Dad was the son of a small town grocer and a woman with pretensions. His was born in the tail end of the Depression.
Inspired by a man about town, he went to chiropractic school and opened a practice in another small town. At the time, I was a small child and Mom, another woman with pretensions, was pregnant with my brother. Dad’s practice did badly and they had to go to his parents for help.
They counseled Dad to do the right thing for a family man: He enrolled in an education program at a small South Georgia college. He started out as a junior high school teacher and became a principal, with his own school. He had a hard time with teachers and students during the day, then a hard time with his angry and fighting marriage and children.
But there was another side to him. Dad caught the airplane bug early and started flying at 16, hanging out at the local airport. His parents let him do this, despite being unable to see out of one eye.
Every subsequent weekend, he went out to one of the local airports to hang around with other pilots. He scraped together money to buy a single-wing aluminum body airplane and spent years of weekends working on it. I remember him stripping off coats of paint. He remarked that each coat was a different life for the old bird. After he flew that plane, the expression on his face afterward said, “I’m free!”
Mom and Dad divorced a few years later; my brother moved out, and I moved on as best I could.
Dad then married a woman who knew how to take care of him, and tried for years to relate to me. He sent me letters that I didn’t read. After he died, I read them. He explained everything. I went from someone feeling like a parentless child to one with a treasure.
Lo Scriviti 