Here's the next five cards.
On Danelle's blog, she put a photo of my father. Gosh, I forgot what a handsome man he was. It's been 30 years since he died, and I still miss him so much. He was way too young to leave this earth. I don't really remember a ton of stuff from when I was young, but I do remember always hoeing beets all summer long. Mom told me later, that she felt sorry for us, but Dad said..."if they would get out there and work, they could be done in half the time". So true. We spent more time talking and putting things on the railroad tracks, peeling up clumps of dirt at the end of the rows and carving them, lying in the rows to cool off...yeah. We worked, but we took our sweet time about it too. I do know though, that if there was baseball practice, or anything else we were involved in, we could go. Dad always supported us in anything we wanted to do. He was a good provider. Of course, Mom gets alot of credit for that too. She always sewed our clothes and made the money stretch. I remember that when I was about in the 2nd grade, I got .10cents a week for an allowance. I told Mom I needed new shoe laces, and she told me..."you get an allowance. Buy your own." To which I replied..." I have to buy my own clothes out of 10 cents a week?" I remember riding the tractor with Dad when I was way young...before I ever went to school. It was a little Ford tractor, and they didn't have cabs back then. They did have a canvas cloth around it to break the cold and wind. I remember curling up down by Dad's feet to keep warm and falling asleep, or laying on the top of the tractor where the engine was and it was so warm. I remember him pulling us with the tractor on an old car hood in the snow...what fun. I remember the big stacks of hay, loose, that we would slid down and play in. Straw stacks that we built tunnels and rooms in. We always had horses. Dad loved horses. I have ridden my whole life, and love to. I remember that we had a riding club, and I would go with Dad to ride once a month on a Saturday. There was mostly men, and they would take turns finding places to ride. Whenever I had a friend over, Dad would saddle a couple of horses for us to ride, because not too many of my friends parents had horses. I remember that one year Doris & Gary, and a couple of their boys, and Dad and Mom and us kids went on a weeks vacation to Bear Valley with the horses. It was so much fun. We so seldom took vacations. I can really only remember about two, besides going to Nebraska to visit family. Anyway, the horse trip to Bear Valley was so memorable. Janell had a little shetland pony, and dad kept telling her to ride up the hill because her saddle was coming forward. She always sang and hummed whle she rode, and she ignored his advice. We came to a stream and her horse bent down to take a drink and she and the saddle went sliding off. She was hollering..."mooooommmm." We all had a good laugh over that. Dad believed in hard work, and always pushed. I can remember driving the pickup back and forth to raise hay bales so he and Danny could stack hay. If I didn't do it right, he would tell me so. I would go in the house crying and saying I wasn't going to help, but when he drove out the driveway and honked...out the door I'd go. He was so good with my kids. When I think about him playing with the rope and tying them up, scaring them with a rug over himself, so many things...that I wish they hadn't missed so much time with him. He always accepted everyone...I think that's why so many people loved him. He could accept them for whatever they were and it was fine. He never judged. He was a wonderful man. I miss him every day.
