My father, the man who would not give up the old west.

[semperfi71]

My Father and I used to run trotlines (we called them "trout") on the Cibolo Creek in Texas. Caught plenty of "cats". He used to say, "I wish I could have seen this country 100/150 years ago, before fences and too many people."

He had fished that creek since he was a kid.

He taught me the "art" of trotlining. A bit more involved than one would think. We even ran a few gill nets before they were illegal.

I used to sit in the front of the boat, he in the back. When I saw something to remark upon I'd say, "See that?" or "Look at that.", and then look back at him for acknowlegement.

He died the first year I was in the Marines. When I got out and came home three years later I ran trotlines alone.

Always...I was thinking of him and our trips on the creek.

One afternoon, as I was alone and thinking of my Dad and the past, I saw a big fish break water up creek from me.

I blurted out, "Did you see that!" and looked back to my Dad for his acknowlegement. But he wasn't there. Only me and a soft, quiet creek flowing by. I had truly gotten happily lost in place and time for a brief moment. But then the moment was gone and I was alone again.

Today I ride the wilderness areas of New Mexico, often alone. I always wish he was with me so that he could see what "...it looked like 100/150 years ago before fences or people." He'd a loved it.

 

[semperfi71]

I love this pic!!

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[feralmerril]

Thanks! In 1939 my folks and sister ended up picking fruit in oregon. The plan had been for dad and mom to go to california and kick out some non paying renters out of a old small house my grandpa owned, live in it and find work. They started out in wisconsin. The man was a preacher with a nest of kids. Dad didnt have the heart to throw them out and drove north. Dad got a job on a ranch for $2s a day plus a cabin. To get the job ma had to agree to work too for I think about a buck packing peachs. Problem was my sister was a year old. Mom said she paid a woman to watch wendie about a quarter more than she made a day so dad could work. It was on the applegate ranch and river west of grants pass. Dad told me it was the best time of his life. They really loved it.
Dad had worked in a factory in milwaukee but was laid off. The factory was gearing up for the comeing war and somehow my grandparents got word to him that he had like a couple days to report and get his job back or be bypassed. Ma said they had $12s saved up and drove day and night to make it. She said dad sold the spotlights off the car along the way for gas to make it! I took my dad to that ranch about a year before he died. Some woman had bought it, or what was left of it. She was a historian of the area and it made her day to have dad walk around and show her what was what and what fields grew what etc.

 

[Tenn2]

I was raised by my grandparents. I did not get along well with my Dad or my 2 brothers. Just too much energy for anyone to control. Almost!

My grandfather was a big german that did not put up with any c***. He made me work hard and there was no complaining. Picked cotton for about .50 a day @ 8 years old.

I enlisted in the Navy and went to VN and never let my family know what I was doing. I was a combat Navy vet. Upon my return they had a homecoming and Dad took me aside and informed me he had found out about some of our ops.

That night he and I went to the bar and got blitzed. We lived in a very small town and were able to walk home supporting each other all the way.

We became best friends until his early death @ 63 due to cancer.

 

[model70hunter]

Semperfi you just gave me another memory I had forgotten. Thank you very much sir.

When Dad worked he also was farming a 200 acre farm. He was always too busy to go fishing. One night my brother and I drug him to the river he had a great time.

After he sold the farm and retired he kept busy with his horses, hunting and fishing. He had a nice 16' jon boat with a jet motor. He loved to go set out trot lines and run them before daylight. When he got to old to go by himself his boat just sat, he had to sell the horses because he had trouble mounting and balance issues and we did not know it but was in the early stages of dementia. After the kids and I divorced their mother I took my youngest daughter to spend a week with Grandma. We lived 3 hours away. After I arrived I noticed he had put new license plates on the boat trailer and his J10 Jeep truck. I asked if he was gong fishing, he shrugged his shoulders. I commented it was a shame he did not have any bait so we could go set out his trot lines. He walked to the garage refrigerator, pulled out lots of bait and handed it to me.

Mom was watching the whole show and told me Dad had done all of this just hoping I would ask him to go. Well he did a good job of setting the bait, I bit and we were going fishing. I drove, ran the boat, set the lines and baited them. We pulled in a few catfish the next morning. It was the last time Dad ever fished in his boat or set trot lines. Later he gave the boat to my brother.

 

[Mickey D]

Thanks for sharing.
I have several fond memories with my father. Not gun related but motorcycle riding related. We rode H-D almost daily for many years together from '79 all through the '80s into the '90s until his knees started to go bad. We were a team!

 

[feralmerril]

I flew home to wisconsin from california in 1977 in my citaberia. Dad had never flown. He wanted a ride. Actualy he got a little disgusted. We flew low and slow over the country he had grown up in. He had never seen it from that prospective. Many open fields were surrounded by rows of trees and woods he had hunted in were gone. Lots of newer houses hidden in woods that he didnt know about etc.
When I went back to california I had a very close call almost running out of gas at night over the mountains in new mexico. It was due to stupidity. I was glad to get down alive and made the mistake of calling him up and telling him about it. He just said, "Do me a favor? Next time ya come home drive!
I remember a time the folks drove out to california to see me. The day before they got by me I went out and bought some nice steaks. Unbelivably I found some steaks that were price mismarked big time. Something like .75 cents a pound where all the others were something like $4.75 a pound, same steaks, same sell by dates. I loaded up and found what looked to be their dumbest looking cashier and it went through.
Next evening when they showed I BBQed and made the mistake of bragging about the deal to them. Pa just said, "Oh?, Well are they worth your soul?"

 

[beemerrider]

Outstanding topic and thread! Look what your efforts have done to make the rest of us remember the best of us. I vote this the top thread I've ever had the opportunity to enjoy.

Thank you very much,

Beemerrider

 

[TinkerDave]

My dad was a flight instructor during WWII. He also flew the P47 Thunderbolt. We saw Tora!Tora!Tora! together - just me and him. It was the only time I saw a movie with just him and I still remember it today even though that was over 40 years ago. TD

 

[shouldazagged]

One of my lasting regrets is that I didn't sit down with my dad and a tape-recorder before he died twelve years ago at 90. There were so many stories he could have told...

He grew up dirt poor. His father was an evil, violent, abusive drunk who disowned Dad because he wanted to go to college, paying his own way. The old b****** told Dad that if working in the textile mills in Knoxville or joining the fire department wasn't good enough for him, to hell with him and his uppity ideas. When he died many years later he left my dad the princely sum of one dollar--a final flip-off. But dad did put himself almost all the way through college by his own efforts.

He went to work as a reporter for the Knoxville Journal in the wild old days of Prohibition yellow journalism when they would run a five-column picture of a dead gangster on page one, with arrows pointing to all twenty-two bullet holes that caused his abrupt demise.

Later we moved to Louisville (in 1941--I was four at the time), where he went to work for the Courier-Journal. At thirty-three, so shortsighted he was probably legally blind without his glasses, he became a war correspondent. He went into Omaha Beach on D-Day with one of the first units, a combat engineering outfit, to hit the beach in the first wave. Had an amphibious vehicle shot out from under him on the way ashore. He never would talk about it; but when he was very old, if asked his profession he would proudly say, "War correspondent!"

He was a journalist for over forty years, traveled to a lot of parts of the world--then retired, and unlikely as it seems for an old newspaper man, went into the ministry. By the time he was eighty, when he and my mother decided to enter a retirement home, he had retired a total of four times. He then felt terribly useless. Men of his generation who had battled their way through the Depression (and mine, the Depression babies raised by those men) felt that if you weren't earning a living you weren't manure. Or you were manure. I had quite a time adjusting when health problems forced me to retire at almost 71. Dad would have understood that.

He was funny and a truly terrible punster. He did the Sunday crossword puzzle in about thirty minutes. In ink. He read constantly, and had a near-photographic memory. Fishing bored him to death, and he never owned a gun and didn't like them. I got my mentoring in fishing from my mother's parents, and hunting from others.

He and my mother were married for sixty-four and a half years before his death. She followed him sixteen months later, not interested in fighting the pancreatic cancer that took her nine days after she was diagnosed. They were both lucid and sharp mentally till the end, but terribly frail.

We kids (I'm the eldest of three) always knew Dad loved us--hell, he sometimes worked as many as three jobs to support us--but I never heard him say he loved me. Hugs and other gestures of affection stopped cold in my family when a son turned six. Once, when he was in his late sixties, I made him stand flatfooted while I hugged him and told him I loved him. He was touched, but so miserably uncomfortable that I never did it again. Another of my regrets.

And oh, the stories he could have told if I had made the effort to record them! All I have is memories and some clippings from his wartime stories.

 

[model70hunter]

Outstanding topic and thread! Look what your efforts have done to make the rest of us remember the best of us. I vote this the top thread I've ever had the opportunity to enjoy.

Thank you very much,

Beemerrider

Thanks, this is one of the best gifts from ones father, good memories which are treasures. Dad always wanted to find treasures, perhaps Jesse James' treasure or the Lost Dutchman, little did he know that he was burying treasure for others to find.

A fathers love was one I did not truly understand until he was gone. I took it for granite. I told him how great he was and how much he meant, but it was too late, Alzhiemers had already taken his best treasure, his mind.

After Dad passed I made sure I told my Mother often about how much she had done for her kids, what a great mother she was to us, how much we loved her and how greatly it was appreciated. She was 82, you should have seen her face, It was like after a life time she heard what she always wanted or needed to hear, she was a great mother. We saw it and verified it.