Thoughts of my Dad

Sometimes the things that I do will bring back memories of my dad Edson Carl Beck. It’s not usually anything big, just small actions, or movements, or the way I do something. In the past, when I stack the firewood, I remember the way my dad could split firewood with a double bitted ax. Time after time he would swing it high over his head and hit the same spot of the upturned piece of wood. It was my dad’s persistence and consistency that impressed me, not that I am that consistent, but it was the memory of him swinging the ax.

The memories may come in the way I move my hands. Mine have never been as work hardened as his large calloused ones, but if I move something hot from the stove or the microwave and the handle is hot, it reminds me of how he would hold hot things with seemingly asbestos fingers. If he did indeed feel something hot, he would swing his arm at his side and flick his hand. If he mashed a finger, he would do the same thing.

My dad was honest as anyone I ever knew. He would often walk back into the store if the cashier over paid him in change. Once he returned a bag of groceries to the store. He found the bag of groceries sitting on the ground next to his car. The bag was filled with food where someone sat it to read a flyer he had placed in the rear side window of his red and white Ford station wagon. The owner of the groceries had forgotten them when he finished reading the poster of the upcoming Buckwheat Festival in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

As a side note, Ohiopyle has cancelled their annual Buckwheat and sausage Festival because of the Corona virus intrusion. I have worked there nearly every year since 1975 It will feel odd not being able to participate in this tradition and visit with my fellow workers and friends.

Dad didn’t usually say “I love you,” but it was there. The consistency of him working everyday to provide for us was the way he showed his love: our food, clothing, and housing. I do differ from my father in that. While I provided all of the same things, I did say I love you to my kids and still do to this day.

Each time I left my father after a visit, I always said, “Dad, I love you” most of the time he would just smile and nod his head so I knew that he’d heard me. I still tear at the memory of him saying I love you back, not too long before he died. It was another special thought of my dad.