A
Anonymous
Guest
February 12, 1968
February 12, 1968 started out as typical as Arkannsas weather can be for it was clear after a overnight low of 33, to turn into cloudy,balmy 63 degree day and no wind. I had just completed my 3rd night of graveyard shift at the Aluminum smelter and was very sleepy when I got home in the morning around 8:44. <graveyard shift is 12-8 in the morning> I headed instantly for the big bed in the corner of the 2-room apartment, I shared with my first love who was in her 3rd year of college to become a Elemantary School Teacher. We had been married less than a year and took the only apartment we could afford at the time. Several more apartments caught our eye but we settled for a 2-room efficency apartment in the rear of a old widow's home and it did have a carport and 2 exit doors.
It was bedroom, small kitchen and hall and a very nice walk in shower in the bath for $42.00 a month. This included utilities but only had a huge fan for air in the window beside the bed. We saw where we could still save after all bills were payed at least $99.00 a month and did not plan to live there forever. We shared a closet for clothes. We were happy, very young and really only needed a bed and a place to bathe, for young married couples do not eat! Why, did we need a kitchen I told her and as typical woman as she was, she just frowned!
The side door was really the front door for outside of this door was the mailbox and our apartment number 704 and 1/2. The widow lady had been my 7th grade math teacher and the home was right across the street from the high school. It was a very safe neighborhood and just 4 houses up , I had lived with my parents and sister, several years before when I was just a toddler, not knowing someday I would rent an apartment several doors down the street. The old home had the old high ceilings and smelt of age. It was on a corner and my driveway was easy to acess and it was concrete too!
With young wife gone to college by the time I arrived home that day in February,1968 I instantly headed for bed with eyelids drooping very heavly. Barely, taking the time to undress, I slipped under the bedcovers and headed for law-law land, dreaming of when she would be home in the evening.
Right beside the bed was the front door and it had 6 glass window panes and the bottom one on the right was loose as a goose from age. I wanted to tighten it up some but did not know how. My Dad, once when he was visiting for a short few minutes, told me he would fix it, but never got around to it. Now, when a salesman came a calling in the middle of the day and knocked on the old door, the loose window pane made a very alarming rattle. No matter how deep a sleep I was this window pane rattled me awake very quickly when someone knocked. It had a deathly sound as the window pane shook as they knocked.
I had been asleep no more than a couple of hours that day in February 1968 when I heard the window rattling from some one knocking on the door very,very hard and quite agressively. I sat up in bed and peeked out behind the window curtains to see "NO-ONE". I was dreaming, I thought and rolled back over and drifted back into blissful sleep.
Then , I heard my Daddy's call to me: "BUTCH", very distinctly
I sat, up in bed and looked around. Shaking my head I had been back asleep just a few minutes. and , then it came again but different this time for when DAD, was playing with me , he called me "BUTCHIE" and I looked again underneath the curtain over the outside door.
<>In the logging woods, Dad was all business, he saw the all mighty dollar bill and treated young employeee as the same as old employee. It seemed as a young age of 17, everything that went wrong I got the blame for it and I heard the dixtinct words..."BUTCH"! Even if I was on a another job, half way across the state, he called my name like I was the blame for something breaking down or something not working out right! Dad, had 55 employees at one time and I was 56. He had given me a job, when I was but a mere 13 years of age, driving a brand new John Deere yellow caterpillar in the logging woods, pushing new roads and making landing sites. He payed me as he called it, 3 squares a day and a bed at night and then grinning, allways handed me my $30.00 check on Saturday. This was 6 dollars a day for 5 days and I would have done it for nothing, I was enjoying myself. If, Dad and I was hunting or fishing the local lakes,rivers,ponds, he allways called me, "BUTCHIE", but if something went wrong or something tore up, somewhere even though I was not there it was BUTCH!<>
The knock on the door once again rattled the window pane and I sat up, noticing the alarm clock to say 11:00 o'clock, and I had been asleep but just a few hours. This time putting on my shoes and clothes, I opened the door, to find nothing or no one. My landlady was closeby raking the late winter's last leaves from the old stately post oak trees.
I calmly asked her..Mrs Rhodes, who was knocking on my door?
She replied! No-one Mr.Voss, I have been here raking these leaves all morning long.
Puzzled, I tried but could not go back to sleep, for it had been just too real. I reached for our extension phone for I knew my landlady was outside and was not using it. I called home and got no answer and MOM, should have been home by now. Mom, worked as a dental nurse for a dentist in town and took the early luch hour for her break. I dialed
it again and still no one answered.
Standing, looking outside into the cloudy day , just something came over me that things were not right and I should investigate father. The phone rang just as I started out the door, and I answered it, but no-one was there but a dial tone, they had hung up before I could answer it.
I climbed into the 53 Chevrolet pick-up truck I had just bought a few weeks before , so my young wife and I would both have a set of wheels to go and come as needed and headed for the home place a few miles across town. As, I neared the main intersection to town, a foolish driver rounded the curve a liitle too fast and side wheeled it into the curb, jumping the road ditch, taking out some shrubs and continued on without even looking around as she ran the stop sign.
IT WAS MY "MOTHER"
Instantly, I fell in behind her and followed her to the emergency room of our local hospital. FEAR, came over me spontantously, the funny little men went to climbing up and down my spine as I drove up behind her and parked. Trying to be the grown up, I stepped out and greeted her to find her in hysterics. She, at the age of 46 was making no-sense. She said something of the order that "DAD" had an accident in the logging woods and they were bringing him in an ambulance to the emergency room.
Mom, was shown where to wait as I took up my virgile looking down that long lane towards the main highway and no body's stomach has been anymore sicker feeling when I saw that emergency ambulance coming and no emergency flashing lights.
Our family doctor who was a fishing/hunting buddy of Dad's from years berfore when they were both young, stopped me as I tried to enter the examining room. He said: Don't go in there Butchie, your DAD is gone! From all things said, he was short handed this monday morning and was cutting down the trees and one of them kicked back on him crushing him to the ground. Looks, like your DAD, tried to cut the log off of him and got the saw cutters into his main artery in his leg and
........
I stood there numb from the words spoken to me by our old friend and doctor and reached inside of me to a place where I once knew there was soltice in a red button deep inside my soul, that showed me the peace in a valley as I had went thru the tedious tasks of seweing up America's young sons, in the killing fields of Southeast Asia! Of where they cried out for thier mother's love and I was there for them. That, magic red button had come to bring me peace, just as I had gave so many times.
Dad, was a mere 5 foot 5 inch, 170 pound woodsman. He had no neck from hard work. His legs were as big at his ankles as they were at his hips. He had no waist for he went from all shoulders clean down to where he tied his shoes. Very, stocky built and hard as a rock at the age of 53! Baldheaded since he was 33. His hands looked like the jaws of shop vise, along with the bulging muscles under neath his chambray workshirt.
Dad, had at one time been a Sunday School Superindent in a Baptist Church. He never missed a church service. His best friends were his family doctor, his young preacher and his boss, who was several, years younger than he was and got him into lots of mischief that Dad, never pulled out of. mainly gambling! why, Dad, would lay you odds that there was no bark on a old oak tree and win! or, make you think he had!
Now Dad, never had to look for employees, for he had a waiting list, wanting to work for him. Guessing here it was his deamenor or maybe the huge bonuses he gave all his men at Christmas time each year. When, someone did not show up on Monday morning, he did not get mad, he just filled in whereever that person was supposed to be, where it was truckdriver or saw operator.
and yes, with no other options because of a heavy workload of our only funeral home in town that year of 1968, we had to carry Dad to his final resting place on sweetheart's day, "Valentines Day" ...February 1968! it was clear,then it cloudied up and then it snowed and in the west right at sundown, it thundered deep in the distance, just as the "mysterious knock on my door!"
Why? you will say?
When, I set in making arrangements to sell all of his equpment I had to have death certificates made for all creditors and down in one small line I saw where the cornorer had listed time of death as 11:00 am, February 12,1968
the exact time that I heard the knock on my door!
I will allways believe even though 36 years has gone by that the knock on the door that day at my first apartment---was, my dear old DAD, saying goodbye son!
He was 53 and I thought he was old? I have outlived him by 6 years and see how young a man he really was. He left my Mother well off for in the November of 1967, Dad, had bought 3 new Ford log trucks with new pole trailers, a new John Deere cat and had the sense enough to take out credit life on all this equipment. All, of it was payed for and I was going to auction it off to highest bidder several months later in the summer of 1968............but,
as along comes his "BOSS", with a very heafty offer for all tools, all equipment, all trucks, trailers,etc;stc;....MOM, was set to not ever have to work again.....
but , just like DAD, she was stubborn and did not retire she was 67!
note:
now dear friends u-know why i have not been on this computer for the last several days, I see many stories to read and things to look at on our forum..........it is just a time of the year, I have problems with.......everybody, is thinking sweetheart's day and I just have to deal with it, year after year after year.........
Just like Johnboy, Lil Brother Tom and Suzy homemaker---special Dad's come along only once in a soldier's lifetime....
far,far,away and away way far and no body knows where but me!
Memories, they help give lift to my wings!
February 12, 1968 started out as typical as Arkannsas weather can be for it was clear after a overnight low of 33, to turn into cloudy,balmy 63 degree day and no wind. I had just completed my 3rd night of graveyard shift at the Aluminum smelter and was very sleepy when I got home in the morning around 8:44. <graveyard shift is 12-8 in the morning> I headed instantly for the big bed in the corner of the 2-room apartment, I shared with my first love who was in her 3rd year of college to become a Elemantary School Teacher. We had been married less than a year and took the only apartment we could afford at the time. Several more apartments caught our eye but we settled for a 2-room efficency apartment in the rear of a old widow's home and it did have a carport and 2 exit doors.
It was bedroom, small kitchen and hall and a very nice walk in shower in the bath for $42.00 a month. This included utilities but only had a huge fan for air in the window beside the bed. We saw where we could still save after all bills were payed at least $99.00 a month and did not plan to live there forever. We shared a closet for clothes. We were happy, very young and really only needed a bed and a place to bathe, for young married couples do not eat! Why, did we need a kitchen I told her and as typical woman as she was, she just frowned!
The side door was really the front door for outside of this door was the mailbox and our apartment number 704 and 1/2. The widow lady had been my 7th grade math teacher and the home was right across the street from the high school. It was a very safe neighborhood and just 4 houses up , I had lived with my parents and sister, several years before when I was just a toddler, not knowing someday I would rent an apartment several doors down the street. The old home had the old high ceilings and smelt of age. It was on a corner and my driveway was easy to acess and it was concrete too!
With young wife gone to college by the time I arrived home that day in February,1968 I instantly headed for bed with eyelids drooping very heavly. Barely, taking the time to undress, I slipped under the bedcovers and headed for law-law land, dreaming of when she would be home in the evening.
Right beside the bed was the front door and it had 6 glass window panes and the bottom one on the right was loose as a goose from age. I wanted to tighten it up some but did not know how. My Dad, once when he was visiting for a short few minutes, told me he would fix it, but never got around to it. Now, when a salesman came a calling in the middle of the day and knocked on the old door, the loose window pane made a very alarming rattle. No matter how deep a sleep I was this window pane rattled me awake very quickly when someone knocked. It had a deathly sound as the window pane shook as they knocked.
I had been asleep no more than a couple of hours that day in February 1968 when I heard the window rattling from some one knocking on the door very,very hard and quite agressively. I sat up in bed and peeked out behind the window curtains to see "NO-ONE". I was dreaming, I thought and rolled back over and drifted back into blissful sleep.
Then , I heard my Daddy's call to me: "BUTCH", very distinctly
I sat, up in bed and looked around. Shaking my head I had been back asleep just a few minutes. and , then it came again but different this time for when DAD, was playing with me , he called me "BUTCHIE" and I looked again underneath the curtain over the outside door.
<>In the logging woods, Dad was all business, he saw the all mighty dollar bill and treated young employeee as the same as old employee. It seemed as a young age of 17, everything that went wrong I got the blame for it and I heard the dixtinct words..."BUTCH"! Even if I was on a another job, half way across the state, he called my name like I was the blame for something breaking down or something not working out right! Dad, had 55 employees at one time and I was 56. He had given me a job, when I was but a mere 13 years of age, driving a brand new John Deere yellow caterpillar in the logging woods, pushing new roads and making landing sites. He payed me as he called it, 3 squares a day and a bed at night and then grinning, allways handed me my $30.00 check on Saturday. This was 6 dollars a day for 5 days and I would have done it for nothing, I was enjoying myself. If, Dad and I was hunting or fishing the local lakes,rivers,ponds, he allways called me, "BUTCHIE", but if something went wrong or something tore up, somewhere even though I was not there it was BUTCH!<>
The knock on the door once again rattled the window pane and I sat up, noticing the alarm clock to say 11:00 o'clock, and I had been asleep but just a few hours. This time putting on my shoes and clothes, I opened the door, to find nothing or no one. My landlady was closeby raking the late winter's last leaves from the old stately post oak trees.
I calmly asked her..Mrs Rhodes, who was knocking on my door?
She replied! No-one Mr.Voss, I have been here raking these leaves all morning long.
Puzzled, I tried but could not go back to sleep, for it had been just too real. I reached for our extension phone for I knew my landlady was outside and was not using it. I called home and got no answer and MOM, should have been home by now. Mom, worked as a dental nurse for a dentist in town and took the early luch hour for her break. I dialed
it again and still no one answered.
Standing, looking outside into the cloudy day , just something came over me that things were not right and I should investigate father. The phone rang just as I started out the door, and I answered it, but no-one was there but a dial tone, they had hung up before I could answer it.
I climbed into the 53 Chevrolet pick-up truck I had just bought a few weeks before , so my young wife and I would both have a set of wheels to go and come as needed and headed for the home place a few miles across town. As, I neared the main intersection to town, a foolish driver rounded the curve a liitle too fast and side wheeled it into the curb, jumping the road ditch, taking out some shrubs and continued on without even looking around as she ran the stop sign.
IT WAS MY "MOTHER"
Instantly, I fell in behind her and followed her to the emergency room of our local hospital. FEAR, came over me spontantously, the funny little men went to climbing up and down my spine as I drove up behind her and parked. Trying to be the grown up, I stepped out and greeted her to find her in hysterics. She, at the age of 46 was making no-sense. She said something of the order that "DAD" had an accident in the logging woods and they were bringing him in an ambulance to the emergency room.
Mom, was shown where to wait as I took up my virgile looking down that long lane towards the main highway and no body's stomach has been anymore sicker feeling when I saw that emergency ambulance coming and no emergency flashing lights.
Our family doctor who was a fishing/hunting buddy of Dad's from years berfore when they were both young, stopped me as I tried to enter the examining room. He said: Don't go in there Butchie, your DAD is gone! From all things said, he was short handed this monday morning and was cutting down the trees and one of them kicked back on him crushing him to the ground. Looks, like your DAD, tried to cut the log off of him and got the saw cutters into his main artery in his leg and
........
I stood there numb from the words spoken to me by our old friend and doctor and reached inside of me to a place where I once knew there was soltice in a red button deep inside my soul, that showed me the peace in a valley as I had went thru the tedious tasks of seweing up America's young sons, in the killing fields of Southeast Asia! Of where they cried out for thier mother's love and I was there for them. That, magic red button had come to bring me peace, just as I had gave so many times.
Dad, was a mere 5 foot 5 inch, 170 pound woodsman. He had no neck from hard work. His legs were as big at his ankles as they were at his hips. He had no waist for he went from all shoulders clean down to where he tied his shoes. Very, stocky built and hard as a rock at the age of 53! Baldheaded since he was 33. His hands looked like the jaws of shop vise, along with the bulging muscles under neath his chambray workshirt.
Dad, had at one time been a Sunday School Superindent in a Baptist Church. He never missed a church service. His best friends were his family doctor, his young preacher and his boss, who was several, years younger than he was and got him into lots of mischief that Dad, never pulled out of. mainly gambling! why, Dad, would lay you odds that there was no bark on a old oak tree and win! or, make you think he had!
Now Dad, never had to look for employees, for he had a waiting list, wanting to work for him. Guessing here it was his deamenor or maybe the huge bonuses he gave all his men at Christmas time each year. When, someone did not show up on Monday morning, he did not get mad, he just filled in whereever that person was supposed to be, where it was truckdriver or saw operator.
and yes, with no other options because of a heavy workload of our only funeral home in town that year of 1968, we had to carry Dad to his final resting place on sweetheart's day, "Valentines Day" ...February 1968! it was clear,then it cloudied up and then it snowed and in the west right at sundown, it thundered deep in the distance, just as the "mysterious knock on my door!"
Why? you will say?
When, I set in making arrangements to sell all of his equpment I had to have death certificates made for all creditors and down in one small line I saw where the cornorer had listed time of death as 11:00 am, February 12,1968
the exact time that I heard the knock on my door!
I will allways believe even though 36 years has gone by that the knock on the door that day at my first apartment---was, my dear old DAD, saying goodbye son!
He was 53 and I thought he was old? I have outlived him by 6 years and see how young a man he really was. He left my Mother well off for in the November of 1967, Dad, had bought 3 new Ford log trucks with new pole trailers, a new John Deere cat and had the sense enough to take out credit life on all this equipment. All, of it was payed for and I was going to auction it off to highest bidder several months later in the summer of 1968............but,
as along comes his "BOSS", with a very heafty offer for all tools, all equipment, all trucks, trailers,etc;stc;....MOM, was set to not ever have to work again.....
but , just like DAD, she was stubborn and did not retire she was 67!
note:
now dear friends u-know why i have not been on this computer for the last several days, I see many stories to read and things to look at on our forum..........it is just a time of the year, I have problems with.......everybody, is thinking sweetheart's day and I just have to deal with it, year after year after year.........
Just like Johnboy, Lil Brother Tom and Suzy homemaker---special Dad's come along only once in a soldier's lifetime....
far,far,away and away way far and no body knows where but me!
Memories, they help give lift to my wings!
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