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HOMESPUN MEMORIES
SINCE THIS WEEKEND IS FATHER’S DAY, I FELT IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO POST THIS ENTRY FROM MY DAUGHTER’S BLOG SITE. SHE AND HER FAMILY ARE ON THE MISSION FIELD AND THIS ARTICLE WAS POSTED IN HER OWN BLOG JOURNAL AS A FATHER’S DAY ENTRY; I JUST RECEIVED IT MYSELF VIA E-MAIL. AS YOU MAY NOTICE, SHE PURPOSELY AVOIDS ANY MENTION OF MY SERVING AS A PASTOR AND A MISSIONARY IN OUR JOURNEYS. SHE DOES SO BECAUSE SHE AND HER FAMILY ARE LIVING IN A MOSLEM COUNTRY; THEIR LIVES AND WORK THERE COULD BE IN JEOPARDY IF SUCH INFORMATION WERE TO APPEAR IN HER BLOG.
JUNE 17, 2006 - MY FATHER, THE DREAM CHASER
As a motherless boy wandering the streets of Chicago, my Dad learned many of life’s lessons the hard way. Among them, he learned that many of his questions could be answered with a library card; and in the process, he learned that there was a whole other world out there for the taking…so, he took it. This, is his story…
First, it was a castaway doctor’s satchel. You know, the kind that doctors used to carry when they made house visits. When the handles finally fell off, my brother had a box built with a glass lid. I’m afraid that didn’t last very long in all the family moves that were to follow—and there were many. In the end, an old metal file box was chosen, and so it has remained until this day. This precious box holds the tales of a dreamer, and of a life well lived. Whenever we have a family reunion, the box is pulled out from obscurity and dusted off. The grandkids gather around, and the yarns unfold before a wide-eyed audience.
When I was a just a little girl of four years, my daddy had a dream. He wanted to look for the legendary Lost Dutchman Gold Mine located somewhere in the Arizona desert. I remember him coming home late at night, more than once, tired and hungry, but full of the day’s adventures. He’d show us a huge rattle he’d cut off from the latest Diamond-back rattler he’d almost stepped on. Or he’d pull out an arrowhead or two, and pottery he’d found in some obscure cave. Once, he didn’t come home for two or three days. I’m sure my mother was worried sick. I don’t remember the event, I was so little; but I’ve heard the account from family and friends many times. During that trip my dear daddy almost perished because the desert waterholes had all gone dry.
When I was five, we moved to the ocean. I say, to the ocean and not ‘by’ the ocean, for I believe we spent almost as much time in it as we did beside it. When we’d get thirsty, we’d come out just long enough for my brother to shinny up a tree and knock coconuts down for us. Dear Daddy, as a young Chicago kid, had dreamed of exploring the wonders of the deep, so he learned to snorkel and swim with the barracuda and shark. Once he came home with my brother, covered in red welts after being stung by hundreds of jellyfish. I would often tag along with my fins and mask and try to be just like him.
He also dreamed of someday catching a shark and experiencing the thrill of fighting it, and so a shark must be caught. And he did it, too - with a light fishing rod. It was an eight-foot monster! The only problem was he didn’t know what to do with it after he caught it. So … he slipped it into one of the small creeks near his home. Local fishermen are still mystified to this day, trying to figure out how an eight foot shark got into that small creek? Among the items in his treasure box is a seven-inch stinger he extracted from a stingray, and also a giant prehistoric shark tooth that was found on the beach near Mayport, Florida. (It once belonged to the ancient and extinct “Megalodon Shark”.)
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Then there was the time he cut an alligator’s tooth from its owner’s mouth and put it on a key chain. Often He would go wading among alligators in snake infested waters, pursuing his dream of catching a lunker bass----- the big one. He realized that dream many times over. Sometimes I’d go with him, shaking in my shoes. And whenever I stepped into a fish nest, I’d sink up to my neck. My dad would laugh, and laugh while helping me get out of it. I realized while quite young that my dad was not afraid of anything.
At the age of ten, we moved 2000 miles north to follow another dream that he had kept on the back burner for many years-- to homestead in the far north and live off the land. ( By the way, my mother tells me he warned her about all these ‘dreams’ before he married her. She still said, “I do.”) All worldly possessions were sold that could not fit inside a used El Dorado Camper, and off we went across America. We saw the waters of the wide Mississippi, The Great Smoky Mountains, North Dakota Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Banff National Park, and many more landmarks; our geography texts came alive. Unbeknownst to my parents, we kids collected a rock from each state we traveled through. Seventeen rocks and several blowouts later, we arrived in a winter wonderland! The flakes were flying fast and to the eye of a child who had never seen snow before, it was paradise. Oh, the memories we made!
Daddy found a wonderful place for the homestead. The only way to get to it, however, was to cross by freighter canoe, a lake that was seven miles wide, and then shoot down a river full of white-water rapids for several miles. So, he pulled out his books that told him how to navigate rapids, and how to build a log home from scratch. He then set out to do it. (He did not tell us until later that several people had perished while shooting those same rapids.)
Arriving safely, we all went to work clearing our very own land. I think it would be safe to say that we were the only children whose sole desire was to have our own machetes. My dad obliged us. Those years up north were happy years. They were lean, and they were hard, and sometimes lonely for all of us, but I don’t believe any of us, including my mother who carried much of the load, regret a single moment. We felt like the heroes in the books we had read about, and the feeling was good.
A large number of our days were spent hauling and chopping wood to keep the stove burning. We went without electricity, or running water, and hunted bear and moose for food. Also we kids carefully watched over our malamute pups with our rifles so that the wolves wouldn’t eat them. Twice bears attacked my brother and he barely escaped with his life. On one occasion, while hunting with my dad, I almost perished by going over a cliff in a snowmobile. That same evening we celebrated our narrow escape with a game of chess that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Our only source of music was what we made ourselves, so we learned to play the guitar, ukulele and dulcimer. We’d sing together, pray together; and sometimes we’d climb up on the roof and gaze at the aurora-borealis dancing among a billion stars.
Once, a gold miner walked into the local trading post store and showed off a gold nugget he had found. It was the size of a half dollar. I remember that moment as if it was yesterday. The following week, my dad took all of us to a stream and guess what we did? Yes, we panned for gold. Now, my dad had a bear tooth on his key chain, and a chunk of fool’s gold in his treasure box.
We learned the value of hard work, and of a job well done. I still quote my father’s words to my children today, “If there’s a job worth doing, then it’s worth doing right,” and “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Years later, he would visit the exotic land of India several times, bringing hope to the lepers, the orphans, and the outcasts - because it was his dream. On his last trip, at the age of 72, he received an honorary Doctorate from a university there. On the way back, while traveling hundreds of miles across India alone, he was forced to remain in a hotel room for three days because foreigners were being attacked on sight. He watched from his hotel window, as frenzied crowds rolled the head of a dismembered man down the street.
I went with him on one of those trips to the East. Little did he realize that this would spark a dream in his daughter’s heart -- a dream that would carry her half way across the world and years away from his lap. It pains him today to be unable to be near her or to watch his grandchildren grow up, but he won’t begrudge his dear daughter the pursuit of her own dreams. He knows their worth.
And I love him for that.
Posted by cdrnorth at June 19, 2006 11:09 AM