Memories of Daddy

Leslie Arnal:  I had won an essay contest in high school.   I was 17 years old at the time.  The prize was to go to Washington DC to attend an awards ceremony with the First Lady.  My mother organized a multiple day trip.  I asked to go alone, and was granted the privilege, which I promptly abused by raiding the in-room stocked bar.  My dad came for the ceremony itself, and then we checked out.  He was handed a bar bill.  When he asked the clerk for clarification, she said that bill was for the items consumed in the room from the bar.   He never said a word to me about it for which I was forever grateful.

Ed Gee:  I come from a large family.  I have seven siblings.  I am the youngest.  But being the youngest, I was the last to arrive.  By the time I got there, our house was pretty full.  So I typically didn’t have a lot of time alone with either of my parents.  But the one thing that my Dad and I did together, just the two of us, was go fishing.  I remember very fondly not only the time we spent together fishing in our “secret spots”, but also the time getting ready for the day.  I especially remember going out to breakfast before the sun rose to a greasy spoon diner that is no longer around.  It was a place truckers used to stop.  We typically sat at the counter and had dollar sized pancakes and bacon.  I still remember the waitress vividly.  I also remember the short order cook preparing the breakfast.  In fact, I remember once upon a time that I wanted to be a short order cook because of my impression of this cook.  My Dad has now been gone for almost 25 years.  If he were alive today, he would be 100 years old next year.

Brad Driggers:  When we hit Ghana, the local racing association was selling race trained Arabian stallions and my dad bought 2 of them which we rode frequently.  The Ashanti rain forest is indescribably beautiful and we spent many mornings riding along misty trails in the thick bush.  Because the humidity is so high, there is often a cool fog in the jungle and we’d often barely be able to see each other.  Something new would materialize in front of us with every twist of the narrow trail.  Massive trees would loom up and the horses would gingerly step around their tangled root walls that would sometimes extend 15 feet above the ground at the tree base.  Vines were everywhere and you could hear the rustle of animals scampering deeper into the foliage.  There was one fallen tree that was too deeply buried in the bush to walk around and we had to lean forward hugging our horses neck to make it under.  Parts of my youth were straight out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan novel.

One day in a lush grass covered meadow along the way, we unsaddled the horses and as the sun was breaking thru, exchanged their bridles for halters.  Putting the tether under one of their front hooves anchored them in place (horses will think they’re tied when they move their heads to walk and feel the tension on their halter) and we put our heads on the saddles and talked about important guy stuff.  Afterwards we made it to the nearest village just as the women were bringing the days bread out of their domed clay ovens.

It was a great day.

Lynette Andersen:  People don't have fences back East.  If they did, it wouldn't have happened.  And, it probably wouldn't happen, anywhere, today.  No fences meant that people could spontanously gather and it also meant that everyone knew what was going on in everyone else's yard.

In 1968, when my dad had just returned from the Vietnam War, we were transferred to Dover, Delaware.  Back in the “olden days”, all the neighborhood children played together.  There were no helicopter parents.  There was no such thing as a "play date".  Kids spent entire summer days away from their homes, playing together, returning only for meals and just before the street lights were about to come on.

It was the summer between my fifth and sixth grade years.  One night, some of the kids decided to have a "camp out" in our backyard.   Kids began bringing pillows, old blankets and sheets over and we built a giant "tent".  We clothes-pinned some of the blankets together and propped up with broomsticks.   We spread other blankets on the ground.  It was so hot and humid at night that sheets were all we needed for covers.  By bedtime, there must have been 20 kids under the makeshift tent.

The next summer, we moved to base housing.  And, believe it or not, the kids in our new neighborhood did the same thing.  Only this time, there were more kids because military families were bigger.  This time, there were more than 30.

The best part was that the morning after each camp out, my dad woke up early and fried eggs and bacon and sausage in an electric skillet for the whole crowd.   He loved it.  And he was the hit of the neighborhood!