Tributes to fathers, and fatherhood Texas style. (original) (raw)

A Celebration of

History & Opinion

Max Schindler (center) and Sons, 1910
Photo by Charles Renz, Colorado County
Photo Courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library - Charles Renz Collection

• Praise for a Common Man by Mary Boner Creighton
• Frank, the Wood Worker
  My grandfather was a carpenter by trade...
• Stolen Bounty by Mike Cox
  Howard Campbell never lost his vivid memory of the only time he ever saw his parents cry.
• "Dear Papa's 'Rules'" or Give Pease a Chance by Mike Cox
  Every parent who has ever helped their child move into a dorm room on a hot summer day at the beginning of their freshman year in college will understand the letter former Gov. E.M. Pease sent to one of his daughters in 1866.

	My Father Zola Baseball, Love and a Love of Baseball A serialization of the writings of George Olsson Short Chapter One

• Small Perfection by Dianne West Short
  "...Joe�s behavior reminded me in a way of our father, who lived with my family for almost ten years after our mother�s death..."
• Frank, the Butcher by Bruce Martin
  For a good portion of my father�s adult life, he worked as a butcher in local neighborhood grocery store meat markets, well before the age of chain stores and packaged foods.
• Country Living in the Mid-1900�s by Bruce Martin
  "Grandpa had a knack for story-telling. There was the one about the old Spanish explorers hiding treasure chests in a cave..."
• Archeological Diversion Ensured Granddad a Quiet Hunt by Mike Cox
  My eyes should have been scanning the sky for birds as we walked with our shotguns down the two-rut ranch road toward the old Aermotor windmill, but I was looking at the ground. It's a habit of long standing and doubtless has accounted for many missed dove over the years, but there�s a good reason behind it...
• My Son Has Just Received His First Car by Byron Browne
  For my son the vehicle offers status, maturity and of course the freedom of rapid access to whom and whatever he feels drawn towards. For myself I had the selfish and dour thought that the car was just another element propelling my son away from home.
• Father-Son Talk by Peary Perry
  Our youngest son is getting married in a few weeks.
• Father�s Day by Peary Perry
  There are a lot of things I would have liked to have asked my father, but was too dumb to think of while he was alive...
• History depends on who's telling by Delbert Trew
  I recall an incident in my early years when a nasty bit of gossip about a neighbor made the rounds. I privately asked my father about it and he gave sound advice that I have never forgotten...
• An Introduction of Two Persons
  From "The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"
  �Make the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have been in it.�
• Necktie: Torture device of men's fashion by Delbert Trew
  The necktie, one of the few men's fashions to survive 400 years of change, will be presented to 4.5 million dads on Father's Day each year...
• Graduation Day by Peary Perry
  "...My kids all wanted to know why a degree was so important at this stage in my life and I told them it was for them more than for me. I wanted them to be able to say to their kids and grand kids that it was never too late to go to school. If your grandfather can do it at 65, so can you..."
• Patching Pot Holes in the Dirt Road by N. Ray Maxie
  "This road-patching chore occurred fairly often. The dirt was soft and wouldn�t last many weeks. With the rain, the wheels splashing, it washed out the holes again, plus some new ones. But all this is the joy of a dirt road, of father and son working together..."
• Bura Handley by Phil Handley
  Chances are good that those citizens of Wellington whose age is less than 60 years may sometimes wonder just what the man whose name adorns the Bura Handley Community Center was really like. Perhaps this small accounting of history will provide some answers to that question, as well as a degree of insight into the character, integrity, and sheer genius of the man whom I was privileged to call my �Dad�, while others simply referred to him as �Mister Wellington.�..
• 35 Years of Humble Service: San Antonio's C.K. Brown by Mel Brown
  "My grandfather, C. K. Brown was nearing the end of a 35 year long career with The Humble Oil & Refining Co. as a truck driver..."
• Great-grandpa wasn�t popular in the South by W. T. Block
  My great-grandpa Duncan Smith was about as popular among his slave-holding neighbors as a skunk in church. Most Southerners expected an Abolitionist to be from some Northern state...
• The River Rat Boys by W. T. Block
  "He had just made his promise to me, and I knew it was as good as gold. Pa's like that--he always said his word was his bond. Oh, he has his faults, lots of them, of course, like every boy's father has, but telling lies ain't - oops - isn't one of them. But he has a way of putting a 'catch' into his promises, or maybe I should say his 'bargains.' And that is exactly what I'm doing now..."
• Poor Fatherless Child by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
  You know I write a little bit. I do it because it is fun. I do it to clarify my thoughts and feelings. I do it to let off steam. I am not sure why I do it, but most of the time I like it. This week, yesterday it was, though it feels like one hundred years ago now, I had to write something. Just a very few words and you would have thought it wouldn't have been so hard. I had to write my father's obituary...
• My Father's Desk by Wayne Scott
  Judge Leonard W. Scott of Caldwell County
• The Big Move by George Lester
  "Sam and I were perfectly happy with life at our Lorena rural home. Then one day our father came in to announce that he had bought a farm near Marlin, and we would be moving down there in a few months..."
• Goodnight Paw. Did You Turn the Rooster 'round? by N. Ray Maxie
  "... My father's earliest beginnings were growing up on a large working farm in northeast Texas with his parents and four siblings. Two male siblings died as infants from an infection I believe they called typhus. One was born about a year before my father and the other born a year or so after him. Thus, dad being born right between the two that didn't survive, in a way started life as a survivor..."
• Daddy's Favorite Song by Sandy Williams Driver
  "My daddy loved country music. He used to tell me stories about his family gathering around their old Zenith radio back in the early 1930s and listening to the latest bluegrass tunes each Saturday night on the live Grand Ole Opry broadcast. The late 1940s brought the haunting voice over the airways of the man my daddy always proclaimed to be "the best country music singer of all time" -- Hank Williams. As far as I know, the legendary performer was no relation to my father, Dalton Williams, even though both men were tall and thin with beautiful eyes..."
• Grandfather by A. S. Friedell
  "My grandparents raised pigs, chickens, guineas with their loud ka-track, ka-track, and the necessary milk cows and their calves. My grandmother would send me into the chicken house or even under the farm house to gather eggs..."
• Our Buick Pickup Truck by George Lester
  "The oil boom in west Texas played out in the thirties, so many people started migrating back east again. My father was one of them..."
• Thergood's Pine by Bob Bowman
• Hunter Texas in the 20s and 30s
  A Memoir by Pablo L. Sanchez
• World War II Sign Painters in Chicago
  1943 Photo courtesy James A. Wilson Jr