happened along and showed me that if you pull both of the ends at once, there is never a knot. At that age, there really are few problems for a kid, he solved all of the problems I had.