18 AND HEADED TO WAR. This is my dad, just turned 18 in the spring of 1944. He was about to ship off to Europe, to join the winter’s Battle of the Bulge, fighting in General George Patton’s army. I’m here because this teenage kid from West Virginia survived. And I miss him because of the man he became.
THESE ARE MY PEOPLE—the men I think about on Father’s Day.
Here they are, in this video: Grandpa (Tell me ’bout the good ol’ days).
For Father’s Day, I’ve been thinking about my dad, who died of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a few weeks after the 9/11 attack. He fought in General George Patton’s army, came home with the Bronze Star, and explained it to me by saying “Everybody got one.” He didn’t speak of the war. It must have been unspeakable, I suppose.
I’ve been thinking about his dad, too, a West Virginia farmer and coal miner: Grandpa Miller. He was a quiet man who let me jump in the hayloft, told me where the strawberries grew on the hill across the holler, and drank maybe a little too much. I thought about Mom’s dad, Pap-pap Williams. He told me bear stories, sang and played the piano loud, and made hard cider. Which he drank too much, I’m told.
This story started with a harmonica
I can’t play the harmonica yet. But I want to. So I bought some cheap ones in different keys, I turned on Spotify, and I started trying to play along in the chords.
Someday I’ll take lessons, I suppose. But for now, it’s relaxing fun trying to play along with great musicians.
Something happened to me a few weeks ago when I started playing along to the song performed by The Isaacs, “Grandpa (Tell me ’bout the good ol’ days).”
I began to cry. I’ve lost a lot in the last few years. Both younger brothers are gone. Mom’s series of strokes and dementia have left me with someone who speaks kindly to me but doesn’t know me. So, you’d think the dog we had to put down would have been comparatively minor.
He was not. Buddy was my friend. Yet it came to me to end him while his brown eyes looked directly into mine. Worst moment of my life. I’ll have words with God about that.
I’m not sure why the song by The Isaacs melted me while soothing me. It’s a song about dads who abandon the family. All the dads in my extended family, far as I know, have stayed until they died. Even so, the music touched my spirit and brought to mind my good ol’ days.
What made the good ol’ days so wonderful
Listen, I have personally known outdoor toilets in the winter. I’ve walked barefooted in chicken poop and through larger pies of warmth. I’ve hauled spring water from the hillside across the bridgeless creek when Granny’s well ran dry.
None of that was good.
But there is one good thing about the good ol’ days.
My dad was there.
Why I play when it sounds so [fill in the blank]
So, to soothe these moments of memory, I play the harmonica terribly, pretending it sounds good enough not to mortify my kids. Though I’m sure it does. And I cry, because I will always miss my dad.
There’s a photo in this video of Dad holding me in August, in the year I was born. When I saw it, I dropped my face into my hands and sobbed. It surprised me—the power within that picture.
The song is what initially triggered my emotional response. Dad’s picture with me finished it. I couldn’t take it anymore, doing nothing. I felt I should do something.
So, I gathered some family photos for my kids and grandkids so they can see the humble places from which we come and discover that what is good about the good ol’ days is the people who were there.
I say I did the video for them. And I did. Yet I know that perhaps most of all, I did it for myself.
For I am the one on Father’s Day who will drink from a blue and white polka-dot coffee cup with one chip in the rim, wishing it was Dad still holding it on another summer morning in Ohio.
Grandpa (Tell me ’bout the good ol’ days)
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