Sunday, June 21, 2009

 

Time to open my 'Daddy sack'

This is the stuff I brought home to Texas when Daddy died March 28, 1989. I opened it and looked through the stuff today for just the third time. I looked through it one year after he died, and 10 years after he died, and now today. A gal I know from Burns Flat, OK, who is like a tiny female version of myself in some ways, had her daddy die the other day, and I'm sendin' fellow redneck cowperson prayers her way.


It's not a huge deal, this seldom-opened sack. But it's a deal. I know what's in this sack. Couple of Zippos. Sunglasses from seeing the Thunderbirds a day or two before he died. Get-well critter. Cattle ear tag. This whiskey bottle was one of a few different ones my brother and I found out in the milk house right after he died. He had a hunch! Teetotaling Mama wouldn't let the stuff in the house.


The sack. Safeway.

I'm gettin' it from both sides today. I miss Daddy. Mama, too. And I miss my Bird -- but she called me today! Yippee!

And I'm fixing to call my father-in-law to see if he wants to come up this Friday to go to an Oklahoma RedHawks (triple-A baseball) game. We've been talking about it.

--ER

Comments:
Please don't use the phrase "Daddy Sack" again.
 
Pft. Prevert!
 
I have a suitcase with my dad's flannel work shirts in it. When my mother was trying to decide what to do with them after my dad died I told her I'd like them to use to make a quilt. It's been 13 years, and I still can't bring myself to touch any of them with a pair of scissors.
 
Yep.
 
About twelve or so years ago, I told my father I wanted his old steamer trunk. It was the kind that opened up and served as a kind of closet, with space to hang clothes, drawers, that kind of thing. He said I could take, it, but first we had to remove it from the basement of my parents' house, where it had been sitting since 1970, clean it, and check out what was inside it.

What was inside was my father's Army uniform with his medals, Sgt. stripes, etc. The uniform itself was unsalvageable (when you touched it, it crumbled to dust), but we managed to save the buttons, the medals, the stripes, all of which are in a bag right now in my dresser. The trunk sits out in the garage, and serves quite handily as a storage place for manner of things.
 
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