Happy Father's Day

My mother and father had eleven children and I am right in the middle of them all.  Nine girls and two boys!!  Unfortunately, he did not live to see them as adults.  I was eighteen when he died at the early age of only fifty-seven so I felt I never got to know him.  I have memories though, of him taking us fishing, we played in the water catching crabs (I wonder why I had no fear of crabs then but am scared to death to pick one up now??).  I remember the Easter egg hunts where he would forget where he hid the eggs and had to help us find them.  And I remember he called all the girls "Tootsie" when they were babies.  I think it was easier than trying to remember everybody's name!  With so many girls in the family it wasn't unusual for him to call us by the wrong name - usually he had to go through the whole list of girls before he got the one he wanted - and he would become very frustrated.  Often the last name he would come to would be "Suzanna Jane."  We just knew to answer when it got that far - never knew who "Suzanna Jane" was because I didn't have a sister by that name!!  Not only was he the father of a lot of girls but he also had my mother's three younger sisters living with them after my grandmother died.  And I remember him calling my mother "Flossie" (her name was Florence) and how he would come up behind her while she was cooking and give her a big old bear hug, then often pinching her on the rear before he walked away (don't think we were suppose to see that).  I still sing the little song he would sing when we were about to get into trouble - "Oh, me lordy, turn me aloose, and I'll go back to the buzzard's roost".  We didn't know what a "buzzard's roost" was but we knew we had better straighten up or we were gonna "get it". 

He reminds me of James Dean in his younger days.  He was a good ole' boy from the south who often got into trouble, a very strict father but my mother's husband for more than thirty years and she never remarried after he died.