Treasure what will remain

by Vivian Lawson Hogue

It is with gratitude that our family remembers the humorous stories about our parents. With three of their five children born in the Depression era and two during World War II, the photos and tales of humor have different references to the times. While our mother’s stories are revived now and then, it was our dad who had the most.

Dad usually had a large tobacco pipe held between his teeth. His ashtray was large as it had to accommodate a day’s worth of ashes. He kept three pipes in the tray, one with missing pieces from the rim after years of banging it on the ashtray to dislodge its contents. The inside of the bowl was much thicker than when purchased, and he sometimes used his pocketknife to scrape it out. He preferred his pipes but would occasionally enjoy a nasty cigar. As we went through the living room, we could see objects through the smoke and feel our way to our intended location. One would think 50 years of the habit would send him to an early grave, but he died at almost 99. He had quit smoking about three years before. Cold turkey.

My husband frequently took Dad to meetings or family gatherings. Dad always spoke somewhat like the Godfather, a cross between a loud whisper and a mutter. He thought he couldn’t be heard, but he certainly was. He once made a remark of purely artistic observation to my husband in a clinic waiting room concerning a nude male Grecian statue across the room. His statement could be heard by two flustered, elderly ladies. Another time, while attending a large meeting, he made an unflattering remark about the “long-winded speaker.”

He thought he was being heard only by my husband who, by then, was looking for an exit door.

My dad enjoyed home cooking, possibly because of his childhood with a table of 12 hungry people in a three-room log cabin. He liked my wilted lettuce salads, congealed grits, cornbread and anything with sugar in it. He had the same love for ice cream, so we sometimes drove him to a local ice cream business. He especially relished a dairy delight of thick ice cream and bananas in a paper cup. The large size. As he sat in the back seat siphoning the creamy ambrosia with a straw as we traveled home, it sounded as if he was going to suck the bottom out of the cup.

He liked ripe bananas. Really ripe. Black, in fact. He loved them as a child, but they were rarely available in the hills where he grew up, so nothing went to waste. I sometimes felt he could have been happy to squeeze one out of its peel like toothpaste.

We were mesmerized when he filled his plate at a public or family buffet. His left arm was injured in his youth, and its movements were awkward. He would fill his plate, then slowly walk with it tilted at what some guessed to be a 45-degree angle. It was with that same arm that he would toss trash into a wastebasket and miss most of the time. He then complained that it seemed the law of averages should make him succeed 50 percent of the time.

Dad was also blind in one eye, the result of being hit by a sweet gum ball as a child. I never thought about it because the eye looked normal. However, somehow he managed to earn two degrees and write books and articles. He studied rocks, grasses, flowers and trees and could spot a leafless sassafras bush from a moving car. He knew how to gauge the speed of a storm’s wind by the size of the twigs and limbs fallen on the ground.

It is interesting that often when we are missing a parent who has passed on, the sadness can be replaced by remembering their faces, behaviors, antics or qualities. Those memories, pleasant or not, can be beneficial to us. I have never been able to identify leafless sassafras, but I sure do like grits. Thanks, Dad.

 


A native of Conway, Vivian Lawson Hogue graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with a degree in art education. A retired teacher, she worked in the Conway School District for 23 years. She is editor of the Faulkner County Historical Society’s semi-annual publication, “Faulkner Facts and Fiddlings.” She can be reached at [email protected].