Train up a child…

One Daddy

My dad grew up in Eagle Rock, MO. He had a scant eighth grade education because he could only go to school when the weather was too bad to work in the field. Working in the field often meant plowing behind a team of mules. When he did go to school, the kids made fun of his bare feet by spitting on them.
Daddy’s mom died in 1926, when daddy was twenty-three years old. By that time, my dad had married my mom and they took his younger brothers to raise. Daddy worked on the railroad in Monett, Mo, for a time. He bought a piece of land outside Verona, MO, and built a house, barn, and chicken house on it. Later, he built a garage and milk house of field rock. He raised hogs and milked cows to sell the milk. He grew corn and alfalfa in fields plowed with a team of horses. He kept the farm, bought another piece of land and began farming it. He had fields of strawberries and took the strawberries on the old red truck to Monett, MO, where they were shipped out on a train.
My dad bought a building in Verona and opened a grocery store while still farming. He built a house on the back of the building and we lived in town for a time. I remember standing in front of that building, (it is still there), and watching a truck come into town, the back open up, and a man ladling soup into bowls and cups held by people lined up behind the truck.
When I was in seventh grade, my dad decided to go to church. His dad was a Pentecostal preacher, but my dad had been too busy raising five girls to think about church. Now, although still very busy, he became active in church. He taught a Sunday School class for more than twenty years. The little church bought him a chair in his old age because he couldn’t stand up long enough to teach. When he prayed, it was like he burst a hole in the ceiling with his introductory, “Almighty God”! He had a booming voice and there was no doubt as to the head of the household. My mom often reminded us of that with her, “You kids just wait ’til your daddy gets home! He’ll take care of you!” And he often did. He helped us each plant a peach tree and when we got a whipping, it was from a branch of the tree we planted.
My dad would often kneel by an old stump on the farm and his voice could be heard far away pleading to God to save his children and grandchildren. It is heartening to see how so many of those prayers have been answered.
Daddy didn’t believe in going in debt. He never bought a vehicle until he could take a load of calves or pigs to the stockyards in Springfield to get money to pay cash. He did, however, occasionally borrow a small amount. His reputation was so good that I think any one of my sisters or I could have borrowed money from that bank with few questions asked. His financial secret…”Don’t spend money unless it will make money for you”.
Daddy loved poetry and once wrote a poem that was printed in a Springfield paper. He said, “Poetry and inventin’ jes go together”. He invented a contraption to help him track bees for his beehives. He invented chicken roosts for chickens to kill mites, and a machine to take kernels out of black walnuts. He grafted a black walnut tree with English walnut. One Christmas, my gift was a quart of nut kernels from the produce of that tree.
When Daddy died, at age 84, he had saved enough money to care for my mom until she died. Then there was enough that each of my sisters and I received some.
My dad was a man who did everything with purpose and intensity. He was respected as an honest, hard-working man. When I looked at my dad lying in his casket, I thought, “Daddy, the greatest thing you did for me was to give me the assurance of where you are now.” There was no doubt in my mind that my dad had gone to be with his Lord.