Time With Daddy

I loved spending time with my daddy.  His life experiences were something that I wanted to know and to share.  He grew up during the Great Depression without a dad.  Granddad Hopper committed suicide when daddy was eleven years old in 1935.  Granddad Hopper, gored by a steer and suffering a stroke, was plagued with depression and paralysis. By his early forties, he shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He believed he had no reason to live.

Granny Hopper, dad’s mother, was a sharecropper, widow woman, and a mother of eight during the Great Depression and daddy would tell how the family struggled to survive.  I remember one of the houses that Granny Hopper lived in for many years.  It was high off the ground, had wide crakes in the floor, and had no inside plumbing.  In fact, the kitchen was a separate building adjacent to the house.

I thought it amazing that dad lived there most of his life.  I was glad that it was not the house where granddad killed himself.  I think that is why we lived in our house for many years without many modern amenities that other folks had, such as hot water and a bathroom. Dad was not accustomed to them.

Dad served in the Army during the second Great World War.  He had been to Texas, California, North Africa, and Italy.  He had been wounded by an exploding grenade and ripped open by a machine gun blast.  He was left for dead and had been captured.  He was in the hospital when General Patton became infamous for slapping a soldier.

I thought daddy was intriguing.  He had been to so many exotic and interesting places.  He knew so many different people from all walks of life.  He would tell us some of the most interesting stories.

I loved to lay out in the yard with daddy in the evenings.  He would come home from a hard day of logging.  I have a vivid memory of him coming home all sweaty and dirty from working in the woods.  After supper, daddy loved momma’s cooking, we would get an old blanket and lay in the yard and watch the sunset. 

The hill where we lived provided the most gorgeous sunsets.  In the twilight, we would listen as the crickets and frogs serenaded us.  We would watch the bats dive for bugs as the stars began illuminating the heavens.  Daddy would talk of how the Old Master created all the heavens.

On our backs and looking in to heaven, we watched falling stars, planes traveling to and fro, orbiting satellites, which he called Sputniks, and sometimes far off lightning.  He would thump a cigarette into the grass and tell us that the crickets were having a weenie roast as the smoke swirled upward.

When daddy started to work evening shift (three to eleven p.m.), our times outside in the yard were fewer, but we spent time out there when we could.  I could not wait for daddy to get home when he worked evenings.  I was happy to see that he came home.  I worried that something might happen to him because he worked with heavy equipment at the rock plant in Calera.

Daddy would always have something left over in his lunch bucket.  It was usually a Colonial honey bun which he picked up on the way to work and did not have time to eat it or may he left it to see the scuffle between my brothers, sister, and I to be the first to open it.  It was fun to share the honey bun, but it felt wonderful that daddy was home.  Oh, the joy of seeing daddy come home.  I knew daddy had to leave home to earn a living for the family and I knew he would come back.  It reminds me of Jesus’ promise.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:2-3 KJV).