How many stories have we all heard in our
lives? Where did they come from? Over the years, I’ve collected uncounted
works of fiction and historical books, each one read many times, but the
stories I enjoy the most are those told.
As a child, I would find an unoccupied seat at the table and let the
family’s stories wash over me as the night would wear on. Stories from uncles and grandparents; tales
of childhood and work and war, all spoke of character and characters, triumph
and tragedy. I learned so much from
those treasured nights, and of the storytellers, the one I always enjoyed
hearing the most was my dad.
My dad was a ‘boomer’, born in
1946. It was a simpler time, by his
telling, much easier to get into trouble.
Some of his earlier stories were of bumper skiing and building match
head rockets, while his most regaled were of hunting and work and gardening and
time spent at camp. They were all part
of a larger tapestry--the story of lessons learned and a life lived.
Today, at ten minutes to noon,
the story ended.
As my own story progresses, I
have done my best to see that his continues, those lessons of the past best
taught through his experience.
Everything from hunting skills, fire building, mechanic work, tooling;
all need to be passed on. How many parts
of the story are there to tell? I have
no idea. They have become such a part of
myself that their wisdom roll off my tongue with little effort, a measure of
joy in the realization that they were his.
As I held his hand today, gazing down at eyes that I desperately wished
would open again, I wondered how much of that story I still hadn’t heard.
Dad wasn’t just an excellent
storyteller; he was an artistic complainer.
This was another ‘skill’ he passed on to me. I didn’t fully appreciate the subtlety of a
finely-honed ranting skill until years ago, on a fishing trip to Barren River,
when he accused the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife of seeding the
river bottom with spring-loaded rocks to make people think there were, indeed,
fish there. He’d never give up,
though. Through it all, we would do
brake jobs in the rain, we re-packed bearings on the side of the road, and he
kept fishing. We did so much, but it
still wasn’t enough.
He was on this world for
seventy-two years. He sailed two tours
in the Navy during Vietnam and has seen parts of this world I haven’t. In the Navy, he met John Wayne, and a few
years before that, he got a ride across town from Muhammad Ali. He could rebuild engines and work with wood,
and could never seem to do enough of what he loved. His story was voluminous--in his life he
spoke millions of words; sometimes eloquently, sometimes not so much. His last words to me were, “Oh, yeah”. My last words to him were, “I wish you could
hear me”.
That was ten minutes to
noon. So many hours later, I can still
barely see to write.
Ronald Wayne Wilkins
December 27, 1946-January 28,
2019
