Dads

With Father's Day right around the corner, I decided my word of the week had to be Dad.

These few paragraphs are dedicated to my Dad, Robert Owens, and his Dad, Raymond Owens. Granddaddy passed away when I was seventeen, so I didn't get to be around him very much. While I was a kid, growing up, I thought he was an “old man”, and wasn't around him near as much as I should have been. From all I can gather, he was a countrified genius. He dabbled in real estate, moved houses, built houses, and made the concrete blocks to build the houses. I guess Granddaddy, and all his sons, and Aunt Rena could have had a construction dynasty, here in Paris, but everyone went their own direction, and maybe we are better off, today, because of it.

My personal recollections of my Granddad include shooting firecrackers at Christmas time and the Fourth of July, playing on his sand mound, fishing in his creek, being at his house when he would return from a fishing trip, with his car just full of Crappie, and following a whole line of cars from Marshall's grocery, out through Death Valley,on down the hill to the Tower Sport's Center, doing all of 10 miles miles per hour.

I sure wish I had “chewed the fat” with him a little more. The lessons I could have learned would have been priceless.

Robert Owens was the smartest man I have ever known in my life. He could do anything, from owning his own electrical business, which electrified many, many, homes and buildings in Paris and Henry County, as well as the surrounding area, to having an acre of garden every year, including every vegetable that anyone in his family could ever want, a grape arbor for homemade jelly and juice, and an apple orchard, to having a regulation Little League baseball field in his backyard. I have yet to figure out how he had the time to raise five kids, be the chairman of the building committee at church, getting all 5 of us ready for church on Sunday morning, helping with all the projects that we, as little kids, took on. He had never ridden a motorcycle in his life, but could fix mine all the time. He used to say he could go to sleep thinking about a problem, and wake up with the solution. He even had a three acre front yard that he mowed every week, and it was smoother than many golf courses.

I feel very fortunate to have not only known Robert Owens, but to have been his son. I was lucky enough, in later life, to visit with him as an equal, although I could have never been his equal. Not as father to son, nor employer to employee, but man to man, each respecting the other. I wish he were alive today, but only if he could be healthy and whole. I watched him go from 210 pounds to 138 pounds when he died. He had heart disease that was taking all his nourishment, just to keep his heart beating. It is very sad to watch a man who has always been so strong, have to give in to something he has no control over.

Every bit of common sense I have, I can thank my Dad for. His way of figuring out how things work, rubbed off. Everyday I do something, sometimes something very insignificant, sometimes something very major, that I can give my Dad credit for. Even some of the book smarts I have today is because he would take the time to explain, in “our” language, what the book was trying to say.

He was a great man. I am glad I told him, before it was too late!
Happy Father's Day, Granddaddy. Wish I had gotten to know you better.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. I Love You and I Miss You!