Cicadas? What cicadas?


Since mom has been in the hospital, rehab and nursing home the past few months following an accident and a stroke, Dad has had much more time to read. He has always enjoyed reading, but usually just read a few books per year. Recently he is reading 1-2 books per week. He has a Kindle which makes it easy to send books to him.

After finishing a fictional series of 18 books, our conversation went sort of like this.

Me: What would you like to read next?
Dad: Maybe I will write a book?
This was a bit of a surprise.
Me: Dad, what would you write about?
Dad: My life.

At 92 years of age, he has many stories and memories we have never heard.  He would sometimes have stories for us, but rarely did anyone sit down just with him.  And, mom always had a lot to say. The family joke was she used all of her words and most of his words each day. This could be interesting.

Since Dad will not actually put pen to paper, this seemed an excellent time for me to spend some time just with him and record life from times gone by. Not sure at this point if we will produce a book, blog, video or podcast, but watch for something pretty soon.

Should mention, Dad and I are hearing impaired. Too much noisy farm machinery, factory work, military guns, etc. There are many sounds we don’t hear even with state of the art hearing aids and if you get a weird answer from us, we probably just misunderstood the question.

Went out one day recently and after an early supper followed by a drive around the ranch. I said to Dad, let’s go sit down outside in a couple of lawn chairs and talk for a while. It seemed to be a very quiet night in the country.  We went outside, I pulled a digital voice recorder from my pocket and said “Dad tell me about growing up in Bluff Dale, TX”  

 Dad started talking and went for 50 minutes only stopping when I would ask a question or when we would both laugh at his stories.  These were great tales of growing up on the 3 Circle Ranch, school days, life in the navy, etc.  We had a great time talking and laughing with everything recorded for future reference.

I listened, enjoyed and chuckled along with the recording again afterwards.  My daughter was visiting and I pulled out the recorder and turned it on.

Me: Listen to this. These are great stories Papaw and I recorded a couple of days ago.
Lauren: Dad, the only thing I hear are cicadas.
Me: Cicadas?  What Cicadas?


Guess I will find an even quieter place for our next session.







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