Daddy

This the man that goes with the face on the previous page. He grew up as a "small-town" boy on a farm on the outskirts of Providence, Rhode Island.



I'd like to tell you a little about him. He was born in 1913 in Rhode Island. He was the second of three children. and had a sister that was a little over two years older than he was. His Mother was pregnant with the third child when tragedy struck.

She was doing the wash and back then there were no washing machines or dryers. The only "energy shortage" was due to physical exhaustion. On wash-day you got out a tub, some homemade soap, put water in a wash-tub to heat up, grabbed a wash-board and rolled up your sleeves and got started. Somehow I just cannot quite picture this situation. I can grasp the concept of the wash-tub, the wash-board, the homemade soap, and cloths-pins and a clothes-line, but boiling water over a wood stove and hauling it back and forth to the tub just eludes me.

This is my idea of washday helpers.



But then this was their idea of urban overcrowding, so what do I know?


It makes you wonder, how they ever survived, and how this nation got to where it is today.

How did the world ever survive without Hillary Clinton? Forget how it survived, I wonder if it will survive if she is elected president. Oops, I'm showing my political bias here. I don't know if the nation will survive the NOW generation with their "entitlement" mentality, and their dependence on our "nanny government" in Washington DC, and I can't blame it all on Hillary, but I try too.

Back in the "good old days" they didn't have washing machines, and not even everyone had electricity, but they had one luxury that we still have today. If you are interested, I'll give you a hint--

--and this was the instruction manual.

and this is the secret--


Well anyway, back to the story:

My grandmother was carrying the tub, full of water that she had boiled out to the back porch when she tripped and the scalding water fell on the little girl. She was badly burned and lived only a few hours after the incident. My grandmother was so shaken by the accident that when she went into labor and gave birth to their third child, what should have been an uneventful birth, developed complications. I'm not too clear just what they were but they were further complicated by her mental condition. It seemed she carried around guilt and blamed herself for the child's death and did not have the will to live, or fight off any illness.

He and my uncle were raised by an Aunt for the next two or three years, until his Father remarried. After that, until sometime in 1930 his life was that of a normal, healthy American boy growing up in small-town USA. His life was affected, but not drastically altered by World War I. It was the aftermath of the war coupled with corruption and ineptitude in the government that caused him to find himself, a lonely, bewildered sixteen year old heading for the big city to make his way in the world.

The family lived on a farm, and by that time they had four more children. When the depression struck, there just was not enough food or money to go around. His family were God-Fearing people, and back then "God-Fearing" seemed to have a different meaning. It meant that you trusted and believed in an Almighty God, and when the going got rough you leaned on Him.

Today, this family would be considered "dysfunctional" and hopelessly inadequate to raise children, and the government would step in and take over with their alphabet soup (DC style--IRS, EPA, etc., and blah, blah, blah)--and raise these children to be good little robots who every night would kneel beside the bed and pray to DC for their daily bread.



My Father was the eldest, almost 17, and was resourceful and intelligent and as his parents had decided that since someone had to go, or none would make it,-- my Father was it. His Mother packed up a picnic basket with what food they could spare, his Father sold off some of his chickens, filled the family jalopy with gas and gave my Father the keys. They hugged him and kissed him and pointed him towards New York City, with the advice to PLEASE "make it" because you can't come back home.

Wow!!


He used to talk to my brother and I about those times, and we would marvel. My brother asked him wasn't he angry and didn't he hate his Father and Mother.

Know what he said?
He wasn't angry because he was too busy being scared. And he did not hate either of his parents, he understood. Someone had to go, and he was the one most likely to make on his own. We asked him what he did and he said he just prayed all the way to New York.

Now I was a bit skeptical about that because he hardly ever went to church, and when he did go, he went to a different church than my brother and I did. My Grandmother and my brother and I attended church regularly, but he didn't. I thought he was just saying that to be saying something. I asked him what prayer he said. He did not answer for a minute or so, and by brother and I began to laugh.

This is a gotch-cha!

Caught him in a fib!

We were sure this was just setting the example, by "Do as I say, not as I do." Or the other great line, when you had to walk to school in the rain, instead of staying home. "When I was a boy I used to walk five miles in the snow to get to school."

Oh whoopee doo!

The reason I am mentioning this is because I think it needs to be said out loud. I will never forget his reply. He laid his head back against the chair, closed his eyes and said... "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall NOT WANT.
(he put the emphasis on those words)

He recited it perfectly and with so much feeling that it drew my Mother and Grandmother out of the kitchen to listen. I don't know whether I mentioned this or not, but my Father was a Baptist and my Mother was a Catholic. That meant that the children were raised in the Catholic church. So my brother and I said our prayers, but not like that. We had both learned the "Our Father", "The Hail Mary", etc. etc. and we said them by rote, with I am ashamed to say not much feeling. That was the first time I heard a prayer spoken the way a prayer should be.

Straight from the heart.

It's strange how some things effect you and stick with you. I often think of him when I listen to people today, and when I hear all the "experts" testifying about why this one or that committed a crime.

Here was man who had every reason to be bitter and angry. Every reason to become and alcoholic or a drug addict. Every reason to become a drag on society and expect the government or someone else to pay his way. He had every reason to wallow in self-pity and do nothing with his life. He could have one of society's liabilities, but he chose to be an asset.

Why? How do you explain it? The only way I can explain it is to say that he had FAITH.

Faith in an Almighty, All Powerful God.

Faith in the God he called Father.

He never expected it to be easy, but he knew it was worth it.

I owe this man a debt I could never repay. And a simple thank you just don't cut it.

If I owe that much to him, how much to I owe to my heavenly Father who loaned him to me in the first place?

Now we're talking astronomical debt, and all He wants is that I acknowledge Him.

I can do that!

Can you?