Father’s Day wasn’t celebrated at our house when I was growing up. My father died when I was four. If I could go back in time I would ask my mother if we could celebrate the day by telling stories about my dad. Tell me what he said the first time he saw me. Tell me what was his favorite meal. Tell me what you thought the first time you met him and then why you wanted to marry him. Tell me how I am like him and how I am different from him. I know so little about him and I have no memories of him. My siblings were all grown by the time I was born so they had memories. I only
know what others have told me – I only know the stories.

He met my mother at a box supper. She was the school teacher in town and he was traveling through as a corn shucker -“The fastest one the county had ever seen” my mother once bragged. When it came time to bid on the boxes, someone sitting next to my dad said, “Get that one no matter how much it costs. She’s the best cook you’ll ever meet.”  He outbid all the others, ended up with my mother’s box and of course, as was the custom, ate its contents with the one who had prepared it. And that’s how Ray Fletcher met Hazel Barnes.

He was a quiet man. Today we would call him an introvert. He liked solitude and being outside which worked out well for him since he was a farmer and spent  most of his time with his cows and his crops. He rolled his own cigarettes and never drank. He suffered all his life with “sick headaches” which of course today we call migraines. He had a hard time showing or expressing emotion. Was that the times he lived in or his temperament?  

He was an extremely hard worker. When his own farm work was done he would help a neighbor with theirs. He was the first to help those in need and the last to ask for help for himself. He was intense and had a hard time relaxing or being idle, though he did like to rock the babies. On winter nights when he couldn’t be outside, he played checkers and cards with his kids and while they all looked forward to  the day they could beat him, that day never seemed to come.

He only graduated eighth grade, but by everyone’s telling, he was smarter than most. Determined that all of his children would get an education, he forbade my brother to quit high school when WWII came and insisted he stay in school until graduation. While other farmers would keep their sons home from school to help with the farm, he never allowed his children to skip. Though probably none needed the help more than he.

When the dust bowl came and the depression with it, he struggled to provide for his family: a dark and bleak time for him. Determined to care for them, he got day jobs in town when he could and worked for the WPA; but the bank foreclosed on the farm he was leasing, he had to sell all his equipment, and the family  moved to town. My mother cleaned houses to buy food. He was a proud man and unwilling to take help or assistance. Eventually my grandfather asked him to come and work on his farm and live there. He was back on the farm, working hard. doing what he loved to do. And then came the flood. My sister remembers standing on the front porch of the house which was up on a hill and watching a wall of water come down the Frenchman River wiping out crops and drowning farm animals. Dad just picked up the pieces and started over.

Three years before he died, he finally was able to buy his own farm. Yet his troubles were not yet behind him. He sent his second son off to fight in Korea and his daughter contracted polio and was very, very ill.  He worried about me getting it and how they would pay the mounting medical bills.  Everyone agrees he worried a lot, though never talked about any of it.