Some Thoughts About Things After My Father Died



Not All Who Wander Are Lost


 



Yesterday seeing a coffee can reminded me of some of the things that happened that summer my father died.  When we (my brother and I) were emptying the house there were a number of surprises.  We found a large cache of coffee.  There were a lot of 3# cans of coffee.  Back then the large cans actually held 3# of coffee, not 28 to 34oz like today.  We also found many 5# bags of sugar, and a large supply of toilet paper.(One older woman I knew had the bathtub piled high with packages of toilet paper.  They had a sauna, so never used the bathtub in the house.)



Another thing we found was a bunch of bottles of homemade wine.  There were several different types, strawberry, blackberry and chokecherry are ones I remember.  The only one I remember as being undrinkable was the chokecherry, it was so dry, it would make your asshole pucker when you drank it.  I was able to get rid of it by giving it to a couple of friends when they would stop by half-drunk already.  I'd ask if they wanted a glass of homemade wine.  After they had some I'd ask if they wanted a bottle to take with them.  They must have drunk the wine while still drunk as this ploy worked every time they came around until I got rid of all the chokecherry wine.  They were the only ones that could drink it.





Another thing my brother and I had to do was haul all the stuff my dad picked up at the dump back to the dump.  We spent quite a bit of time asking each other why the old man hauled this stuff home.  The funny part is that when we were bringing the junk back to the dump(back then most towns and area locations had a dump, not a landfill like today), there were a couple of guys there picking thru the trash.  They looked in the back of my pickup and said "That looks like good stuff.  Don't throw it over the edge, set it over on the side so we can look thru it."  Between the basement and the garage, we made many trips to the dump. 

I don't remember how many days we worked at cleaning out the house, but we finally got everything out of it so we could sell it.  Last summer I drove by where the house was and all that was left was the sauna my dad built in the backyard.  When they sold the farm, my dad took apart a log building that had been used as a shop of some kind and put it back together with sill sealer insulation between the logs.  He put in a wall to make two rooms, the changing room and the one for steam.

I'm not surprised the house is gone as it was old and needed a lot of work, I am surprised the garage is gone as that was fairly new.  My dad built it on the lot next to the house after buying the two lots next to the house.