Dot`sThoughts

Walt`s Birthday.

Yesterday , October 3rd, was Walt`s Birthday. Like the past 6 Birthdays, it rained again. Can`t say I accomplished very much. I kept thinking things like this-
Wonder if he would like my new car,
I am sure he would have done a better job puttying the window,
remembering how the kids all used to show up for his birthday,
Oh, my mind just kept wandering. Six long years without him. He would have been 82 yesterday, but he only celebrated 75 Birthdays. Even though he was 5 years older than me, last month I had already lived 2 more years than he had. He was a good man who kept his name clean for his kids.

As my Dad would say. your name was clean when my Dad gave it to me and still clean when I gave it to you. Now it is your turn to keep it clean to pass on to your kids. Have no idea what my Dad`s name might have been since his Dad was adopted by a wonderful family. I sometimes wonder what my Birth last name would have been if we had known the actual last name of my grandfather before he was adopted. My Dad tried and was never able to find out anything as the court house had burnt years before.
Now I am watching the name being passed down to the great grandchildren and hoping they continue to keep it clean. Of course my dad and mom`s names are not being passed on by me, but I am hoping Walt`s name that I helped pass on will stay as good as he kept it for them. I often wonder if things might have been different if his own father had lived as his father was an alcoholic and Walt`s oldest brother was also one. But, Walt had a step Dad for a short time and from what I heard, this man was a good father image. Walt even chose to name one of our twins after this step dad. There are 4 sons to carry on Walt`s last name, and together these 4 boys had 3 more sons plus an adopted son to carry on his name. I hope that at least one of these sons has a son to carry on the name in the future.

Yesterday, I went to the bank and then to the grocery store. As I walked around the store I kept seeing items that I used to buy for Walt. He had a sweet tooth and loved whatever I picked up for him. I remember one birthday when he said he wished he had some coconut. next day I bought him a full bag of plain coconut and it was eaten in no time. I stopped buying him the long boxes of thin peppermint patties because the kids started adding them to their gifts. I remember being asked "What do you give a Dad that needs nothing". I told them Love and taking time to sit and chat with him. He always loved it when any of them stopped by to visit. Walt would often say to me" Why are you so good to me? or You are so good to me." He never had much when he was a kid. I think he grew up thinking he didn`t deserve much. His Father died when he was 13 and he came home from school to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor a couple years later. He went to live with his grandmother till the system decided she was too old to be raising a teenager, and they moved him to a foster home. At 16 he walked out of the foster home, left school, got a job at a silk factory and a room at the YMCA and from that time on he supported himself. You could call him one of the kids who fell through the cracks as no one ever looked for him when he never returned to the foster home or went back to school. He learned that no one cared what happened to him. He also learned the hard way that you only get what you are willing to work hard for. He was a hard worker all his life until he retired. We had a lot of hard times trying to keep the kids all in shoes and sneakers at the same time. Sneakers sure never lasted very long in those days. Seemed like someone needed a new pair every week and the school required them for gym. Those flimsy sneakers tore out or came unglued so easy. No super glue back then, and sneakers were nothing like the stronger shoe style ones we have today. The thin material wore holes in them very easy.

I was just thinking of a time when we were at our oldest daughters home when her older kids were small. Besides working at the mill days, Walt also worked evenings in the bike shop or the grocery store ( over many years we operated one or the other) with me when our kids were young. So he never had a lot of spare time to play with the kids. He would talk with them while fixing a bike, etc., and we often took them on picnics and fishing in the years between closing the bike shop and opening the grocery store. Trouble with the grocery store was that it was kept open 7 days a week. It was supposed to close by 9Pm, but we would often be still waiting on customers at 10- 11 PM..
To get back to the daughters home. It was one of the granddaughters birthday parties and one of her gifts was a book of paper dolls. Walt was sitting at the kitchen table when we noticed he was cutting out the paper dolls clothes for our granddaughter. Something he had never done before. In the old pictures, I still have a picture of this. Another picture that comes to mind is one taken in the early 80`s at our step-sons place when they lived in N. Carolina. Both the s-son and his wife were working when we arrived and we spent the day with the three grandchildren. The two granddaughters were young at the time and their parents had taken them all to a Fair the week before. At the Fair the girls got some monkeys on strings hooked to a stick. These monkeys were at least 2 foot tall. They both brought out their monkeys and sat them on their gramp`s lap. The youngest g-daughter then climb up onto his lap while the other one stood beside him. I took that picture also. I think he was making up for missing out on all this while working so hard to support the family. Another picture I have is Walt holding our youngest son, feeding him his bottle- about 3 or 4 months of age. We were on vacation and spent a week at a quiet small camp near a small lake. We had hired someone to run the grocery store and a friend to stay with the older kids for the week. Our youngest daughter was only 5 at the time so Walt insisted we also take her with us. This was the only time I remember him holding a baby while feeding him his bottle. He looked so happy standing there holding the baby with the youngest daughter standing beside him.
The older kids used to love walking through the wide stream on the rocks where they would often see a fish swimming past them. The little ones would get so excited when a fish swam by the rock they were standing on. They soon learned how to be very quiet so they wouldn`t scare the fish away.Their Dad led the way up the stream and even the smaller kids would try to step on the same rocks they saw their Dad walk on. I remember telling him not to take any large steps that their little feet couldn`t reach. I was usually the one on the flat cleared space near the stream - watching the baby in the playpen. But, I did often go fetch one who slipped off the rock into the stream. Walt knew all these nice spots off the road where there was clearings large enough for a playpen and a couple of chairs, plus enough room to toss down a blanket for the kids to sit on. He had grown up in this area. We often took the camp stove and ate picnic style there. There wasn`t room for a bonfire in these small clearings. These were happy times that the kids will never forget about. Owning a bike shop, all of our kids owned bikes. The two step- kids were already grown and married by the time we opened the bike shop. But they were still home to enjoy the fishing and rock walking with us.

Thinking of Walt, I could write and write and never cover even half of what our
life was like during our courtship and our -a little over 50- years of Marriage.

Why was I so good to him? Easy, I loved him and knew he also loved me. That is all the reason any one needs to be good to each other. Love works wonders if it is given freely and when that love is returned it has the power to make the whole family love one another. Gone, but never forgotten.