Oh My

Have been in kind of an "old age moment" for a couple of days whilst trying to figure out what to write next......

Thinking of the Tony Snow column, made me consider doing a bit on who in history I have looked up to the most and why....but, then I realized that two of the people I have always admired more than anyone are my Mom and Dad.

Dad first...
Mr Spencer (something I will never be, because I never had to earn it like dad did) had a tough life, nothing was ever handed to him......figure a dirt farming family in Missouri then the plains of Colorado.....that meant working every waking minute of the day, once you got to the advanced toddler stage...haphazard schooling because of the rural life at the time, then leaving school for good at 12 years old...oh, and having to learn how to write with his right hand, because in those days it was considered a fault to be a natural born lefty! The hard physical jobs as a teen and in his twenties...a marriage that fell apart though no fault of his ...... a succession of low paying retail jobs, that ended up being his apprenticeship to the world of small business...finding a career with Rascos store, and having to uproot his family and move them every year from 1956 until 1962 before settling in one town for more than 9 months....the strain of having either his mother or mother in law as a "house guest" for 19 of the first 21 years of marriage......

The things that strike me at looking back at this wonderful man.....

I never, ever, once heard him complain about life or unfairness.

If there was a job to be done, he did it, right now, and it was done and life went on. No procrastinating.

When his health issues started to take a toll on his body in the 1960s, he never let it show in his speech or attitude.

People always, and I mean ALWAYS trusted Dad..... to know him was to believe in his inherent honesty and courage..both morally and physically.

People respected him.....never saw anyone (except a certain mother, and a wayward son) treat him with any kind of disrespect.

His quiet efficiency, never boasted, never bragged, just did.

The aura of protection he placed around his family....one of my most cherished memories is going somewhere with the folks, driving at night, Dad (always Dad at the wheel), Mum in the passenger seat, me laying down on the back seat drifting to sleep with the steady click click click of him alternately dimming and brightening the head lamps.... the rhythm of him being in charge and aware......

Even as he lay dieing in the Tucson Veterans Hospital...tubes running in and out of his body, monitors beeping and knowing we was close to the end... a full grain of morphine every 2 to 3 hours..... I told him if he pulled through I'd shave off my (hated by him) beard and mustache....he was able to only nod his head a very tiny bit, but his eyes crinkled up in humour and around the breathing tube his mouth broadened in a grin wide enough to set off an alarm.....

At his funeral a few weeks later, most of the pall bearers were men that had known him for decades....once a friend of Frank T. Spencer...always a friend......

His enjoyment of, and contentment with the so called little things in life...picnics and bar-b-ques...a baseball game... teaching me how to throw and catch a baseball....panning for gold......rebuilding a car I had bought.......

He was always neat and clean......never had a fancy wardrobe, however when he went to work, it was in a pair of sharp creased slacks, and a short sleeved dress shirt...OK, I guess it would be a sports shirt, but it would have buttons down the front, and a button down collar.... in cooler weather he would wear a button up sweater.....I'd say like Ozzie Nelson, but few today would catch the reference....

These things added up to quite a man.....I've always berated myself for not living up to his image.....took me many years to realize that I couldn't do that.....a cheap imitation at best.....However, I can do the best I can in my own way and thank him for the loving example he set...