Honor in the Telling

I have been told that my father read every book in the Lincoln County library. The librarian claimed that she would call our home to tell my father when a new book arrived so that he would have something new to read. He and I made regular visits, I perching or sprawling or kneeling in the stacks labeled Children on the right side of the building, and he in the adult stacks on the left, two stories high. He read remarkably fast.  When he had selected his reads, or rereads I suppose, he sat in the orange vinyl lobby seating next to the newspapers hanging on wooden rods. Sometimes I would bring my books over, and sometimes I would listen to records through the giant earphones, with him in view.  I can see it. I can smell it.  His expeditious reading ability was developed inadvertently through hardship, when at the age of eight he spent one year bed ridden with rheumatic fever.  That year he read voraciously and completed two years of school work during his illness instead of one. He would go on to earn the honor of valedictorian of his senior class in 1948, but he would not attend college. There was no money for it.

My father, Aubrey Hilton Felder,  grew up on a farm in Pike County, Mississippi.  Whenever our family would make the 25-30 minute drive from our home in Brookhaven to the farm to visit my grandparents, Claude and Lexie Felder, who lived there until after "Pa Pa"'s death in 1976, my father would say, "do you want to take the highway - meaning interstate - or do you want to take the country roads?"  When it was up to me,  I always chose the country roads, including wooden bridges and branches that cloaked the winding road in a sunlit quivering tunnel of green. The farmhouse was the hostess of hours of happy make believe and lazy afternoons in the porch swing.  The mimosa trees for climbing and reading,  the wooded paths leading to tiny ponds and black berry bushes, tee pees made from the dried day lily stalks and clothes line string, the front room closet holding a few beloved toys - monkeys in a barrel, stackable plastic cats, and stuffed sock animals - and the dusty old barn which housed Bet, the most aged and patient equine on the planet were the stuff of rich childhood visits.  Visits to the farm often coincided with Camp Meeting at Felder's Campground, a summer revival which had taken place since the mid 1800's. Spanish moss and rustic cottages, dinner on the grounds and wooden pews outdoors, vivid images in my mind.

After high school,  my father went to work at a local AM radio station, WJMB.  Years later, after he purchased and became owner and operator of the station, my father fell in love with and later married the 17 year old daughter of the station's secretary, Miss Lynn Harrision, a tennis player and Brookhaven native for generations. During my childhood my mother helped part time with the bookkeeping and as a preschooler I played house under the desks, learned my alphabet on the typewriters in the office, and punched patterns in the rows of numbers on the adding machines, pulling the level over and over. My father's office smelled like leather and WD-40.  His desk was massive and very messy. Stacks of reel to reel audio tape and files covers the desk and stacks lined the walls. I was welcome in every space. I grew up hearing my father's voice not only doing "spots" on the radio, but as the broadcaster of our local high school football games.  I accompanied him to games, arriving early and sitting up on the stools in the press box until my playmates and later friends arrived.  I remember lying in my bed some nights listening to the radio and calling the station to request whatever song I wanted to hear. His knowledge of sound equipment was made useful by school and church programs, my mother's junior auxiliary events, and community productions all of my life, he was generous with his time and equipment.

I know my father was an adventurer when he was younger because I have heard stories of hunting trips in the mountains of Colorado and seen photos of deep sea fishing trips with his long time friends. I also remember being told that he would only ride a sure footed mule, no horses for him on the steep mountain trails. He was an avid gun collector, and I loved watching him clean them.  Oil cloths and ramrods and WD-40, guns in the cabinet, in his closet, in the air conditioning vents.  By the time I came along when my father was 39, however, the damage done to his heart during his childhood bout with rheumatic fever had begun to take it's toll and he could no longer bear the altitude of the rockies.  His heart condition would also render him unable to attain health insurance at any point in his life. This misfortunate fact would be the cause of great hardship as his health failed in later life.

My memories of him are full of outings -  the ice cream parlor downtown which was always freezing cold compared to the heat and humidity outside in southern Mississippi, Janie's Bakery for all over chocolate donuts on Saturday morning, and our favorite,  Jones Restaurant across the railroad tracks for lunch of roast, rice and gravy, green beans and corn muffins.  He liked salt on his watermelon and cheese on his waffles.  He took a 30 minute nap every single day, no matter where we were or what we were doing.  He wore khaki pants, hush puppies, and a Munsingwear shirt every weekday that I remember except once, on vacation, when he wore shorts fishing on our boat, and his legs got terribly sunburned. On Saturday evenings for a while, my father, a self taught musician, would play the steel guitar in a tiny establishment called the 550 Opry House on Highway 550.  I liked to go with him and sit in the metal folding chairs with the old people.  When I was 6 years old or so I even sang on stage with his "band', a feat which I suspect took very little coaxing. I remember sitting on the concrete back steps of our patio as he lit the charcoal in our grill and I caught rolly pollies while I talked his ear off. We often went downtown to the historically beautiful post office to pick up the mail for the radio station, finding it's box number on the wall of little metal doors.  As we left I would always slide down the ornate stone bannisters which framed the wide stone steps. He owned a small tractor which lived behind our garage in the middle of our old Brookhaven neighborhood, and every once in a while he would crank it up and drive me in his lap slowly around the neighborhood in the evening.   My nightly tuck ins occasionally included delightfully silly stories about the adventures of Sargent Sam, a character from my father's imagination.  Sargent Sam had a brave dog named Tonto and a petulant grandmother who once got her bottom stuck in a bear trap. I can remember very few details of Sargent Sam's adventures, but I remember that. What I wouldn't give for a chance to hear and record them. When I was in preschool, we added a two story addition to our house and he designed the blue prints. He cared nothing about sports unless one of his children was playing.  From 4th of July races at the Country Club to tennis, basketball, softball tournaments and infinite number of nights watching me "cheer", both of my parents were there, in the stands, every game. Growing up so close to New Orleans allowed trips to plays, concerts, great restaurants, and the French Market, colorful memories indeed. On Sundays my father took us to Sunday school and afterward we would met him in the lobby at the back of Faith Presbyterian Church where, if he was an usher that week, I would see a tiny white carnation pinned to his lapel. After the service he put the flower in my hand. That smell, so easily recalled.

The day my father died I received a phone call at our tiny house in Tulsa, only the second house I had ever called home.  Phil and I had been married a mere nine months.  I was wrapped in a towel, having just stepped out of the shower and I was about ten weeks pregnant with Hannah.  My parents had visited us in our new married home only once, and we watched Father of the Bride, a poignant experience given that he had been the "Father of the Bride" just a few months before. I remember my father being a bit startled by my domestic inclinations, and as I was standing in the doorway when they were leaving, he told me what a good job I was doing, looking in wonder at his littlest girl who was now a woman and a wife. Little did he know that shortly after they left we would discover that I was also a mother to be.  Little did we all know that would be our last conversation face to face.

I don't know how to put that depth of grief and loss into words. I have tried before to write about it, to write about him. For many years each attempt at putting the words on paper made them too real to bear. I remember groans and I remember my inability to get out of that towel wrap and move on to get dressed. I remember a new husband, at a loss regarding how to comfort his bride, but reaching for me, trying.  I remember sitting on the plane from Tulsa to Mississippi, and, overcome with despair and sadness, looking in detachedness at the people around me who were having a ordinary day. I don't remember the drive from the airport in Jackson to Brookhaven.  I do remember walking across our front yard, through the front door that was never locked and into the foyer of my childhood home. I remember seeing my little brother, the day before his 12th birthday, and feeling a torturous helplessness.   I remember choosing an emerald green shift dress to wear to my father's funeral because it was his favorite. He had seen me wear it to a friend's wedding a few months before. I remember pouring rain and the horror of burying my beloved Daddy.  And I remember a community surrounding us, the community that had raised me, come and honor, come and feed, come and thank, come and proclaim the kindnesses my father had shown over the course of his life.  And I remember the gift.  I remember the new life, the timely gift which averted my eyes from my own pain, my loss and trepidation - to look forward. Throughout my pregnancy my emotions were overloaded - joyful anticipation juxtaposed with despair over what no longer could be. My children would never know him.


It would be years later when I became a parent that I would more deeply appreciate the richness of the experiences of my childhood. I now understand how much my father enjoyed simply being with us.  We spent numerous weekends and even weeks sleeping all over the US in our pop up camper, from nearby rivers to the Smokies, not to mention a three week trip from Mississippi to Canada and back. I grew up the youngest of a boy then three girls, until ten years later when we adopted my younger brother, and in my mind's eye it seemed that my father spent as much time teaching the three girls to shoot skeet, fish, and use a solder gun as he did my brothers.  But he did not treat me as a Tom Boy, he treated me like a beauty, a fully capable beauty.  When I would walk into the door of 504 Storm Avenue from Ole Miss, or Camp Desoto, or numerous other adventures, he unfailingly picked me up off the floor and held me in a hug, delighted completely. He believed in me fully, even to a fault.  But his affection for and confidence in me gave birth to an optimistic expectation about people and life in which I assume the best, though I would live through some of the worst. That expectation has shored me up to bear grief and to delight in joys all of my days.  I miss him most when I want my children to know something that he could have taught them, when I imagine the conversations they would have, when I see needs in their lives he could have filled. But when I miss him, I tell them all about him, and honor my father in the telling.