It’s been 20 years now.
August 26, 2002 was the day Daddy died.
This writing has been a long time in the process…meaning that I’ve rolled it around in my head and prayed about it so many times but never started it.
Please indulge me as I relay this story…
Let me start by saying I loved him very much but I have so many thoughts and feelings about him that I’ve tried to process.
Our relationship was a sometimes complicated one, but with God’s help I have a peace.
I was told he wanted a son for many years but eventually I was born.
I loved my daddy and was very much “Daddy’s little girl.”
People would ask me who I was and I would reply, “Dinah Grace John Pearson.”
It seemed to me that this was a very quick way to identify your father by including his name into yours.
There’s a man in town who almost always calls me that when he sees me to this very day. We always share a little chuckle over this.
I thought my daddy hung the moon. He always took us places wanting to show us around the area where he grew up or interesting places in the state. We went camping and enjoyed many of the State Parks. He loved the great outdoors.
He always made little toys for me, many of them that he had made as a child during the depression.
I thought about that memory when I saw this little boy (below) in Haiti rolling a wagon rim down the road.
Daddy even tried to market one of them and he took a few of my friends and I to the TV station in Columbus to demonstrate it on the “Uncle Bunky” show, a local television show for children. It was a little wheel that we pushed around and steered with a stick.
Daddy and I had a lot of fun together.
He loved to create interesting things out of objects others might have discarded much like the novelty horseshoe puzzles I saw at a recent festival.
All the grandkids and curious visitors to Momma & Daddy’s house loved o try their hand at this challenging puzzle.
Daddy always loved horses and animals of any kind really.
When I was in first grade I learned his ti read on the books that most kids of my day did – Dick and Jane !
I absolutely loved to read about Dick and Jane’s pony.
I wanted one of my own and I begged Daddy to get me a pony.
That was right up his alley and we had a pasture behind the house with a shed so he bought me a pony!
He even bought a cart & harness for Trigger to pull. (He had also said he wanted me to be a barrel racer and he loved the rodeo but that never worked out. )
That pony was so stubborn and didn’t want to be ridden. Trigger would “clothesline” me back in the days when those were a staple in back yards. One day he rubbed up against a barb-wire fence with me on his back so he had to go!
I had lots of scars from that episode… still do even now.
I was so tender hearted when it came to animals. I cried my eyes out when Daddy whipped him even though that pony had hurt my leg so badly.
Dinah's Dabblings 