Sunday, June 20, 2010

Father's Day


It is Father's Day and a time for celebration. My daughter got me a blue carnival glass dish with a pedestal. I like antique glass and use to collect it. It was shipped all the way from Utah and made it here in one piece. The blue color is a cobalt blue and blue is my favorite color.

These are the gifts that Mary got me. The main gift was a cordless phone. When we are both on our computers in the bedroom which has been converted to a computer room and the phone rings, it is a race to the other side of the house to get to the phone before the answering machine comes on. This phone will be kept right next to my computer so that if someone calls I can easily answer it. And if the call is for Mary, then I just hand her the phone since it is cordless. It is a Motorola and so it is a good phone. I didn't want one of those cheap brands because I was afraid that the tone quality might not be all that good. She also got me some sugar free Hawaiian Punch in different flavors. It reminds me of my childhood when I set up a Kool-Aid stand in front of the house that I grew up in New York.

I was the young entrepreneur who had dreams of selling kool-aid roadside to passing motorists. It was summer and it was hot. This seemed like a really good idea. I got a wooden crate and stood it on end. I made a sign and put it on the front of my wooden crate kool-aid stand. My kool-aid stand was right where the black car by the mail box is in the picture above. How many of us have had a kool-aid stand when we were very young? I must have been around 10 years old when I had mine. I enlisted the aid of Jimmy Benson from across the street to help with my kool-aid stand. We waited and waited and finally a car did stop and bought a glass of kool-aid for a nickel. I think that the man just did it to humor us. He was the only one who stopped. It was hot standing by the kool-aid stand and Jimmy Benson and I started sampling the kool-aid. It wasn't long before we had drank all of the kool-aid. My enterprise had flopped but at least I got to drink a lot of kool-aid which was fun.

But on a day like today I remember my own dad. I have very few pictures of him left.

This is my mom and dad when they came to visit me in Phoenix, Arizona. It was summer and the intense heat when he got off the plane was quite a shock to him. Back in those days at the airport when you disembarked from the plane, they would roll these metal steps on wheels up to the side of the plane and the passengers went down the steps to the tarmac. My dad had never been to Arizona and he enjoyed everything. We spent a lot of quality time together with me taking him out into the desert in my jeep to chase dust devils which are like mini tornados. He was a good father and a good provider. My mom was very devoted to him. Here on Father's Day, he is remembered and missed. Have a nice day and remember some of the good times that you may have had with your father. Lew

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