My mother cooked meals for our family for many years. She was creative – not by what she could do with the ingredients, but the way she fed our family of seven with very little money. The pressure cooker was the key. She could put a small piece of a very cheap cut of beef in the pressure cooker and turn it into a delicious family meal. Most of the meals consisted of vegetables from our garden or fruit from our orchards. She re-created meals from her childhood – navy beans and cornbread. She tried every option for our apple from the orchard – fresh apples, apple pies, apple dumplings, fried apples, applesauce, apple cider, Waldorf salad, and apple butter.  She did love to make desserts and made blueberry cream cheese squares, strawberry Jello pie, orange jello dessert, chocolate mayonnaise cake, pineapple cookies, and zucchini bread, She grew tired of cooking meals for us however, and most meals were repeats from week to week. My dad told her, in a joking way at one meal, “Mary, you really put your heart into this one.”

My mother was the one that kept our household going. She took the ingredients of our life and made sense of things. We counted on her for our substance and she always came through. Dinner was always ready at  five pm, with enough food for seven of us. When Dad was unemployed, she would scrape by with what she had. When my Dad was working, she got up at five am and made his lunch (pickle pimento with Colby cheese sandwiches on white bread, vegetable soup, carrots, and a thermos of coffee). She wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper, placed the warm soup in the short thermos and arranged it all neatly in his metal lunchbox. Her way of cooking was very matter-of-fact and orderly. We counted on her and she came through as expected.

Dad helping with Thanksgiving dinner

In a time when most men didn’t cook, my dad was a foodie. He loved to put what little we had into a creative dish. Instead of looking for a recipe as my mother did, he created his own.  He used the Crock Pot to make peach and cherry bread pudding with the fruit that we grew on our property. He experimented to make soda bread from his childhood, finally getting it right to eat at night with jelly and milk. He was spontaneous, and risked making mistakes and being laughed at. His cooking was a perfect example of this. We used to watch him in the kitchen to see what would happen next. It might be entertaining, but waiting for the taste was the best part. My Dad was the fun one. He would take parts of our life and mix them together in ways they had never been put together before.

This was a dish that Dad would cook so he could clean out the refrigerator. He would take all the leftovers from the fridge and put them together with eggs, milk, onions and whatever spices fit the bill. Sometimes he would put A-1 sauce in it and always pepper and salt. He would put everything in a skillet & cook it until the eggs were done. There was usually 2 or 3 kinds of meat, sometimes mashed potatoes, vegetables and whatever else he could find. Amazingly it was very tasty. He called it “schlumgolian”. I’m not sure where the name came from, but it added to the mystery of the dish. We were naive enough to think that every family had schlumgolian made from leftovers.

My Dad would prepare his harvests from his garden  in special ways. We always had pickled beets – with eggs – in the refrigerator.  He prepared ground horseradish from home-grown horseradish roots to spice up his home-cooking. He used the crocks bought at auction to turn cabbage into sauerkraut in the basement. His vegetable soup was superb and I still remember how great it tasted – twenty-eight years later.

A picnic for my High School Graduation – with potato salad

He became known at family reunions for his potato salad. It was creamy, crunchy, sweet from the homemade sweet pickle relish, and pungent from the freshly picked dill.  The flavors melded together, blending my father’s creativity and the garden’s freshness. His recipe for potato salad has been recorded and my sisters and I still make it for family gatherings. Both the taste and the process of chopping the ingredients as a family bring back great family memories.

Some of his creations didn’t turn out so well. Let me tell you about my father’s dandelion wine. He tried making wine from the grapes in his small grape harbor. It was tasty, but there weren’t enough grapes after canning grape jelly to make more than a bottle or two. He resolved to picking all the dandelions in the yard and following the recipe from an article in his organic gardening monthly newsletter. It was perplexing to see how weeds from our yard could become a tasty drink. Though I was only fourteen, I was allowed to taste it. And just as I still remember how great the vegetable soup was, I also remember the awful bitter taste of the dandelion wine. I shuddered profusely and spat it out. Thankfully that was the end of his resourceful wine-making ventures.

Dad taught me that you win some and you lose some – it’s not the end result that’s all that important. Instead, it’s the process of taking what you have and blending it together in creative ways  – with much enthusiasm and with people you love. Thanks Dad!

©Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My Dad was a bunch of fun. He was the middle child of fourteen children and simply craved attention. At family reunions, he held court with his brothers and sisters. He was a favorite uncle to his fifty nieces and nephews – he would get on the floor and play with them. He could pull quarters out of their ear, and he also convinced them that one  of his arms was longer than the other. He would pull his sleeve down over his wrist and pull one arm to make it longer. It was convincing for all who watched. During the Dukes of Hazzard County years, he became “Luke Duke” and his grandson was  “Bo Tie”, making their get-away in my father’s recliner chair turned “The General Lee”, their imaginary  1969 Dodge Charger . I think my father enjoyed the play-acting more than my nephew did.

Dad goofing around “playing” the guitar

He was the fun parent too. We didn’t have much money in our family, but it didn’t take money to have laughter in my house. Dad was entertainment director. I learned to dance – standing on his feet while he danced during the Lawrence Welk and Grand Ole Opry shows. He comically would move around the family room floor as long as the music played. He bent over, pushed his rear-end out, and taught us all how to jitter-bug.

When I brought my boyfriend over to our house at age sixteen, he told Paul that he liked his football-team moustache. When Paul asked what he meant, my father quipped, “There are eleven on each side.” Paul laughed while I left the room completely mortified. The morning of my wedding, Dad choreographed a line dance to “Going to the Chapel”. Later that day, he walked me down the aisle, and before giving my arm to my groom, he took a minute to ask him for five dollars. Of course he wasn’t serious – he was just making a joke. It didn’t matter to him that it was the middle of my wedding ceremony.

He told the corniest jokes. He died twenty-seven years ago, but I still remember most of those jokes, maybe because he told them so many times. Certainly not because the jokes were funny.

“Judge, I want a divorce.”
“Do you have grounds for a divorce?”
“Yes, I have seven acres.”
“No, what I mean is do you have a grudge?”
“Yes, I have three-car grudge.”
“Sir, what is the foundation of this divorce?”
“Our foundation is concrete, but what does that have to do with a divorce?”
“One final questions: Does your wife beat you up?”
“No, I’m always up before she is.”
“Case closed”.

He told these same jokes to our family, to strangers, and around my friends in high school. My friends loved him. He was the life of my slumber parties. I thought my girlfriends and I would stay in the basement all night as I had games planned for the evening. But they clamored to be around my dad. He held court.

“My favorite salad is a honeymoon salad”.
“What is a honeymoon salad?”
“Just lettuce alone.”
“Second favorite salad is a Little Boy Salad.”
“What is a Little Boy Salad?”
“Lettuce, turnip and pea.”

“What’s a paradox?”
“Two of them.”

“They hired a new coach from China. His name is win-one-soon.”

“How do you call a headless dog?”
“I don’t know”.
“You wouldn’t want to call him anyways, he couldn’t hear you.”

“What’s the difference between a quarter and a henway?”
“What’s a henway?”
“Oh, about two and a half pounds!”

“You have friendly hair, it’s waving at me.”

My Mom and Dad Visiting

Two months before my Dad died, he came to visit us in our new home in Houston. He came with my Mom to be present when my first baby was to be born. My Dad had suffered a heart attack at his job two weeks earlier, but it was undiagnosed. He must have felt poorly, but he still spent part of his two weeks at my new house putting in a new backyard. He asked me how would I grade it, meaning was it level and would it drain properly? I told him, I would give it a B+. He appreciated my attempt at humor.

We toured the Houston zoo during that week and watched the monkeys groom their babies, pulling off fleas and slicking down their hair.  He teased me and asked me to watch the mother monkeys so I’d know how to take care of my baby. Mom and Dad had to leave before my son was born – I was two and one-half weeks late to deliver him. It was the last time I saw my Dad. He suffered a massive heart attack and died before I could get back to my home town.

When I arrived home, my mother was busy planning the funeral. She fussed over her new grandson for a short while, and then returned to making plans. She pondered what to have my father wear. He had two suits, one very formal that he rarely wore and another than was his favorite, a nice brown and blue plaid. She mused out loud that “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid Suits.” It was comic relief for me and my siblings as we roared in laughter that my mother’s comment coincided with Steve Martin’s new movie “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” that came out that week. My father would have loved the humor.

We read the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote at his funeral. It says, “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.”

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Aardvark.
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles.

Thanks for keeping us laughing, Dad.

©Copyright 2016, All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My Mom couldn’t stand to have a question and not have the answer to it. Our small farm house had two sets of encyclopedias when I was growing up. We couldn’t afford the World Book from the salesman that came by, but my resourceful father found a Funk and Wagnall’s set at a garage sale. It was the subject of many jokes on Laugh-In, but in our household it was a prized possession The set was only five years old and had fairly recent information. Through the years, we acquired a used set of Encyclopedia Britannica as well. It was my mother’s treasure to have access to those books and, more importantly, the information contained on those pages.

My grandfather was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and he had the strong belief that education could change circumstances for young people, especially those living in poverty. They had no electricity in their household, so each night my mother, her brothers and her father would read by lamp light until bedtime. When they didn’t have resources for food, they somehow found a book to read. Perhaps my mother’s thirst for knowledge was part of my grandfather’s legacy.

Library Contest Winner in First Grade – My essay about my favorite book

As a child, we frequented the library often. They knew us by first name there. All five of us would spend an hour picking out our best guess of a new favorite book. I knew how to use the card catalog many years before my peers. It contained the key to finding the next great book. Mom would leave us in the children’s section sometimes so that she could find books that interested her, mostly historical fiction. She actually read history textbooks. We all marched out of the library with a stack of books taller than we were. It was six miles to our library, so my mother arranged for the county bookmobile  – a large RV equipped with books – to park in our driveway twice a month. Essentially our books came to us. If we called the library, they would send books that we requested to our stop. My family was their best customer, for sure.

Library contest winner for essay on Favorite Book – 1st Grade

I still surround myself with books, both fiction and non-fiction. They fill my shelves with great reading material, but they also provide comfort of my memories from my childhood. My night stand is filled with my next fifteen books to read. It is the best pleasure to read in bed and devouring the story contained in those books.

My sister has four children and has received a good number of “Why?” questions from them. She answers them with a very simple statement. She says to them, “Look it up, Mary.”, meaning take after your Grandmother Mary and research it yourself. My nieces and nephew find their answers on the internet, using Google instead of a card catalog. My mother would have loved Google. But then maybe she wouldn’t have had the love affair with books that she enjoyed all her life. Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.

©Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My mother and her College friends Fall 1941

I distinctly remember my mother telling me about her life her first year of college at Tennessee Martin Teacher’s College. She started college when she was sixteen and was one of the youngest there. She was on the school women’s basketball team and basketball was big in Tennessee. It was played with half-court rules then.  She had many friends and dated many different fellows during this first year. After her hard life in Appalachia, she was at her pinnacle at Tennessee Martin. She was carefree and enjoyed getting to know the young men and women in her classes.

How different it was from her second year there. This was 1942 – the first year of World War II. They started the year all together. But at semester break, war was declared against Japan. Instead of returning to school, all of the men reported to basic training. Her class was one-half the size that it was the preceding year. All of the men were gone. That year the fun and laughter was measured.

Uncle Warren entering WWII

My mother’s older three brothers enlisted right away into the Navy. Her oldest brother Warren was seriously dating a young woman named Dimple (her real name!). And he left for the Pacific Ocean without making a commitment to their relationship. He was at war for three years and returned home to Tennessee when the war was over to find that Dimple was married to a fellow that was excused from participating in the war. As the story goes, my uncle either didn’t write to Dimple during those years or perhaps he did and the letters were not delivered. He was devastated to find his love was married.

A few years later, he married a young lady that he knew from the area and they moved to Indiana to work in the factories there. We visited them often as they lived just a few hours from our family. My mother and her brother were very close. After twenty-five years of marriage, my Uncle Warren’s wife died from breast cancer. He had no family in Indiana and returned to Tennessee often to visit his brother there.

After one visit to Tennessee, he returned to Indiana alone. Almost after the instant that he opened the door to his empty home, the phone was ringing. It was his old girlfriend Dimple. Her husband died nineteen years previously and she had heard that Warren was in Tennessee recently after his wife died. Would he consider going to lunch with her the next time he came to visit his brother?

Uncle Warren, Dimple, and my mother

Uncle Warren drove immediately to our home to talk to my mother about it. She knew Dimple from their growing up years. He asked my mother if she thought it would be OK if he returned to Tennessee to see his previous girlfriend. My mother gave her blessing and was in fact delighted to her that Dimple was interested in seeing him again. He then drove to Tennessee to visit his brother again and to rekindle the relationship with Dimple that he started thirty-five years earlier.

Uncle Warren and Dimple married a few weeks later. It was something to witness the love that they had for each other. You could observe it with their every action. It was mutual adoration for the sixteen years they were married. He would talk and she would tilt her chin up to listen to his words while locking the gaze from his eyes. They would talk to each other and sometimes appearing to be unaware that others were in the room. She was ill toward the end of their marriage and he would cater to her every need. His purpose was to serve her and he did it with joy. They were kind and gentle and sweet to each other in every encounter I saw them have. If ever two people were meant to be together, I believe it was my Uncle Warren and his love Dimple.

Uncle Warren died November of 2000. I traveled to Tennessee for the funeral with my sister and we visited with Dimple who was hospitalized the day of the funeral. She was truly suffering from a broken heart. They didn’t spend their entire lives together. But it wasn’t the number of the years together that mattered. It was the amount of love during the time they had together that counted. How beautiful that they ended up together after being separated by war.

©Copyright 2016, All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

I grew up in a Brethren church or rather my parents dropped us off at a nearby Brethren church every Sunday morning. The Church of the Brethren is rather like a Mennonite church. Their “Thou Shalt Nots” number far more than the Ten Commandments. Most specifically, our church didn’t believe in war. There was a volunteer service available to any young men who would be drafted, as they could easily get a 4F status for being a conscientious objector.

We felt very welcome there, even without our parents attending with us.  I was sure if I ever heard God talk, He would sound just like Pastor Fells sounded. He had a big booming voice that was clear and kind, deep and warm. His words made sense to me and I felt the community and God’s love that existed there.

It was a bit strange for us to be orphans in our church, orphans in the sense that our parents didn’t attend with us.  We attended Sunday school and then went directly into the church service. I was the oldest girl in our family, so I would round up my three younger sisters and find a place for us to sit together. Our aunt and uncle would include us in their pew, but sometimes we would get moved from one pew to another so that entire families could sit together. I don’t remember getting in trouble for talking or anything, but I’m sure our behavior wasn’t perfect for four young girls under the age of eleven. My older brother attended with us sometimes, but he was five years older and probably sat with his teenage friends.

I remember one sermon when I was a teenager that stressed the importance of Baptism and being saved. I was ready to go to the altar to ask to be saved, baptized and then become a member of the church. But before I got the courage to do it, I wanted to ask my parents why they didn’t go to church. Because if they didn’t go to church, would they go to heaven? It concerned me greatly that if we went to church without them, we could also end up in heaven without them.

I asked my Mom  about it first. She had alluded to an incident that happened to her when she was young. She didn’t grow up with her mother, her mother choosing another man and crime when my mother was a baby. After her mother left their household, my mother attended a church and was surrounded by the women of her church who prayed for my mother. My mother was sensitive and ashamed that her mother had been convicted of robbing a train and felt that she was being condemned by these women during their prayer. She thought they expected her to also end up as her mother had. My mother avoided church all of her adult life because of this incident. She assured me that she didn’t think it was necessary to attend church. She didn’t like being “religious”, instead explained that she was spiritual and believed in Jesus.

It was harder to talk to my dad about it. He joked about everything, and this seemed a serious subject, one that we tended to avoid in our family. I approached him and simply asked him to go to church with us next Sunday, that I was going to be saved and I wanted him to be there. And I asked him if thought about getting into heaven. I will never forget his words and his tone. He was deeply serious and his voice trembled – I couldn’t tell if from anger  or conviction. He told me that it was impossible to dig  a foxhole one morning during WWII and know that while you were digging it that you would be wounded by enemy fire that day. And he was hit by enemy fire that day and hospitalized for ten months for injuries sustained during that attack. He said he knew his relationship with God was solid and that he made his peace with God during that time. I replied “Yes Sir” and didn’t push the matter of him attending my baptism.

I knew that our family was not the usual church family. My parents didn’t feel the need for church. But for some reason, they dropped off us off every Sunday. They gave us the gift of deciding for ourselves. And I do think that it was part of God’s plan.

©Copyright 2016 – All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My mother

My mother grew up on the edge. It was the edge of the Appalachian Mountains, but it was in reality it was the edge of society. She was the youngest of four children in a one-parent family. Her father was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse and her mother was convicted and sentenced for robbing trains.

As much as my mother told us what her life was growing up in poverty, I don’t think we ever fully grasped what her day-to-day tasks were like. There was no electricity and no inside plumbing in her house. She washed the family clothing down at the spring. Her brothers made a fire in the stove in the kitchen every evening before my mother cooked dinner for the family. They all ate beans and cornbread every day for dinner. My mother reportedly never owned a dress, instead dressing in her brothers’ hand-me-downs. And these hardships were before the Depression started.

But even though there was extreme poverty in many parts of the Appalachian  Mountains, my mother’s family was set apart from the others in the area. They were children from a divorced family and their mother had run off with another man and was part of a mob that robbed trains. My mother and her siblings were seen as outcasts by some.

According to family story, my grandmother came back to my mother’s town when my mother was six years old. She was trying to get some of her children back to live with her and her future husband. My mother heard from her father that her mother was going to marry a “half-wit”. My mother sobbed for hours that night. When her father persisted to find out what was wrong. She admitted that she didn’t want her name changed to “Mary Half-Wit”. She told the story in a humorous way, but we could feel the pain of her childhood trying to come to grips with this situation.

My mother told us the story about going to church when she was about thirteen years old. She attended with a girlfriend, even though she didn’t have the appropriate clothing. She felt scorned because of this. At some part of the service, all the women from the church gathered around her and prayed over my mother. It may have been a religious ceremony for young teenagers in her church. But in my mother’s eyes, she was being punished for her family’s situation and for her mother’s sins. She never returned to any church except for the few times her children were in Christmas pageants and when we got married. She didn’t belong.

My mother attended teacher’s college at the age of sixteen and graduated the year after World War II started. She taught for a year and hated it. She tried different careers, and eventually in 1946 moved to Lima, Ohio where her brother and sister-in-law lived.

Lil – my mother’s best friend

She didn’t try to fit in with society there. She worked in a factory and became friends with other women who were seen as “not proper”. She didn’t try to hide her differences and instead she and her friends created their own societal rules. (I later learned some amazing – even scandalous – stories about these women.) They became life-long friends, bound by their similar situations. With them she felt respected, valued and loved. When my mother was with them, she belonged and felt normal. When they were not around, she felt different from most.

They were with her when she gave birth to her first son, fathered by a railroad man who did not marry her. They were her family and part of our lives, becoming more like a grandmother to us than a family friend. Even with their support, I’m not sure my mother ever overcame this feeling of being on the outside looking in. She grew up in poverty without a mother. But with the help of her friends, she found a place to belong.

©Copyright 2016, All rights reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

I love football. I give my Dad credit for that. He grew up in a family of ten boys (and four sisters). Football was important to him and his brothers. He played in high school and from the stories I heard (from him), he was quite good his senior year. His younger brother was all-state.

There is an old family story about his letter  in football. His school colors were black and red and he was very proud of his big black letter ‘S’. But he never had a jacket or sweater to put it on. It always lived in his special box with his war commendations.

Check out this newspaper article that I found on www.newspaperarchives.com about a touchdown pass my Dad’s  senior year.

My dad coached Pee-Wee football for the Bath Cats – the precursor to Pop Warner. He was devoted, even though he didn’t have any boys playing. I got to be on the cheerleading squad. Our uniforms were corduroy pants with a white sweatshirt with a bright blue ‘B’ on the front. We wore white headbands. We did cheers like “Teams in a Huddle, Captain at the Head. Out comes the coach and this is what he says . . .”. My favorite though was Football Boogie. I still remember every word and all the dance motions. “Football Boogie, Yeah Man! Football helmet, football shoes. I’m gonna get ready for the football boogie . . .” I was all of five years old and loved it. My cheerleading job was important.

My cheerleading years

My Dad and my Uncle Jim attended every high school football game  – home and away. Since I was the oldest of four girls, I was allowed to go with them. My Mom stayed home with the younger girls, and it was pretty special for me to be able to travel with them to the football games. They talked football, the stats of the season, and during the quiet times, sang along with Johnny Cash and George Jones on the radio.

We took blankets to keep warm and bought popcorn to share. When we arrived home late at night, my Dad would make home-made hot chocolate. It had cocoa, sugar, salt, vanilla, and milk and the taste was exquisite. I still love football, and I still love his recipe for hot chocolate.  I now attend high school football games and have Texas season tickets. I just can’t get enough of football. My Dad would be proud.

*Complete Words to Football Boogie:

“Football Boogie, Yeah Man! Football Boogie, Yeah Man! Football helmet, Football shoes, We’re gonna get ready for some Football Boogie. It’s the football Boogie, Yeah Man! It’s the Football Boogie, Yeah Man! It’s the Football Boogie and we’re gonna win today, today, today. Yeah!

Sitting in the grandstand, beating on my tin can. Who can, We Can. Nobody else can.

Football Boogie, Yeah Man! Football Boogie, Yeah Man! Football Boogie and we’re gonna win Today, today, Today. Yeah!”

Ask me sometime and I’ll show you the movements. Best cheer ever!

©Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved. http://www.KimberlyNixon.com

In my senior year, my Dad earned $3200. It helped me get Federal Grants for college for sure, but it made life pretty hard that year in my family of five kids. My Dad was a laborer in the local Union. I remember my Dad getting up and calling the Union to see if there was work for him that week. It was a requirement of unemployment and Union benefits that he contact two new employers each week.The phone call to the Union counted as one call.

Our family’s only phone was in the living room. We were all embarrassed for my Dad having to make those calls – especially when the answer was “no work” –  so we ducked out of the main room of our house each Monday morning. He was willing to do anything to support his family, but the unemployment rate was quite high at the time.

My Dad had the problem of trying to figure out how to feed his family and much time on his hands. As a result, we had the area’s largest organic garden in 1974. His solution was part therapy from being unemployed, and part survival skills from having gone through the Depression.

The Apple Orchard

I grew up on seven acres in Ohio. We had thirteen apple tress, two cherry trees, a strawberry patch mixed with rhubarb, a grape harbor, blackberries in the field, and a one-half acre garden. We lived off the land.

Taking care of the soil was the secret ingredient. He composted our food scraps and lawn rakings. Fertilizer was easily accessed from area farms. My Dad tilled the soil, mixing all the components together to make the soil ready to bear fruit – and vegetables. As inadequate as he felt when calling to inquire about work, he knew what he was doing when preparing the soil.

The garden started with seeds in early March – getting their start in egg cartons. When the seedlings were a few inches tall, they would be transplanted into their home in the rows of  rich soil. My Dad tended those plants, perhaps compensating for his inability to tend to our family’s financial requirements.

No chemicals were used in his garden. Bugs were kept away from the tomatoes by planting marigolds next to them. How creative he was. We had the first personal watermelons. We had green beans that were purple until they were cooked and turned green. Others in the county would come to inquire about growing asparagus like he did. Apple branches were grafted to improve the yield. He grew horseradish and ground it. He even tried to make dandelion wine – not for the faint of heart.

So we survived the recession of 1974. My Dad traded bushels of apples for eggs from the local farmer. We bought milk from the dairy farmer down the road after selling gallons of apple cider. We canned, made pickles and relish,  froze vegetables and made it through the year with unemployment and the fruits – literally – of my Dad’s labor.

I can still remember coming home from my first fall away at college. My Dad waited until I pulled into the driveway and then trotted to the garden to pick the largest ripe tomato – one that he had been saving – to give to me for a treat. I realized then that he was giving me more than a tomato. He was caring for me the best way he knew how.

©Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved. KimberlyNixon.com

My Dad wouldn’t talk about his experience in the war much. It was possible that he never could comprehend the situation that he was in – even thirty-five years after it happened. It was also possible that it was so horrible, it was just best to not talk about it. Every single one of his children knew not to ask. We knew that coming from the farm and reporting to duty in Europe was a stretch for our father at age twenty. It changed his life.

Before his service