Original Post: July 21, 2015
Today would have been my dad's 101st birthday. In the picture above my grandmother is holding my aunt Nancy. My grandfather is holding my dad. Hard to imagine that this picture was taken in 1916 when the American West still was fraught with wildness.Â
I've studied this picture in detail in an effort to develop my dad's character for a project of historical fiction that I'm writing. They say my grandfather once fought a grizzly. My grandmother had a laundry service for the well-to-do women in town. People have told me that my dad sat atop a horse at the age of 2. That fact defined his character, and perhaps was one key point that drew my mother to him.Â
My dad died months before I was born. The practice of writing has breathed life into a man I've only seen in 2-dimensional pictures. In my mind now, he has a laugh that sounds like air escaping from a balloon filled with air, the neck taught to squeeze the sound out of it. He loves a good Chet Atkins guitar lick. My dad has a quiet, wry sense of humor. He thinks things through, and is a gentle, giving spirit.Â