A Glance Back – To The Good Old Days

This past week, we celebrated my father-in-law’s 94th birthday. My husband and I are his primary “care-givers,” not that he needs a lot of care. Mostly just pampering. He’s to that place in his life when he loves to tell stories, especially about his younger years, and we try to be good listeners, even if we’ve heard those stories before.

Here are a few highlights of Dad’s life. Some happy, some not so happy, but all pretty amazing.

1. Five months before Dad was born, his father died in the great influenza epidemic that killed millions worldwide. That was back in 1919. Dad was the youngest of 7 brothers. His oldest brother was 11 when Dad was born. His mother remarried 5 years later, and, when Dad was 10, his only sister was born.

2. When he was still a little boy, his mother wore floor-length skirts and drove a horse and buggy to get them to town and to church.

3. Dad attended a one-room school through the eighth grade.

4. During the years he lived at home, he grew up without electricity or running water.

5. To attend high school, he had to “board out” and live with another family because in the winter the side roads were rolled rather than plowed. If you wanted to get anywhere, you drove a horse and sleigh or you used skis.

6. Dad lost his oldest brother to a hunting accident. The brother was accidentally hit in the leg with one pellet from a shotgun. He died of gangrene.

7. Dad volunteered to serve in World War II, as did four of his brothers. One of them served at Iwo Jima, one at Guadalcanal, one was wounded and taken as a prisoner of war in Germany, one served in Hawaii, and Dad was a machine gunner in the front lines in France and Germany. The miracle is they all came home again – alive.

8. Dad has worked as a store clerk, a driver for a creamery (when he was still in high school), as a logger and last as the co-owner of a butcher shop. He worked until he was almost 70.

9. He helped me care for his wife of more than 60 years during the long five years she had Alzheimer’s. He didn’t complain much during that time, and if he did it was about small things: “A man appreciates a radish now and then.” (His wife wasn’t able to go to the store and buy them. He learned to buy them for himself or ask his daughter-in-law to do so.)

10. Every week, he plays the harmonica with a jam group. It’s a skill he learned from his mother when he was five-years-old.

11. He and his wife raised four boys, taught them by example to be hard workers and men of faith.

12. This week of his 94th birthday, he’s been painting the outside of his two-car garage.

Happy Birthday, Dad. It’s been a privilege to be your daughter-in-law.

Blessings!

Sue