Happy Father’s Day 2023!
We sat together in the deep woods, outside Paris, my father and I. Overhead a thick gray blanket, very like heavy cotton batting, lay over the sky as far as could be seen in every direction. From it white snow fell in fine flakes, like meal. The fineness of it an indicator that more was to be expected.
Though the hour was late, both the falling snow and the fallen snow reflected every hint of light. On this night, the dark was neither grim nor uncertain. The bright white that lay upon the ground, in the trees, and upon every surface, even in the air as it continued to fall lent a beautiful strangeness to the night.
Such a snow was not unheard of in East Texas. It was however, uncommon. Its choosing to fall on the night my father and I were on a father/son deer hunt and camp out made it all the more memorable.
“You cold?” Dub asked.
“Yes sir,” I said through chattering teeth.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Yes sir!”
“Boy, you are always hungry!” he accused through a bright smile.
My father was a handsome man. His smile was broad and infectious. I couldn’t help but also smile.
“Yes sir!”
Dub was a coal miner. Most people do not associate coal mining with Beautiful, East Texas. He worked three days on and four days off then four days on and three days off in the mine as a heavy equipment operator. Every workday was a twelve hour day.
I cannot recall ever hearing my father complain about his job or work of any kind, no matter how hot, difficult, or dirty it was. Dub, really was the single hardest working human being I have ever known in my life and without exception.
When he was not working at the mine he worked in other ways. My dad was decidedly of the opinion that tired boys were good boys. This being so, where ever he was, what ever he was doing, you better believe I was there doing it too.
Every year we raised acres of watermelons commercially. We cut endless cords of wood for ourselves and our neighbors. If you bought a cord of wood from Dub you got nothing but oak, no elm, and no trash wood. One hundred percent oak. You also got a full cord of wood, delivered to your home, and stacked in such a way that no sunlight showed through it and all for seventy five American dollars.
Good heavens!
I can’t tell y’all the wood we cut, loaded, hauled, split, stacked, unstacked, reloaded, unloaded, delivered, and stacked again.
Dub liked to observe, “Men who cut wood are warmed by it twice, once when they cut it and again when they burn it.”
I suppose he was something of a philosopher in his way.
My father brought with us an ample supply of firewood to keep us warm. There was plenty of fallen dead wood to supplement it should there be need.
“Look here,” he said. “When you build your fire, you want to have a backstop to keep it going after you fall asleep.” He demonstrated how this was done. “By building it this way,” Here he indicated his meaning, “you help direct the heat where you want it to go.”
As the fire grew and began to burn according to this improved arrangement of the logs, I felt the improvements in terms of warmth. “How about that?” he asked grinning.
“Much better,” I said.
Dub’s front two top teeth had a gap between them. It gave him a look all his own and something more. My father, who dipped snuff, could launch a line of tobacco spit through that tooth gap, several feet long and a good fifteen feet in any direction he choose with an accuracy that was unsettling. My father’s sons learned the value of both listening and minding right quick unless they wanted to be his target when the next time to spit presented itself.
Whenever he spit there was a sort of squinching sound, one that I am not able to adequately reproduce, though I wish I could.
Before the roaring fire, my father placed a pan in which he prepared our modest but wholesome and tasty supper. As he poked and prodded the fire sparks of red and gold rose heavenward, popping and cracking. Higher they rose passing by the downward falling flakes of white.
The night was quiet, oddly so. “Why is it so quiet out?” I asked.
“Its like that when it snows,” my father said.
“Why?”
“The snow makes the world quieter,” was all he choose to offer.
It was enough.
My father and I reclined against the fallen tree to which we’d set our backs there in the camp. He sat to my right. Between us and the quilted sky, was a tarp that kept most of the snow off of us.
Our camp was in a small clearing surrounded by seemingly endless woods. Oak, elm, cedar, and persimmons as far as the eye could see and for distant acres beyond seeing. Not far from us a community of coyotes began to howl, sing, bark, and yip.
For the most part I was unafraid of the coyotes, though their nearness was such that I could not help but be reassured by my father’s presence. Dub was more than a match for whatever the Paris area night time wilderness might choose to offer up. My father was himself a, Force of Nature, one not to be underestimated or trifled with.
He could shoot. He loved to fight and was stunningly good at both. He studied boxing and a martial art created by Joe Lewis. My father worked daily to increase his physical strength.
His presence, confidence, and martial skill reassured me in such a way that I could frankly enjoy the coyotes not-to-distant communications, even taking pleasure in them.
“You like hearing that don’t you?” he asked. I heard the approval in his voice and tried not to squirm with gladness.
“I do like it,” I said.
“So do I.”
Father and son smiled in the surreal, snow-lined oddly bright, dark of night. I heard the tell-tale squench of my father’s spit and found even this wonderfully comforting. Hearing my boyish laughter, Dub joined me with a chuckle of his own.
In time sleep began to itch just behind my eyes. Though I fought it, Dub noticed.
“Big day tomorrow,” he said.
“You think we’ll see any deer?” I asked.
“I hope so!” he said.
“I hope so too.”
“We’ll be getting up in just a few hours. It will still be dark,” my father cautioned.
“That’s okay.”
At this Dub laughed. “You always say that and then you are hard to wake up!”
“I’m not hard to wake up,” I protested.
It wasn’t true. I wanted it to be true but, it was not. When those very early morning wake up calls came, it was painfully difficult for me to wake up. I was glad Dub could not see my blushing face or, if he could, that he did not remark on it.
“Alright then, time to turn in,” he said.
Dub and I hunted many times together. Deer, dove, quail, and squirrel. We walked, stalked, crouched, and sat silently for hours on end. My father and I hunted both with and without dogs depending on our prey.
We did not often camp. Though on this occasion we did. It is among my most cherished memories with my father. I had his undivided attention – a rare and precious thing.
I am unsure what prompted Dub to take me with him on that occasion. These many years, even decades, I have carefully preserved this special memory. It is one that I only have because he did take me with him, because he made the time for me, and because he was determined to allow it be a special memory.
Dear Fathers,
As each of you know, these special memories don’t just happen – at least not very often. They happen because you make them happen or because someone made them happen for you. Let’s you and I be sure we are making similar treasured memories unfold for our children so that they have something to cherish when it comes time for us to move on from this life – even as my own excellent father had to do so unexpectedly decades ago.
Happy Father’s Day!
Much Love,
Hank
You’ve Been Hanked!
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