Daddy Tried

My dad was a very dear person to me. I think that I'm the
only person who understood him, that's probably because we are so much
alike in a lot of ways. He was stubborn like a mule. When he had his
mind made up forget about trying to change it . There were no gray
areas with him everything was black or white. At least you always knew
where you stood, he did not pussy foot around anything.

He
worked very hard all his life raised both his younger, sister and
brother after both his parents died in their early forties from
Consumption, I think they called it back then, Tuberculosis is the
proper word now. He was twenty one when he married my Mother, who was
fifteen she got pregnant right away they had a daughter she died at
eighteen months with Pneumonia.

My Dad, according to
Mama was a pretty man who worked hard, and pitched baseball for a team
that went from town to town on weekends playing ball and getting drunk.
She said when I was born delivered by a midwife, he was somewhere
playing ball. When he came home there was a deep snow on the ground and
she watched from the window as he came across the field caring a bucket
of Rex jelly, and one baby shoe for me. He said he had em both when he
started out.

That's when he stopped drinking, and
turned into the workaholic that I knew and loved. He worked hard for
the man, got himself a few acres of his own to farm worked his, and
still worked for the man who owned the gin, the country store, and all
the farmers in the area where we lived. The man who owned all this
drove a big Cadillac, down the roads once in a while looking at the
crops and deciding what needed to be changed.

The way
he owned you was furnishing you all the necessities to grow the crops,
when they were harvested you paid him back, praying all year for
everything to go well, enough rain, enough sun, good seeds, that didn't
rot in the ground. I spent all my young life listening to pillow talk
between my folks, Lord if this rain don't let up I don't know what were
going to do. It was always something I still worry about the weather
and the effect it's having on the farmers.

The worst
thing, that could happen to my Dad was not starting out with a clean
slate every spring, he could not bear to owe anybody anything. So we
worked as hard as we could go to keep that from happening. He tried to
do things right, he was fair and was respected by all that knew him. He
even managed to save some money, had burial policies on all of us, and
health insurance.

Mama, got real sick and had to go
to the hospital for surgery, when the hospital informed the insurance
of the amount due, they refused to pay, said her illness was from a pre
existing condition. It took all the savings, and years to pay off the
bill. That Insurance company ruined our lives. Mama, always felt guilty
about it of course it wasn't her fault. Daddy, never said a word about
it we just worked harder than ever, there wasn't a lot of smiles at my
house.

If we had been smart a lawyer could have made
them pay back then folks just took what people in authority told them
as law, and did what they said. Dad died in 1996 without a pot to piss
in or a window to throw it out of. This makes me mad enough to scream.

If you had known him and how very hard he worked,
and to have nothing at all to show for it. Me and my sisters, and
brother had to pool our money to bury him. The burial insurance, that
he had been paying for forty plus years was not enough to cover his
expenses. How sad is that .