Dot`sThoughts

Feb.21,2008

More Remembering

Thinking of my father as I made some shredded wheat for breakfast. Poured hot water over it in the bowl to soften the cereal, drained off excess water, spread a little oleo on the shredded wheat and sprinkled it with a little splenda. Now where did I learn that-- from my Dad of course, except in his day there was no sugar replacements so he used reg. sugar as I used to do.
One Christmas I saw this pretty dress shirt in the store and decided to buy it for my Dad. Others told me he would never wear it. It was a pale pink color and back then pink was for girls, blue was for boys, right. Well things sure have changed since I was small. My Dad surprised everyone-- he loved the pale pink shirt and even wore it with his suit at weddings. It was a real dress style shirt. That realy surprised everyone as our Dad was one tall ,strong, broad shouldered man who was a mechanic and a machinest by trade. He was not only the provider, but the protector of our family. An honest, dependable, and very intelligent person who was welled liked by everyone. I never knew even one person who was ever angry with my Dad. People looked up to him and all of us thought the sun shone on him. We always knew he would be there for us if we ever needed him. And I needed him a lot when we first built our house and later after we moved into it. He taught me how to fix the furnace when it quit working while Walt was working and I was alone at home with all our little kids . Then it was the well pump, I sure learned how to prime it and how to put my ear onto the water pipe coming from the well and tell if water was flowing thru it. Pump learning was a lot easier than furnace settings and less to worry about. Furnace settings had to be exact to light safely. I learned how to take the foot ruler and measure the exact space needed between the fuel line nozzle and the points-- just so far behind and so far below so that it fired like it should. I remember one time when Walt was adjusting the points and scared the life out of me. I was upstairs getting supper ready, when I suddenly heard a loud blast. I went running downstairs to see if he was ok. He had blown some of the furnace pipes right off the furnace. Thats when he asked me what the settings should be. I went upstairs and got the foot ruler and went back to check. He had kept trying to start the furnace and of course each time he just sent more fuel into the furnace that wasn`t lighting. So, when he did get the setting close enough to light the fuel the over abundance lit and it was like an explosion. The furnace had run out of fuel, plugging up the opening in the nozzle so he needed to remove it to clean it and had jarred the points out of alignment when he was putting the nozzle back on. Everything worked ok again once the points were adjusted so they could light the fuel before it was able to build up. After that Walt never just guessed at the settings and learned how to measure it exactly. Many times he would ask me to come check it.

Well, to get back to the pretty light pink shirt. One year my dad told me he needed a new pink shirt for the coming Christmas as his was beginning to look a bit worn. So that was part of his gift again that year. He wore it for the few years he had left. No one ever again said he would never wear a pink shirt. I also bought one for Walt when I bought the second one for my dad. For some reason, I never did buy Walt a second pink one after his wore out. Who ever thought real men don`t wear pink didn`t mweet my Dad.

My Dad was always there to help whenever I had a car problem. I remember one time when he set the timing so it ran lots better and a week later when I drove the car the car was again running rough. Back to my Dad I went. He checked the car and told me someone had changed the settings again. This happened a couple times more in the next few months-- some fellow at the mill told Walt how to set it. Well, that fellow sure didn`t know what he was talking about. That next time my Dad told me he would reset it if I promised not to tell Walt he worked on it. So, after Walt drove it to work the next morning he came home and said " For some reason the car always seems to run better after you have driven it". I told him it was probably because I put better gas in it. Since I had added fuel, he actually believed it was the gas. I never told him the difference till years after my Dad passed away and Walt was retired and not seeing that so smart worker to talk with him about cars. I did learn somethings about cars from my Dad as he was always under someones car when I wanted to ask him something. I got into the habit of always asking him what he was working on now. He was a machinest week-days at the mill, but evenings and week-ends he worked in his garage making extra money by repairing others cars. Over the years Walt also learned more about cars from watching my Dad work on our car. Sometimes I think it bothered him to see that what my dad did always worked. Now if he had only asked my dad instead of the mill friend he might even have taught his friend something useful.

March First
Tomorrow is one of my younger sister`s Birthday. I received a phone call a few minutes ago asking me to come down as her Husband ( also named Walt) was having a small birthday party for her. This may be her first birthday party as I can`t remember her ever having one before. This is the sister and her Walt who had the Double Wedding with Me and my Walt. We both married Walt`s, but they were the exact opposite. my Walt was more quiet, less pushy and less demanding and a better worker than her Walt. Mine was taller, thinner with blond hair ( later turned dark), while hers was shorter, got stockier and dark hair. They both made friends easy, but mine kept his friends longer. Mine was never abusive while she went thru a lot during the first few years of marriage until she finally got brave enough to stand up to him. Then things got better for her. He is the only brother-in-law we have left as both of my other sisters have lost their husbands.

Weather is supposed to be a little better tomorrow. We had about 14 inches of snow this past Wednesday, and about another foot last night. Seems we no more get the driveways cleared and it snows again. Banks are so high you can`t see over them to back out of the driveway. My daughter who lives next door told me a while ago that she thought it was neat-- hearing her husband and I talking in my driveway and her standing up higher on their back porch and she still couldn`t see us over the high snow banks. With the arthritis in my hands getting worse, I can`t work the gas pumps so they take my car and get it filled up for me whenever the car gets low on gas. my daughter could hear him backing my car out of the garage and out of the driveway, but she wasn`t able to see the car.
That reminded me of the year my youngest son had left his car parked on our other lot for the winter. One morning I got up and couldn`t see even the top of his car. It was completely covered with snow. I took pictures of it that year and took a second picture when the very top of the car was verily visable to show the car was really under the snow. You couldn`t even see a dip where the car was-- the snow was so smooth over the whole lot. Not quite as bad this year as that year was because we had some rain washing down the snow a little a couple weeks ago. We have had more snow this winter than in the past few years.

Hardly a day goes by when some memory doesn`t appear from some thing that happened from past years. Memories are what keep all those we loved always with us

Labels: remembering the past