I thought he knew everything.

Six foot two inches tall, dark brown deep set eyes, straight black hair, lanky, all arms and legs and large hands - that could build anything and fix everything. He said he could do anything as long as he could read the directions.

He built the house where I was born from used lumber and nails, and it was still standing sixty years later. He was born in Ohio in 1912 and lived on a large farm. His family worked as sharecroppers. When he moved into the city, he worked at a foundry. He also worked as a bookkeeper and a snake handler in his youth.

He loved to read and fish, to learn new things, the challenge was in the learning; once he mastered an activity or experienced it, he was off to another adventure.

Some of his many interests and activities included: building houses where we lived, building trailers, and building boats. He was a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, a bricklayer, and a roofer - whatever he needed to be.

He could pare an apple and leave a thin red curly cue rind that hung down in a long spiral. He scrambled or fried gooey eggs and bacon, barbeque with mesquite wood and beer barbeque sauce. Under a grape arbor on top of a gray concrete slab, he built a redwood picnic tables with matching benches, slatted reclining chaise lounge chairs, mesquite wood table lamps (completed just weeks before he died), and a sewing table for our Mother.

He called himself a “Heller” His voice often appeared rough and loud, but he also sang songs like Whispering Hope and The Old Oaken Bucket. He had a strong belief in God.

He saw life in black and white with little tolerance for the gray areas. Everything was Damn Good or Damn Bad.

He loved “White Lily sausage” - fried shrimp on Fridays. Bought Momma a potato ricer and steam pressure cooker and used it himself.

He tooled leather belts and wallets and a three legged stool. He admired blue marlin. He was a fisherman and seemed happiest and healthiest when standing at the end of Bob Hall Pier on Padre Island all night or surf fishing in the early hours of morning.

He took pictures with a small Brownie Box camera and developed the film in a darkroom he built off the garage.

He taught himself to tat lace and decorate cakes. When he practiced making roses, he would snip off the bud for us kids to eat.

He loved to work in the yard and developed hybrid roses. One was a lavender rose he named Pearl, after his wife, my mother.

He ate green bell pepper sandwiches and fried green tomatoes, crackers in milk, sugar on his cottage cheese, pickled pigs feet, and white chocolate bark. All of these delicacies he shared with us.

He was a doer and not prone to being inactive; although, he did enjoy watching wrestling on our 9 inch TV Wednesday nights. It was more fun to watch him sitting on the edge of the couch, jerking, twitching, and twisting with each blow that was thrown as the action unfolded on the screen, and he vicariously won every match.

He would take us to the Drive-in Theater. On Sunday night we would go for Banana nut ice cream. He liked to play canasta with the family, and tell off-color jokes and tease Momma. He liked to make things with his hands, wood or metal or leather. He died at 47, but he left a strong impression on the lives of his children.

Some of his children may remember his stern authoritarian personality; some his moralistic judgments; some his booming voice; some his helpful teaching ways; some his humor and wit; some his love of learning; some his dedication to his wife and family, but all looked to him as the head of his house.

These are the observations of a child and young adult as I look at through adult eyes. I wish I had known him better.

He didn’t know everything, but he knew enough. Thank you, Daddy.

Written by Joyce Roe Flaugher 1998

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