All this rain has reminded me of my father. He was a man with his own sense of humor, to say the least. He also had a fundamental understanding that if God wanted him to hire help, He wouldn’t have given him children.
Every Saturday, while my friends were hanging out, decorating floats for the Homecoming Parade, eating pizza, going to the movies, (Well, movie – it was a small town.), we, the Offspring of Cliff, were working. And I don’t mean doing chores around the house, I mean working. One year we put in a septic system. We fenced about a billion miles of pasture and built a barn.
I still dig the straightest ditch of anyone I know.
So one day in the middle of a Northern California winter, we were unsurprised to be rousted out of bed at the crack of dawn...
--- Brief digression –
My father had his own way of getting a teenager out of bed, as well. This was an elaborate enterprise that required a police whistle and a wet sponge. He’d storm into our room, blow the police whistle, and recite:
Awake! For morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that casts the stars to flight!
Then he’d count to about 2 and squeeze the sponge over your head. Worked, too.
----
Anyway, it had been a very wet year. Really wet, even for Northern CA, which does nothing but rain all winter anyway. We drank our tea, ate our English Muffins and shuffled out into the yard.
Cliff soon had us scurrying here and there. Some of us were moving lumber. Some were sawing. Some were measuring.
It wasn’t at all unusual for us to have no clue what we were doing, so it was some time before one of us piped up and asked just what we were building.
My father said “An ark!”, roared with laughter and we all went back to bed.
(Thanks to Ann for reminding me of this little vignette..)
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Comments: 27
We had a replica (uh, scaled down, but still pretty big) of the Liberty Bell which my dad liked to ring on Saturday mornings when he thought we'd been in bed too long. That worked, too.
We had a 'dinner gong'. A huge brass circle on an elaborately carved wooden stand with a HUGE drumstick, padded with leather. Traditionally the gong was sounded in posh homes to summon everyone to meals. Ours had been found by my father when we were stationed in the Far East and then it moved around the globe with us and was always on display in the hall.
My dad was an officer in the British Army. Suffice it to say, that damned gong was used for summoning us for ANY reason.
I love the sense of humor, and the story, great surprise ending.
One Saturday my father who never yelled at us, got up at 5:00 AM the hour he had to get up to drive to work on weekdays, and threw two wooden chairs down the wood floored hallway, finished of with the water baptism, small splash in the face.
Our "crime", we had been too noisy all week with the allowed kitchen card parties.
We were allowed to stay up very late,(summer time) with friends, playing cards and board games, but we were to 'keep it down" after 10 PM. . . we had not been very quiet that week.
I was in California for the drought in the mid-1970's, so I know it can be dry. We'd get up, look at all that blue sky and become depressed.
Hard to imagine, now.
He also liked to say that when he said "Jump!" that we better not ask how high until we were already on the way up.
Susan - we got the "Jump" thing, too. My dad didn't sort us, but he would have liked to. He was an old-fashioned patriarch and a serious disciplinarian. I actually was glad to have that in my background when I was raising my son - I was clear on who was in charge. Some of my friends apparently weren't, and their kids were a nightmare as a result.
But I always woke mine gently and quietly. Usually about 6 times, of course.
I don't have ark plans, but I have a picture of one...