The Father I Knew

If I am to write about my family, then I must logically start with my father. I tell myself that I am nothing like my father. He was a much better man than I could ever be. Maybe I just know myself too well. There is one thing for sure about my father, he was a good man. In a repetition of history, I have learned more about my father from others than all that I knew before on my own.

John Edwin & Ida Mae Martin Reed

 

I wish that my children could say the same about me. They know little about my life – even less about the person I am. There is little I can do about this. If I knew what to do, I am not sure I would want to do anything to change it. Time does not change the truth, only the perception of it.

 

My father, like myself and one older brother, was born in February, an Aquarian. In my eyes as a child, I thought he could make anything. I never questioned his judgment. I really never questioned him about anything – we did not talk much.

 

My memories of him are distinctive, but there are very few. My first is when I was about 5 years old. It was a Sunday morning and I was dressed and ready to go to church. That day, he sat me on his knee and read the cartoons in the newspaper to me until it was time to leave for church. He rarely went to church and later I learned the reasons why – very similar to my own story.

 

The next is on my birthday when I was 12 years old. My family did not celebrate birthdays, but I was invited to a friends house to have a birthday party with friends from school. It was at night, and it was raining. I was taking my football game in a box to the party. The box was in my lap as I sat in the front seat of the car.

 

In  the rainy darkness, he did not see a black car stalled in the road. He slammed on the brakes and we slid into the rear of the stalled car. My head hit the windshield but not very hard. The box may have saved my life, the way that seatbelts do now. The box with the game was crumpled but not ruined – only my birthday party was ruined.

 

Not until I was 16 was there another birthday party for me. My friends from church gave me that good memory. I never knew how bad my dad’s vision was that night of the accident. He had cataracts in his eyes. In my own time, I learned the fear of driving in the rain. It is a fear that is not easily forgotten. I am certain that he had it when he drove.

 

There are many thoughts of him working in his shop on the outside of the house. His specialty that I knew was carpentry. He was many other things in his earlier days. When I was very young, he operated a saw mill to cut lumber into boards. His crews of workers cut down the trees, hauled the logs on his trucks and cut the lumber to size at his saw mill. This was his business and it was hard work outdoors.

  

I tinkered in his shop when I was a boy in Houston. While he was away at work, I used his tools and his gadgets and made things. I am sure I did not put everything back in its right place. I am sure I broke some things. I am sure I did some things he did not approve of. I know for sure that he never expressed his anger at me for being in “his” shop.

 

I remember assembling parts for a bicycle after my bicycle had been stolen. I polished the chrome to make it shine. I painted the fenders and frame with the only paint that was available – an ugly maroon color. It was finally ready to ride; all it needed was tires to put on the wheels.

 

I was out of money and it just sat in the shop area. One day my dad brought home the tubes and tires that I needed to finish the bicycle. We put them on the bicycle together. I was the proudest boy on the block riding my “new” bike up and down the street.

 

If a car needed repair, he could fix it himself. If anything broke, he could repair it himself. If he could make something better, he would do it. His ideas were not always perfect. He was not always right, but looking back on it all, I can understand the logic in his life and why he did the things he did. Maybe I do see some of him in my own life, but I also know that an image of something is not as good as the original.