More Popdaddy Memories

This morning I was home and was able to sit and have a leisurely visit with Dad over a donut and coffee (for him), tea (for me). He was in a mood to think back and it is incredible how he can remember towns he lived in and even correct dates. What a marvelous organ is the brain God gave us!

He started talking about coming to work for a company here in Baltimore during the war. Sometime in the early 50's I guess a young guy who had been working for the company for about five years came to him with a proposal. He had been working for the company in order to learn the business well before getting his own company started. He wanted my Dad to come with him. He offered him either the option of being an employee or a partner if he wanted to put some money in the company. He said, "You know your mother and I had always been conservative in our spending, so I had a little money saved." He decided to invest in the company. He has told me before how nervous he was about that venture but God blessed it and enabled him to make a good living. He laughed and said that he worked hard to start that company. When it started he drove the bulldozer and supervised the job and then after dropping the men who worked for them at the "car line" (streetcar) went back and operated the backhoe to fill in the ditch. I feel so lazy after hearing Dad's stories--what diligent, hard-working people my parents were! And how blessed that I had some a comfortable life because of their hard work.

Dad then started thinking back to working in a town near Punxatawney, PA. They moved around a lot, often in boarding houses and this time they rented a bedroom with kitchen privileges in the home of a family. My dad had a 1939 Studebaker at the time and they had their possessions tied to the top when they pulled up to the house. The grown daughter of that family lived next door and later told Dad that she was worried that gypsies were at her parents house. In this home was a telephone switchboard that the mistress of the home operated. One day she had to go out and asked my mother to operate it. (This was in 1939-40 so my sisters were about 5 or 6 and 3 years old at the time.) One of the calls she had to connect was a farmer calling the veterinarian. The line wasn't very clear so mother had to convey information back and forth from the farmer to the vet and back. In this way she helped the farmer deliver a new calf! Dad then laughed and told me about a time that mother was calling the grocery store to order supplies. They were on a party line and mother could hear other people picking up the line to listen in. Mother said, "It's okay, you can hang up. I'm only ordering groceries." That reminded Dad of how feisty my mother was and he remembered that people in that little Pennsylvania town thought my mother's Virginia bred mountain accent funny. One little Jewish lady told my mother one day, "Don't worry, honey. When you have lived here long enough you will sound just like us." My mother shot back, "Well, I hope I don't live here that long!" Mother was never shy about telling people just what she thought!

Thinking about cars, Dad remembered how scared he was when on a trip one time with Mother and my two sisters who were about 6 and 9 at the time. The doors of cars at that time opened the opposite way that today's cars do and as they were driving, my sister Janet must have been playing with the door handle and it swung open. Dad said he saw a glimpse of it opening and Janet flying out onto the road. (This was way before seatbelts were thought of.) He went back and found her, very nervous about what he would find. Of course, my sister, Peggy, who saw her sister flying out the car door, was now hysterical. There must have been angels protecting her that day because she only suffered a broken collar bone.

We then went on to a discussion of the merits and disadvantages of seatbelts and our opinions about whether government has the right to legislate their use. I sometimes forget my dad is almost 96 years old. He still is very much a logical thinking person with definite opinions. I am so grateful for his wisdom and his presence in our home.