Parental birthdays always being up old memories and the feelings that accompany them. My father’s 114th is November 1. He was an older man – by current standards – when he married. During those early years he managed to roam about the country and spent some time in Kansas as a telegrapher on the Union Pacific Railroad. He later turned to barbering.
He was musical. He sang in the choir. I have a photograph of him with an alto saxophone. He used to sing old ditties to me to make me laugh. They were all of a vaudevillian genre it seemed. One that has stayed with me follows. If you’d like I’ll sing it for you. You like? The words follow for you who desire a more in depth experience, and perhaps wish to sing it along with me.
Well, she promised she would meet me when the clock struck seventeenAt the stock-yards just five miles outside of town;Where there's pig's feet and pig's ears, and tough old Texas steersSell for sirloin steak at nineteen cents a pound. She's my darling, she's my daisy. She's hump-backed and she's crazy, She's knock-kneed, she's bow-legged and she's lame; And though they say her breath is sweet, I would rather smell her feet She' my freckle-faced consumptive Mary Jane.
If you are still here after that, you must have less to do than I do. Actually I am making a couple of loaves of potato bread. And yes I have been thinking of my father. On his birthday, I have a kind of ballad I composed a while ago that I’ll share. You’ll be happy to hear that it is not musical in case you were thinking of taking a trip that day or maybe making some bread.
I am not at all sure that we are ever done with our parents.
Jerry thanks for the memories, my father was a surgery for C. P. rail in BC. He sang inn the church cornice… Thanks for the reminder.