Happy Father's Day

Good day all,

How is everyone this Father's Day? I am just guessing that not too many fathers read my blog. (I know of only one for certain.) Even so, most of us have a father or a father figure, if we aren't fathers, except for me. I have not found out my ancestry yet, so I have no idea who my father might have been. It's really more important who is in your life and helps you and cares about you than who is actually your biological father. Don't get me wrong----it can be one person who plays both roles.

While I don't know anything about my father, I have heard Missy Linda talk about her dad. She has said that she doesn't know how he worked so hard all the time. His job was always strenuous physical labor, and then he would come home and garden until dark for a very long growing season. Missy Linda says she remembers planting potatoes as early as Valentine's Day, and the garden was not finished until the squash and black eyed peas and peppers were gone. When one crop was over, that place would be re-planted with some plants that needed hotter weather to grow. When Missy Linda was young, the garden was not a little patch in the back yard like we think of now. It was more than an acre. Her father and grandfather would plow with a horse and work the garden just as people had d0ne in earlier times. That garden was big enough to need a tractor, but they couldn't afford one.

Missy Linda must have been a real country girl because she said that when the horse didn't have to plow the fields, that was her horse to ride. Her saddle was a gunny sack with cotton in it, sewed together on the end. Anyway, she says that she knew her dad would make sure that they were never hungry. What she wouldn't give now for some of that fresh corn like they used to grow! Missy Linda said that they picked it when it was less mature than what we buy at the store, which meant it was more tender and sweet.

One of the nice things that Missy Linda's dad did for her was to bring her home a baby squirrel to take care of. He punched holes in his lunch box, and put it in there. Evidently, the mother squirrel had been killed, and he knew Missy Linda would want to take care of the baby. They had cages at their house where they sometimes had rabbits. That was a very touching thing to Missy Linda for her dad to do.