With seven of us kids in the family we all thought that we had the best Dad in the world. Our Father’s name was Herman. While we lived in a place called Steptoe we had to get all our water from a pipe line that had several spigots along the line so we spent a lot of time getting water and also playing on the huge pipe that carried the water into the town of McGill. Herman loved to chase the children on the pipe line and tease them. They would laugh and run as fast as they could along on the pipeline and Herman would run along side and sweep them off into his arms giving them a big hug when he caught them.

Daddy loved all kinds of animals.  We had a kitten come to the house. It was a cute little gray and white one. When it first came He told the us kids not to feed the cat but we would sneak food for the cat every chance we would get from the breakfast or dinner table.  Daddy came home from work one afternoon and seen how cute the cat was and went right into the house and told us kids that we had better feed that cat or it would starve.  We named the cat Tommy. Daddy could not stand to see any animal hurt or hungry. So the family ended up adopting several dogs and cats through our lives of living at home.

We all thought that Daddy could fix anything and everything no matter what it was and we each knew he did work miracles as he would blow smoke in such a way that it appeared to come out of his eyes and he would tell us kids to push the button on his throat and smoke would come out of his eyes.

Of course we girls never got into trouble except when we would get the giggles. Herman’s temper probably run a little thin the night I and my older sister, LaRue got the giggles at the dinner table and he tried to separate us. He moved us from sitting next to one another, then he moved us a crossed the table from one another, then down to the end of the table. LaRue and I probably sat in every seat around the dinner table before the episode was finished but we continued to giggle no matter where we sat or even how annoyed Herman seemed to get. All we had to do was look at one another and the giggles would continue.  Who knows what we might have been laughing about? It definitely was not about Daddy.

He was a great Father.