Happy Birthday, Dad

Today is my father's birthday. He missed being in June with the rest of us by one day.

He always has been an outlier. Ha. He likes to think of himself as a rogue, anyway.

Before I called my father around 8:20 a.m. this morning, I heard a story on him. A friend had called to see if he could come over to fish. He told me, "I remember your dad one year was making hay here in front of the house. He was driving that tractor as fast as it would go and he would spear those round bales and never even slow down. I was sure he was going to turn the tractor over, but he never did and he kept right on going."

I laughed and said, "Dad only has two speeds: all out and asleep."

My father is 79 years old. He came over on my birthday in June to say, "I came to see you because I've never had a 57-year-old daughter." Well, I've never had a 79-year-old father!

He may have slowed down a little, but not much. He is retired - sort of - but still keeps his hand in the politics of the business he built up starting sometime in the early 1970s. He likes to work around his property - and I mean big jobs, like moving dirt with heavy machinery. He plants corn to feed the bears. I have no idea why.

He played the guitar, and I enjoyed that and hearing him sing. Because of him, I grew up around music and that was a great gift he gave me.

Dad with his current band

He was gone a lot. He traveled as a salesman and he played in a band on the weekend. After he bought the farm, then his "free time" was spent working on it, making hay, taking care of cattle, along with his work and his music (he didn't give up the music until after I'd left home). 

At one point, he had a lot of birds, like quail and guineas. Chickens, too. I remember having to fetch the eggs until my mother figured out I was allergic to the chickens and the straw in their nests. I stayed sick and my father didn't have much patience with a sick kid, especially a girl.

Dad with his wife, Rita

His focus was on making money and being successful, not on parenting, and while I turned out ok, I have always thought that was more because I raised myself and read a lot of books. He was sometimes generous; he gave me an old car to drive when I got my license (a Datsun), and he helped me buy my next car, paid for the big wedding I didn't want but my mother did, and helped us build our house. 

I appreciated the time he spent helping us put in the electrical wiring more so than any money he gave us. Money is his love language. Time spent with a person is mine. They don't necessarily work together, and that's okay.

My first guitar belonged to him - an old Gibson that he said a woman gave to him because he rescued her from a burning house. I think I have that right. The Gibson later was damaged when my parents' own house burned down. That seems rather circular, doesn't it, in the telling. There should be a poem there.

When I was 14, for Christmas he and Mom gave me an electric guitar, an off-brand that looked like a Gibson Les Paul and actually played better than a Les Paul. I still have that guitar. It is heavy and it has a short in the wiring now. I had someone fix it but the repair didn't hold. Then I started having back issues and it was too heavy to play. Now I play a lighter electric guitar, but that old no-name electric guitar will always have a special place in my heart even if I never hold it again.

Dad with his grandson, about five years ago

We went camping when I was young, though I don't remember those trips, just stories about them. I recall an odd and long adventure that involved a drive across the United States when I was 12. We saw the Grand Canyon and many other sights on our way to visit my grandparents, who had moved to California when I was six months old.

Other vacations were spent at Myrtle Beach. Everybody in this area goes to Myrtle Beach. We went so frequently those times all run together in my head, like the ocean waves. Memory in, memory out. Who was there? Who wasn't? 

Dad has always worked hard and played hard. He is an extreme sort of fellow.

So happy birthday to Dad. Look forward to having an 80-year-old father next year.

Mom, Dad, me, & my brother, 1983, at my wedding.