My father

I'm thinking of you, dad, on this Father's Day. I have been reading aloud in the car a remembrance by novelist, Richard Ford, of his parents, titled Between Them. It is a very touching story, and it cannot help but cause the reader to think about his or her own parents in a new way.

Richard Ford's father was a traveling salesman for a starch company. He was a loving father, but absent a great deal, and Richard says he cannot remember his father teaching him any skill.

Dad, I remember your teaching me, e.g., :
   - how to play chess
   - how to shoot a bow and arrow
   - how to take clinkers out of a coal-stoker-fired furnace
   - how to do basic carpentry
   - how to drive a car

  - how to operate a mimeograph machine and make a stencil
   - how to write a sermon

I am grateful for your love and guidance, dad. You were a good father! It is a little hard, though, for me to stretch my mind around the realization that you died 60 years ago this May! You and mother are still very much alive in my heart and memory.

Barney Crockett (1896 -1957)