YOU LOVE THAT LITTLE BOY?

 

January 18, 1976, is an important day in the Hopper family.  The first grandson of JM and Leecie Hopper came that day.  It was a Sunday morning that Andy Lee Hopper entered the world.  I was a proud dad of the future of the Hopper family.  He entered life with a broken collarbone and yellow jaundice.  As a new dad with a boy child, I had many thoughts about the new responsibility I had.

Andrew, a disciple of Jesus and brother to Peter was the inspiration for Andy.  Andrew means strong, manly, and brave.  Lee means shelter, sanctuary, or haven.  My mom’s name was Leecie, which is Irish meaning servant of Jesus and English meaning happiness gaiety.  Andy Lee is an important name to honor.

One of my fondest memories is my dad holding Andy at Granny Hopper’s wake.  Andy was three months old.  It represented the passing of one born in 19^th Century 1891.  The look at dad had and the scene of this muscular man holing a small fragile baby is a price picture.  Andy would be the first of many more Hopper boys born.

Andy loved cowboy boots, tractors, and horses.  Every toy horse he had usually had a broken leg.  I have his Wonder Horse in storage for restoration.  It has a missing front leg.  One time I watched him play in a field of red top clover.  On his knees, he would throw his head back and kick his right leg into the air.  I got close enough to hear him, heard him neighing like a horse, and saw him chewing on a clover stalk.

I had an old Jersey milk cow that Andy loved.   He drank her milk as a baby. He would call out to her; J E R S E Y and she would come to him.  At one time, he had several laying hens, but that is another story for another time.

I mentioned that he loved tractors.  One time his pawpaw Moxley received a toy metal cast John Deer tractor as a gag gift for Christmas.  Pawpaw gave it to Andy because Andy thought Pawpaw got his Christmas present.  It is also in storage in my shop along with other toy tractors and trucks.  Andy had a toy John Deere peddle tractor that we lost in a house fire.  The John Deere trailer that came with the tractor survived.

Andy would ride along side of me when I cut the fields with a real tractor.  I was so happy when he would ride with me.  One day a man in an empty log truck stopped and came to the tractor that Andy and I were riding.  He introduced himself as Travis Price.  He asked, “You love that little boy?”  I thought he was about to scold me for riding my toddler on a large piece of equipment.  I looked him in the eye and said, “I love him very much.”  Then he shocked me with, “You better do a better job of watching him.”

Just minutes earlier, I had the responsibility of taking care of Andy alone while his mother ran some errands.  She had not been gone just seconds when all of a sudden Andy was missing.  I panicked.  I called out to him.  We were standing in the front yard when he disappeared.  I run into the house and I looked everywhere.  Andy was notorious for hiding.  I looked in the basement, in the closets, under the bed and in the bed.  I had built him a Captain’s bed and he was not the hidden toy box of the bed.

I went back out front and there he was standing in the yard.  I hugged and squeezed him and told him how much he scared me.  Then we went to the tractor and started cutting the field.  That’s when Mr. Price stopped and told me something that really scared me.

Mr. Price said, “I topped the hill, to our left, with a large load of logs.  In the middle of the road was your little boy.  I was scared to death and knew I could not stop.  I waited to see which way he was going to run.  When he ran toward your house, I run the log truck into the side of the road at the house over there, pointed to my grandmother’s house.

Mr. Price said I was so scared I was nauseated and had to stop about a mile up road and settle my stomach.  I was so bad that I drove very slowly to the sawmill.  When I saw that precious little boy in your arms I had to stop.”

He had my attention, and all the possible dangers and scenarios flooded my mind.  Mr. Price then shared with me what I will never forget.

He said, “I had a boy about your son’s age.  One morning I had to run to town.  As I started to back my car out of the drive, I made sure there were no children around the car.  Not seeing any, I started back.  That’s when I heard a terrible sound.  I stopped and checked under the car.  That’s when I saw that I had run over my son and killed him.  I will never forget what I saw and what I done.  He had hid under the car and I did not see him.  That’s something that I will never get over.”

When Mr. Price left, I took Andy into my arms realizing that a dad that loved his son very much lost his son.  I had mine because another dad was willing to sacrifice himself to spare my son.  I hugged and loved on Andy so much.  I wept. 

God’s gives us great responsibilities when he gives us children.  Andy is approaching his 49^th birthday as I write this article.  He lives far from Sugar Ridge in Bessie, Alabama where he learned to call Jersey, eat red top clover, ride toy and real tractors, and have laying hens.  San Antonio is a long way from County Road 50 where God placed his hand on a logger and surrounded my Andy with angels.  I love you son! 

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. John 3:35

Thanks Dad

In one of my favorite pictures of my dad, he is leaning against a two by four board holding up the front porch.  Dad did not like to have his picture taken.  On this occasion, his brother was down from Illinois.  Dad had been hauling logs that day and had the smell of pine rosin and sweat mingled with the aroma of Camel cigarette smoke and grease on him.

In this picture, dad is tanned and muscled.  He was very strong from working with pulpwood and logs most of his life.  I, along with my brothers and sister, could not wait for dad to come home in the evenings.  We would spend many evenings lying on an old quit in the front yard just talking about life and looking at the heavens.

I remember that I could not wait to get old enough to go to work in the woods with him.  Back then, pulpwood was measured.  I carried a measuring stick and marked the fallen pine timber as dad cut.  He had a large, and heavy, McCulloch chainsaw.  As a ten-year-old, the chainsaw was very heavy.  It was all I could do to crank it.  When I could not, daddy would give the cord a yank and fire it up.  Ever once in a while, he let me run the chainsaw.  Most dads won’t let a ten-year-old run a chainsaw!  I had the best dad.

When hauling logs, dad allowed me guide the mule that pulled the logs back to the truck.  I was not sure I could do it, but dad said the mule knew what to do once I hooked the tongs to the log.  It was fascinating that the mule could find his way back to the truck.  I would jump on the log and balance myself as the log rolled, twisted, and turned going up and down the hills and hollers back to the truck.  It was even more fun to watch the side loading arms of the log truck throw the logs on the truck.  I don’t think momma would have let me go with daddy if she had known how dangerous it was.

I remember helping dad fall a giant oak.  He bated the tree and I helped to push.  Suddenly as the giant tree started to fall, a gush of wind caught the oak and pushed it back toward us.  Daddy yelled, “Run son!”

As a boy, I wanted to spend as much time with dad as I could.  Dad was what folks back home call a “jackleg mechanic.”  When you are poor and have nothing but junk, you spend a lot of time repairing.  Most of my time was spent under the hood or underneath cars, tractors, and trucks.  This is something I enjoy doing today.  It is therapeutic and nostalgic.

For some reason, dad went most places by himself.  On particular day, he was going to Montevallo to pick up his check.  Momma asked if I wanted to go.  I think she wanted me to spy on dad and see what he was doing.  I knew I had to keep my lips sealed if there was to be another expedition with dad.  I was so excited and could not wait to ride in our log truck with him.

As I went out the door, I closed the door on my fingers.  Doing the natural thing, I pulled them from the closed door, leaving one of my fingernails in the door.  Blood was flying and the finger was throbbing.  I was not going to miss an opportunity to spend time with dad.  I dare not cried.  He would have made me stay home.  I remember sitting alone for what seemed an eternity with my finger throbbing with the beating of my heart.  Dad wanted me to be tough.

Momma taught me how to drive, but daddy let me drive.  Dad went from logging to working in a rock plant.  Our family car became his work vehicle.  As usual, it needed repair another rear axle.  As we started to Bessemer to find a replacement, dad said, “You drive.”  I was twelve. 

On a long hill near Montevallo, I remember being scared to death as we descended.  I looked at dad and he seemed to have confidence in me.  That was until I kept riding too close to the outside of the highway.  Dad told me that there was more room to the inside and stop driving like momma. He said that we would have to have new tires and the front end realigned if I kept running off the road.  Driving in Bessemer was scary and exciting.  I had the time of my life, me driving my daddy.

In her book, Catching Fireflies, Patsy Clairmont says that she read somewhere that we get our role models from our same-sex parent and our sense of safety and security from our opposite same-sex parent.  I don’t know about all that, but I do know that I am glad I had a daddy that loved me and taught me much about life.  I know there are thousands of children that do not have a dad in their lives.  Society is paying a tremendous price for this.  This creates a negative view of God as our Father.  Those that have a nurturing and tender interaction with their dad helps in bonding with our heavenly Father.  Clairmont says that Deuteronomy 32:4, 9-10 gives us a glimpse God’s father-heart.

 

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.

For the Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

 

November is the time for Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving.  Thanks dad!