13 Memories of My Father

This week, I'm taking a break from the cycling-themed posts, as it's the second anniversary of my father's passing.

However, I still wanted to do a Thursday Thirteen, and so I'd like to share

13 Memories of My Father

My dad's HS baskeball team. He's front row, second from the left. What a cutie, eh?

1) For a while, when I was growing up, my father helped out with the high school basketball team. He'd played when he was in high school, too. He was a very passionate sports fan.

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2) As a matter of fact, he was such a passionate sports fan, I have vivid memories of standing at the stove, making myself some spaghetti for dinner while he shouted and carried on as he watched a football game in the den, downstairs. He was so upset, I heard him crying - over a bad play? the team's loss? - and I got upset enough to go down and make sure everything was okay. Luckily, the spaghetti didn't boil over and the sauce didn't burn. Dad was fine, though perhaps a tad concerned that he had scared me.

My dad, my mother, and my brother, Chris.

3) Dad loved to dance. More than once, he shared with me that he had dreamed of being a professional dancer of some sort. (He totally could have done that.)

He used to dance in the living room to all sorts of music - I remember watching him dance with my mother, and then pick me up to dance with me, too.

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4) What were the words I heard most often from my father? Well, I reckon it was a tie between "Kim? Shut up." (said in a gentle, teasing way or in a mildly frustrated way - never mean), or "Come here Hain'chel (Angel) and give me some sugars".

Dad and Mom check a map - where the heck *are* we?

5) He also used to call me "Jimberly Koy". I thought it was hilarious.

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6) Dad used to spend Sundays sitting with me reading the funny pages. He taught me how to read with them, too. Because of things like this, I started reading earlier, and consistently read at a higher level than the majority of my schoolmates. I also started writing earlier.

My dad and my brother, Chris.

7) Dad sometimes volunteered at the Boys' Club in my hometown suburb of Westwood, Kentucky. He encouraged my brother to learn to box, and supported my brother's budding interest in the sport. This, of course, came to a crashing halt as soon as my brother came home with a black eye and busted nose from a fight and my mother freaked out. LOL!

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8) Dad supported my interest in archery when I was young, and helped me build a target out of an old cardboard box (I think it was originally for an appliance of some sort, like a washing machine), then put it across the street so my misfired arrows wouldn't go sailing down the hill behind our house.

My dad and me.

9) One day, Dad showed up at my school unexpectedly and pulled me out of class. I thought something bad had happened until he told me he just wanted to spend a little time with me. He took me over the river to a Lowe's Hardware and said he was thinking of getting a TV. We looked at a few, and he asked my opinion, which made me feel so important. I picked a reasonably cheap model, but he said we should go with the next most expensive. When we got home, he put the little black and white TV in my room.

Later, he joked that he'd done this so he could get his TV/radio combo back, since I'd hijacked it a few months prior.

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10) He taught me how to fish. As a matter of fact, he taught me the art of "setting the hook" - making sure to pull once, firmly, on the line so the hook will catch or "set" in the fish's mouth - so I wouldn't lose the fish I might have caught. However, on one fishing trip, after a full day (we'd left home before dawn with packed lunches and everything, then gone out in his little fishing boat), I got a "bite" and he took over so I wouldn't lose the catch.

In his enthusiasm, he didn't do that firm single pull. The fish got away. I looked at him and said "You didn't 'set the hook'."

He looked at me, smiled sarcastically and said... "Kim? Shut up." Then he laughed.

I could totally work that floppy bow, now, I'm tellin' ya!

11) Dad loved to sing. He sang all the time. I have a really clear memory of sitting in his greeny-blue Ford truck, riding over to Ironton, OH so he could get some beer (Ashland was a dry town, at the time) and he sang along to all the songs on the radio. At the time, he listened to a station which played (in the days before radio formatting) all sorts of different songs.

I started singing along to a song by ELO, and then to the chorus of a song by Olivia Newton-John (I think it was "If You Love Me Let Me Know"). He asked me how I knew the words. I honestly didn't know I did. LOL!

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12) I mentioned last week that I once saved up my money to buy a bicycle. That was only part of the story. 

The whole story is that I was so enthusiastic about trying to find chores to do in order to earn that money, my parents quickly realized that I wasn't going to give up any time soon on this goal. One afternoon less than a week after I started "working" to earn the money, my dad asked me to come with him to Woolco. He said he wanted to see what kind of bike I was talking about. (You see where this is going, right?)

I showed him the one I wanted (that Huffy Pro Thunder model), explaining that I wanted the boys' model and that it was sooooo cool and I couldn't wait because it'd be so much fun to ride and now I could ride with Dustin (my cousin and next-door neighbor) and keep up with his BMX bike and....

Dad took all of this in, nodded, and said "Okay, that's good to know. I'm glad you're working so hard for this." And he took me home.

The next day, I got home from school and Dad arrived shortly afterwards with the bike in the back of the truck.

Me and Dad in 2004.

13) My absolute first memory which I can clearly recall is of my father.

My sister (three years older than me) and I shared a room from an early age. Our beds were on opposite sides of the room. One night, for some reason, we decided to trade beds.

Long after we'd gone to sleep, my father came home from work (late shift) and looked in on us. I remember the door opening, the golden cast of the hall light coming in, and him standing there for a moment, looking from one bed to the other, momentarily confused. He chuckled after a moment and then closed the door to let us sleep.

It is one of many, many times I felt so incredibly safe and secure thanks to him, and I knew that he loved me.

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I'm sorry, but there's no eye candy this week. I'm sure you understand why.




Thanks for reading.