After I started this thread, Mike reminded me that there was already a thread that he posted about this same subject. I went back and looked at it. I was a bit dumbfounded. I had made a reply or two to his thread. I had completely forgotten about it. Really made me feel like I was 'losing it'. But, I will leave this thread because there may be some who didn't see Mike's thread and have not checked the site in his signature.
One more thing, I have not talked much about my dad. I would like to say that there never was or ever will be any man who will be able to 'hold a candle' to my dad. I'm sure that all your dads were great guys. Mine (to me) was the greatest that ever lived or ever will live. He was a family man, a Christian, stopped smoking when I was about 9, never drank, always fair, never overbearing, would help anyone who he determined deserved help, and he and my mom very seldom argued about anything. He was 36 and my mom was 27 when they married. He had stopped drinking when he was 27. (That's a story I'll have to tell sometime!)
Anytime I talk about him helping anyone he thought needed help, I always think of an incident in 1953. We lived in a small town about 30 miles east of Dallas. Kaufman, Texas. We were eating lunch one Saturday during the hottest part of summer. Dad looked out the window and saw a black man with a large box on his shoulder walking down the sidewalk. He watched about 30 seconds, got up from his chair, and said that he would be back in a few minutes. He went out to the man and asked him if he needed a ride. The man told dad that he thought he could get to his house ok. Dad told him to come get into the car and he would take him home. The man really didn't know what to think. He asked Dad how much he would have to pay for the ride. Dad told him that he wouldn't owe anything for the ride. In those days, there were not a lot of white people that would do something like that for a black person. Dad took the man and his box of groceries to the man's house. Again the man asked Dad how much he owed for the ride. Dad told him that he owed nothing.
When Dad got home, he didn't say much about what he had done. He just sat down and finished his lunch.
Dad wasn't an educated man. He had to quit school during the first grade because of an eye infection. He never returned. Though he wasn't educated in school, he was well educated in the ways of life. He didn't try to tell people how to live. He just lived an example for them to see.
