My Daddy

Father, Daddy, Dad.  This man grew up hard-scrabble on Colorado's high plains, raised a heathen, God reached down and drew him into His family when the boy was seventeen years of age.  From that point on Dad dedicated his life to the service of his Master, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation through His atoning Blood.

Dad went home to his Heavenly Father nineteen years ago.  I still miss him, but the love, the guidance, the teachings that he left with me remain with me.

  

Delbert W. Lacy 1910 - 1999

Backyard Mechanic #T

I saw the motto and knew instantly what was being advertised-- brand name and all.

How long has it been since you saw an ad for piston rings?  Everyone, well, nearly everyone, owns some but no on gives them a second thought.  That is unless he is a combustion engine mechanic by profession.

Back in the. . .  Well, you know, when I was a lad it was not uncommon for the family vehicle to develop a bad habit of belching smoke due to worn piston rings, among possibly other causes.  It was also not uncommon for Pops, or Daddy by whatever moniker he was known in the household to purchase a set of piston rings and a few other things, pull the car under the shade of the elm, and proceed to correct the problem.

This just isn't done anymore.  Isn't necessary, and scarce is the man who has the know-how to accomplish the task.  We resolve our automotive issues in different ways these days.  But here is a brief story, true story, a memory from my kidhood, circa 1945.  Faithful reader Vee will verify or correct the date.

Little sister having been stricken ill was hospitalized and the appendix was removed.  Daddy had a real concern regarding payment of the accompanying medical bills.  I think I remember numbers, but in the interest of correctness in reporting I shall tell the story without naming dollar amounts.

Dad had access to a small amount of cash but not enough to meet the obligation.  A new neighbor recently moved into town had a 1934 Ford sedan he wished to sell.  But the little V-8 engine was afflicted with the problem cited above, along with other foibles.  Father bought the car, pulled it into a garage on the back alley, and disassembled the engine, laying the parts carefully on the workbench.  We were cautioned, nay warned, that to touch, move, knock over, or in any other manner disturb this arrangement was to put our very lives in peril.  Kidding.  Dad did not threaten our lives, but he made it clear that we might wish we were dead if we messed up his work.

He bought piston rings, some bearings, and whatever else he found he needed, cleaned the old engine, rebuilt it and reassembled it.  He sold the car for enough money to recover his investment and pay off the medical bills.

Hastings had nothing on my father who was also "tough but gentle."

Dad's Strawberry Roan #T

I shared this story on STSTT several years ago.  I can picture Dad clacking away on his old manual typewriter, twenty-six years ago today. 

The following is  from my father's writings.  I go through his material from time to time and share some of his wit and wisdom on the weblog as I feel impelled to do.

The time of this incident, circa 1924, the setting, a  farm in Southeastern Colorado.  These memories were recorded  when Dad was eighty years of age.  I know this because the document is dated July 19, 1991.

When I was in my early teens, I came into possession of an outlaw horse, a very bad deal for the horse, as I remember, but game he was.  He was always looking for a way to ditch rider and destroy life as well.  Oh, that "strawberry roan," under fourteen hands high but mighty in determination and revenge.  Falling with rider on back was his delight.

Number one:  With eyes bulging, running full force, teeth set in the bit, he ran headlong into a heap of discarded woven wire.  At that time I wasn't even classified to be called a Holy Roller, just an angry sinner, until I saw old Dewy doing the roll himself, trying to get untangled from his own mess, while I, bruised and angry went to his rescue, not for pity's sake, but to capture him so that I wouldn't have to walk home.  With disappointment in his eyes, I saw, more than heard, him apologize for his wrong-headedness.  A lesson learned that day from a horse.  A good apology vents the soul from all venom.  Indeed:  Oh, yes!

Number two:  When Dewy ran for vengeance he was trying to find a way to do the thing he had in mind, or did he have a mind?  We always traveled full-tilt out on the farm, but why would he pull to one side and step in a hole?  On purpose, I sincerely believe.  He had a gambler's heart, innocent eyes, and seeming readiness for the run, just waiting his day.  What a trip to the ground!  A somersault on the horse's part, and a belly buster without any water for a landing place for me.  Again an apology-- accepted with the understanding that he must carry me home, for I was bruised awfully.

Number three:  This time a badger hole.  I think my shoulder was broken, but I had to milk my share of the cows anyway, one handed, I must say.  Dad didn't believe in Drs. nor did he have the money for such niceties.  Nature would, in time, take care of that.  About this time I thought of praying for relief from pain that lasted for days, but how was I to pray?  I didn't know how, but I sure did develop a strong left hand for milking.  Bad wind that blows no good, so I had learned the hard way.

Number four:  An indentation in the road was sufficient excuse for another roll.  By this time, I had heard others pray, but when I tried, it didn't seem to do much good.  Does God hear prayers offered in profanity?  Well . . .

Final fall:  Across the ridges in a field.  There must be a magic number some where, but I am not sure where.  I sold the brute and got all my money back, with a bit of increase.  Beginning of my business life, after recovering from my last ride on Old Dewy.*

Business life  (to be continued)




Other snippets of Dad's writing may be enjoyed here and here.

*I heard Dad speak of Old Dewy many times.  I pictured the name as "Dewey" ala Admiral Dewey.  I first thought to change the spelling, then thought, Perhaps Dad did not name the horse after the admiral, but rather called him "Dewy" because he was always in a lather.  You reckon?

Carl and Cañon City's Civil War #T

Last week we saw a little Cañon City episode involving a youngster named Earl Cecil.  Today's tale is set in the same locale at about the same time.

The Tuttles lived about three-quarters of a block west of us at, oh, say, about 610 Mystic Avenue.  The Tuttles had two children, twins Carl and Carlene who were about the same age as I which at the time of this event would have been eight.

Mr. Tuttle, or Rev. Tuttle as he was known in the  community, was pastor of the Four Square Gospel Church a few blocks south on Fifth Street.  Thus it was that Carl and I had this in common: we both lived in a preacher's home.  Not the same one.  That is about all we had in common except the neighborhood, for we did not cotton to each other, so to speak.  I don't know if this had anything to do with the fact that our parents' churches might have been competing for the same clientele, or if we simply didn't much care for one another.

The setting is the garden behind the church were I am standing on the east verge of the veggie patch.  Father was four or five rows into the garden with a hoe.  He was intent on what he was doing and about then who should swagger up the alley beyond but Tuttle.  Carl, I mean.  In my memory's eye, Tuttle always swaggered.  Carl stopped opposite me, stared in my direction, his version of the evil eye, I think.  I stared back; neither of us said a word.  He bent to the ground, picked up a donie and heaved it in my direction.  Missed me, but with no formal declaration, war was on.  I bent and grabbed a rock, threw it toward him.  Missed by a mile.  Even my own dad would tell you I throw like a girl.  Oh, that  I could throw like some of these modern-day high school softball pitchers.

So Carl grabbed his second missive and wham!  Hit me square in the middle of the forehead.  Blood spurted, bells rang, and I, with all the strength my little eight-year old lungs and larynx could exert screamed, "YOU! DEVIL! YOU!"

Instantly my male parental unit became aware of my existence, dropped his hoe, took three or four quick steps toward me, grabbed my arm, and without a word hauled me into the house.  With no attempt to assess the damage to his only male offspring, he, in emulation of Mother Hubbard, spanked me soundly.

Then he cleaned the wound and patched me up.

Get Up! #T

"Let's go.   Day's wasting away."  It was Dad rousting me from bed.  I rolled to the edge, placed my feet on the floor, opened one eye and looked at the clock on my bureau.  4:32.  Unbelievable.  Then consciousness flooded in.  It was Monday morning and we were going hunting!

An hour later and fifty miles down the road, the Arkansas river flowing alongside the highway, we neared Cotopaxi.  A few minutes more and we were at the hunting grounds of Dad's choice.  We got the rifles and ammo from the car, stuffed the sandwiches Dad had made into our parka pockets.  I put my hood up, tied it under my chin.  The sun had broken the eastern horizon.  The sky promised a clear day, but it was chilly and I don't do cold well.

We set off up a long draw, the summit we hoped to attain probably four or five hundred yards above us.  That is we were going to hike probably more than a quarter mile at an angle that appeared to be almost straight up.  It wasn't, though.  As we trudged along I was processing the level of excitement I was experiencing, adrenaline starting to flow.  Was I more excited about hunting, or was the exhilaration due to the fact that I was skipping school with Father's knowledge and approval?  Any day that did not imprison a body in school was a good day.

As we neared the top of the draw Dad was perhaps ten steps ahead of me.  The events in this paragraph occurred faster than you can read about them.  Dad reached the summit, turned to see where I was, and by then  I was right behind him.  Suddenly a clatter of gravel to our right and a magnificent animal, white rump signaling its goodbye to us, took off.  Dad instantly raised his rifle and was sighting in for the shot.  I screamed as loudly as I could, "Don't shoot!"  Startled, my father lowered the weapon and stared after the animal which was quickly out of sight.  Dad turned to me and said, "Thanks, Son.  You just saved me a lot of trouble.  And money, too."



I had immediately identified the beast as a Big Horn sheep.  We had no license to hunt sheep and the fine for shooting one was $500, nearly half year's income for Dad at that time.

Image: Creatures of the Wild Wikia

Hunting Season

 "Deer season starts next week."  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with the .30-06 lying on the oilcloth, its bolt below the trigger guard, can of gun oil beside them.  The cleaning cloth was in his hand, he was reaching for the ramrod.  I had no clue that it was October or that hunting was on his mind.  Not much.

"We need to get these rifles sighted in," Dad continued, as he screwed the little brass brush into the cleaning rod.  My heart began to race and the excitement welled up as I realized that this might be the year that he would take me hunting with him.  Dad  had brought home the meat every year since I was five years old, never failing to bag the game.  I turned seventeen last July.

Saturday we gathered guns and ammo and  a half-dozen tomato juice cans, placed them gently in the trunk of the Ford and drove to the disused gravel pit which was the local de facto rifle range.  This site was on Mesa road and less than half-mile from a residential area as the crow flies, yet there was a veritable mountain between the venue and any dwellings.


We set up a row of cans at the base of the cut in the side of the hill and paced off a hundred yards.
Dad loaded the .30-06 and from a standing free-hand position, fired.  A puff of dirt shot up immediately behind a can.  My father tinkered with the sight a few seconds, raised the rifle and fired again.  Can flew off into oblivion.  "That'll do it," he said.  "She's good."  He handed me the rifle.
 
Now I had  fired  a .22 many times and even the .25-20 on occasion, but I had never handled the ought-six.  I was in for a walloping, and I got it.  But I also got a can.  Dad then fired one shot with the .270 he had borrowed from a friend, picked off a can and said, "We're good.  No need wasting ammo; run down there and gather up those cans." 

He stowed the rifles in the car as I fetched the remaining targets.  Hunting season starts in four days!

Slather and Mop

I was enjoying my supper this evening-- spaghetti with red chicken sauce.  It was good and it was satisfying.  Nicely buttered rye toast in the left hand.

And as I finished up, mopping the sauce with the bread, I had a flashback to the dinner table in my childhood home.  I realized that I had utilized one of my father's quirks, violated another.  I had slathered the entire slice of bread, plastered it, in Dad's parlance.  He was a stickler on the point holding that while plasterers had their place it was not at the dinner table.  One dabs a bit of butter onto the bread, consumes that portion, then he dabs a bit more, and so on.  I had violated this rule this evening.

Strangely, though Dad found it anathema to plaster the bread, he thought it not uncouth to mop his plate with the last morsel of bread.  "Waste not, want not," don't you know?  And this quirk I utilized.

Enjoyable meal and fun reminiscing about one of the most loved and most influential people in my life, my Daddy.

The Preacher and Silly Matt

My father was a preacher who practiced his calling for seventy years.  It goes without saying that he prepared hundreds of sermons.  I have written about this a bit in the past but where I want to go here has to do with the papers he left behind.

I have file cabinets filled with notebooks in which he had stored his sermon outlines, clippings, anything germane to his interests, and that encompasses much of life's quirks, oddities, and yes, triumphs.

Several years ago I started to transcribe Dad's sermon outlines.  After a good number had been done I realized at some point that I was never going to complete the task.  I drifted on to other things and now I am hard pressed to recall even where the digital copies are stored.  Do I even still have the drive on which I stored them?  I am not as well-organized as some people are.

A few days ago I opened the bottom drawer of a four-drawer file cabinet and pulled out one of the notebooks it contained, one I had not gone through before. Yes, it contains sermon outlines, but also some odds and ends of this and that, including this little verse entitled "Silly Matt" which I remember having heard my father recite:

I feel so exceedingly silly,

I say what I shouldn't to ought.

My mind is as frail as a lily

'Twould break with the weight of a thought.

I am so exceedingly lazy

I neglect what I oughtn't to should.

My notion of work is so hazy

That I couldn't to toil if I would.

Thrown Rider Turns Entrepreneur #T

...I sold the brute and got all my money back, with a bit of increase.  Beginning of my business life.

So concluded D. W. Lacy's horse story.  The preacher continues:

Business life was among my brothers as they always seemed to have some need or desire for money, and I had a bit as I was inclined to be rich some day.  A loan, yes, with interest.  Miserly mind.  I'll loan you five dollars for a pair of trousers (worth that much) and a lock box for business purposes. Business venture that opened my eyes on how to:  It worked then and was some help later when I learned to pray. . .  During the great depression 30s and early forties.

My business life venture had to include a Model T Ford automobile.  Not much to look at, but then I was interested in its possibilities as a race car.  It had been remodeled with about anything that would fit where, after it was twisted, bent, and bound together with a bit of baling wire, if necessary, and it was generally necessary in those days to have a spool of that kind of mending material for emergencies experienced along the road when far from help of any kind.  I do believe that the Ford was brought into existence by Henry Ford as a powerful stimulant to the creative powers of the lower middle class people who were unable to pay for road service when caught far from town or home.

The directions to successful traveling included an odd type of jack & handle, a small patching kit with which to mend an inner tube.  Of course there was a handle that could be used for other purposes after patching inner tubes on hot days.  Distance travelers often patched as many as ten or twelve tires in one day.  Oh yes, I almost forgot, a pump of sorts that could be used for inflating the tire; after all that perspiration loss and energy waste the handle could be used to beat the devil out of the car itself, or at least, that was the thought.  I saw a deep dent lengthwise on a car's front fender.  The driver's wife explained when the driver was too embarrassed to do.  She merely said: "It wouldn't run, so Lester gave it a beating."  Because these were depression days in the 30s, that old car wore its scars with pride for many years.  The fender was patched up with a ball peen hammer, pushed back into an acceptable position and wore this sign:  "Its quilted."

Temper tantrums were then found as observed by some as noted, but how times have changed.  Too many times the driver with auto trouble takes a swig out of a bottle, does a little exercise with blasphemous words and then beats the devil out of his wife, scares the little kids nearly to death then leaves them all until his guilty soul lets him crawl back to his family without apology.  Happy change when the two footed demon is safely incarcerated in jail. . . I do think that all society owes itself an apology for the nice places they have for these fellows to sober up in (drunk or just ungoverned tempers).

Part of my business life of running away from our home of ten children.

Here ends that particular document.  The last sentence could be misconstrued, I suppose.  He was referring to leaving his childhood home, not his own children, of whom he had far fewer than ten.
Also, Dad is no longer here for me to nitpick, but if he were, I would point out that by the time he left home at seventeen, his five older siblings had already flown the nest.

Dewy? Indeed He Do!

The following is  from my father's writings.  I go through his material from time to time and share some of his wit and wisdom on the weblog as I feel impelled to do.

The time of this incident, circa 1924, the setting, a  farm in Southeastern Colorado.  These memories were recorded  when Dad was eighty years of age.  I know this because the document is dated July 19, 1991.

When I was in my early teens, I came into possession of an outlaw horse, a very bad deal for the horse, as I remember, but game he was.  He was always looking for a way to ditch rider and destroy life as well.  Oh, that "strawberry roan," under fourteen hands high but mighty in determination and revenge.  Falling with rider on back was his delight.

Number one:  With eyes bulging, running full force, teeth set in the bit, he ran headlong into a heap of discarded woven wire.  At that time I wasn't even classified to be called a Holy Roller, just an angry sinner, until I saw old Dewy doing the roll himself, trying to get untangled from his own mess, while I, bruised and angry went to his rescue, not for pity's sake, but to capture him so that I wouldn't have to walk home.  With disappointment in his eyes, I saw, more than heard, him apologize for his wrong-headedness.  A lesson learned that day from a horse.  A good apology vents the soul from all venom.  Indeed:  Oh, yes!

Number two:  When Dewy ran for vengeance he was trying to find a way to do the thing he had in mind, or did he have a mind?  We always traveled full-tilt out on the farm, but why would he pull to one side and step in a hole?  On purpose, I sincerely believe.  He had a gambler's heart, innocent eyes, and seeming readiness for the run, just waiting his day.  What a trip to the ground!  A somersault on the horse's part, and a belly buster without any water for a landing place for me.  Again an apology-- accepted with the understanding that he must carry me home, for I was bruised awfully.

Number three:  This time a badger hole.  I think my shoulder was broken, but I had to milk my share of the cows anyway, one handed, I must say.  Dad didn't believe in Drs. nor did he have the money for such niceties.  Nature would, in time, take care of that.  About this time I thought of praying for relief from pain that lasted for days, but how was I to pray?  I didn't know how, but I sure did develop a strong left hand for milking.  Bad wind that blows no good, so I had learned the hard way.

Number four:  An indentation in the road was sufficient excuse for another roll.  By this time, I had heard others pray, but when I tried, it didn't seem to do much good.  Does God hear prayers offered in profanity?  Well . . .

Final fall:  Across the ridges in a field.  There must be a magic number some where, but I am not sure where.  I sold the brute and got all my money back, with a bit of increase.  Beginning of my business life, after recovering from my last ride on Old Dewy.*

Business life  (to be continued)




Other snippets of Dad's writing may be enjoyed here and here.

*I heard Dad speak of Old Dewy many times.  I pictured the name as "Dewey" ala Admiral Dewey.  I first thought to change the spelling, then thought, Perhaps Dad did not name the horse after the admiral, but rather called him "Dewy" because he was always in a lather.  You reckon?