My Dad

From 6-15-14

Mothers and Dads are both very special, and if the love and respect is in your relationship, it should last a lifetime. If you are very fortunate, your parents are the only ones who will love you, more than they love themselves, for your entire life. Most of my parents life they worked at very demanding jobs in the cotton mill in order to support their family. Our life centered around the Church, our school, the mill store and a Sears-Roebuck catalog, the village, and of course the mill.

My Mom was extremely religious and when any problem occurred, she would always say," God will take care of it." She was always right, but sometimes I was too stubborn to wait on Him. My mom always stayed busy doing something, and she always thought that idle hands were the Devil's workshop. I had an older sister, Margaret who tried to look after me, and later a younger sister named Carol that added much excitement to our life. I loved my family, but today's Father's Day. My Dad's other life beside the mill was baseball and later softball.

It was always a thrill for me to ride the company truck with the team and hear their stories about life. They always sung, "show me the way to go home Lord,"and I still love that song today. In 1940 Daddy played in a game that set a world softball record, when they played the CCC men in a game that lasted 26 hours and 44 minutes. My Dad's Exposition Cotton Mill team lost by a score of 172 to 171 in 246 innings. Jesse Sluder pitched the whole game for my Dads team, and I still have the newspaper to prove it. I watched most of the game until my Mom made me lay down and go to sleep. I am thankful that my dad believed if you spared the rod, you'll spoil the child. Most of the things that last a lifetime, come with a cost. Many of my mistakes came with a whipping, and I deserved and earned each one. When I was 7 years old I decided to skip school and go down the street to a Hog Killing. They had only hung two hogs up when I heard my Dad's whistle, and I knew what that meant. It was about a half mile to school, and he must have said 10 times, your mother and I don't work in that mill for you to skip school and he hit me with his belt. Every now and then he would say something that I still don't understand,"this hurts me more than it hurts you," Huh. I never considered hooky as an option again. My freshman year in HS I went out for football, and the first day in pads was a day I'll always remember. I bent over to pick up a fumble, and our all-state linebacker hit me in the rear, and I was sure I would never be able to walk again. I struggled home to tell my Dad I was quitting football, it hurt too much. He said, boy did we buy you some football shoes? I said,"yes sir." He then said," you are going to use those shoes." If my Dad had let me quit football, I doubt that I would have lasted 50 years coaching young people. When I was 15 my family got a new car, and one of the first days I was determined to drive it to Jan's house to show off a bit. I was tooling along changing stations on the radio and I didn't see that big bus stop in front of me. I almost got around it, but scraped the new car's fender. After we got the damage appraised, my Dad looked at me and said,"I"ll have to work more than a day to pay that $26 bill. My dad said as long as I practiced, and played ball, I didn't have to go to work in the cotton mill. When my Dad was in the hospital with a brain tumor he told me that he had a cemetery plot, but he wasn't in a hurry to use it. During the surgery the doctor came out and said,"that if Daddy made it, he would require help the rest of his life. Daddy did what he always did, what was best for his family, he went home to be with his Heavenly Father. If your Dad is still alive, let him know that you love him, I promise you that one day you will miss him.