My Dad was born on September 4, so today is his birthday. I’d love to bake him a yellow cake with bananas and fudge frosting but he died of esophageal cancer on Feb. 1, 1997.
In this collage there is me, and my Dad with me riding high. Then my Dad in a cowboy hat holding a longhorn and petting our sheep dog as he helped my Grandpa, Mom’s Dad sell horns and Antlers to tourists coming to Yellowstone park from off a black pick-up truck in the summer. Then there is a much older, Dad/Grandpa reading to my two boys, and two pictures of mom and Dad. Then there is my dad as an adolescent and the curly haired picture his brother Walt tried to destroy because he hated that his baby brother looked like a girl.
Dad was many things in his life, a baseball fan raised close to the Pittsburgh Pirates. A Genius who was so poor he had to go to a technical high school and then into factory work although he could win Jeopardy and know about every subject. Unlucky, he got drafted and had already lost a brother on Okinawa and had his Dad blinded by mustard gas in service – but also lucky, he became a morse code operator who ever after could type over 100 words a minute and survived his military time to move to Wyoming and marry my Mom.
They were oddly suited to each other, and fought a little but mainly got along very well. He worked at a sawmill, and fought forest fires and worked in a wall board factory. Always he made little more than minimum wage and benefits only cane at the last job he had, but he provided a happy childhood to my brothers and I.
He always loved Babies and wanted to be a grandpa, but his first three grandkids were born in between March 29, 1993 and April 16, 1994 and then he died just a couple years later. Not having him there when the boys were little kept me saying “Yes” to them often because I’d think “I’m tired, but I’m alive and Dad would have given anything to be able to do this with them.”
gosh, I just love this project. People's lives are so fascinating. I hope it's ok that I'm just bopping around my life rather than systematically following the prompts. I decided to just see what popped into my head as a subject.
I particularly like about this collage that it shows the same person over many years.
I think this shows that no matter what, he was a happy man and satisfied because he had a family to love. You've been writing some beautiful pieces Dixie!
I particularly like about this collage that it shows the same person over many years.