Since you kids grew up in Alabama and Texas well within the embrace of the Vedel family, the only grandfather that you really had a lot of exposure to was Granddad, George Vedel. So my father, Emmett Darr Macrander is someone that you have known mostly from conversations between mom and me.
Adding to the relative mystery of Emmett as a person is also the influence that my mother had in the family. While it is not fair to say that Mom's (Betty) personality was bigger than Dad's, there was seldom any doubt as to who shaped the family, who commanded the ship of state Macrander, and who you had to keep an eye on from a discipline stand point. Whereas Mom was quick and vigorous in her disciplinary actions, the, "wait till your Dad gets home," threat carried little weight with my sisters and me. In fact, that was considered a reprieve, as dad feared that he would hurt us, and generally punished us reluctantly out a sense of duty, more than a quick emotional reaction.
Even as adults, telephone conversations with my family, were principally a conversation with Mom, with Dad's participation being listening in and commenting sparingly. Dad also died, when you all were pretty young, so, I suspect that he is largely unknown to you. So, on Father's day, here are a few daddy stories about my Dad.
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Dad was generally a pretty gentle soul, but, like anyone, had a temper that could flare on occasion, mostly with cussed farm animals. He used to tell the story of trying to milk a cow that was a habitual kicker. After taking several kicks from her during a bad attitude milking session, he apparently lost it, and hit her over the head with the milking stool, knocking her out cold, collapsing right there in the stanchions. He thought he had killed her, a sobering thought with a valuable milk cow, but after a few minutes she staggered back to her feet and never kicked again.
Between my sisters and me, I probably have the sole memory of actually being afraid of Dad. It was during the time that we lived away from the farm in St. Joseph, MO. I think of those years as my sports crazed years when I just knew that I would one day be a professional athlete, most likely a shortstop for the Kansas City A's. Not the Oakland A's, or the Kansas City Royals. That all happened years later. I lived and breathed baseball and spent untold hours in the front yard fielding grounders from the backstop, or learning how to place hits around the yard. Dad was, mostly, my partner in this, playing catch and pitching for countless precious hours. On my own, though, I came up with the idea of gathering small rocks from the yard and throwing them up and hitting them with a bat, trying to get them to go precisely where I wanted them to go. I had been told not to do this, a number of times, as there were neighbor's windows and cars at risk. Being 10 and reckless, though, I knew best that I could control where the rocks went, so there was no reason to worry. One day, Dad was out in the yard while I was hitting rocks. He told me to stop it, but, of course, I had to hit just one more. After all, I already had it in my hand. I tossed it in the air and, WHACK, really connected solidly with the rock just as Dad turned to look at me. In my mind it was headed straight over the pitcher's head and out into center field for a solid base hit. In reality, though, the rock hit Dad squarely in the forehead just above his left eye and at a distance of about 15 feet from the bat. In today's movies of action heroes, it is common for super men and women to levitate and zip from place to place in a blur. One moment Dad was 15 feet away. Whoosh, the next moment, he had snatched the bat from my hands and was standing over me with the bat raised and quivering. Visions of the milk cow passed through my head until he lowered the bat and said in a strained voice, "I told you to quit that," then walked into the garage placing my bat in the corner where it belonged. I think that it scared him more than it did me and I escaped any real punishment for nearly maiming my father. I won't say that I was as smart as the cow, but I eased off on the rock hitting for a while.
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Dad was a gregarious man who loved joshing and practical jokes, like hiding in the corn and howling like a wolf to scare my sisters and me as we were bringing the cows in from the pasture for the evening milking. He was popular in the coffee gatherings of winter leisure farmers at the local restaurants and truly died with many friends and no enemies.
He could outwork three other, larger, men and would simply not be outdone. I remember a friend speaking in awe of Dad, that he could drive a 10 penny nail straight and true in three hammer strikes, when his own father would take 5-10 and likely have to straighten a crooked nail a couple of times before getting it down.
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For all the hard work,though, he could be guilty of a lack attention to detail, or, as I have said, not putting the period at the end of the sentence. The greatest story I have of that comes from my senior year in high school. It was a beautiful breezy April day that was just cool enough to be fantastic if you were working, but, a bit cool if you were standing still. It was Sunday, mostly a day of rest or small chores. We knew that Mom wanted to go to town for lunch, then on to her part time job at a local hospital. Dad and I decided to get a head start on the spring cleaning and burn off the dead vegetation in the fence rows. This would reduce the need for mowing and spraying and keep the weeds down. To keep the fire from getting too hot and burning out the fence posts, we used a couple of wet burlap sacks to beat it back when it started to flare. Initially, we were just going to do a bit, but, the day was nice, the fire was burning and we were really making some progress. We had worked our way to about half a mile from the house making it necessary for my sister to drive out in the car to bring us in to get ready to go to town. We quickly beat out the fire and threw the wet sacks in the trunk of the car.
A quick shower, nine-mile drive to town, and Sunday dinner (lunch) at the hotel later, mom went on to Fairfax, while Dad, my sister and I headed home in our 1962 Ford Falcon. The day had warmed up just enough to encourage us to roll down our windows and let the wind blow in.
Now, the town of Tarkio is adjacent to the Tarkio River, a small river that you can wade across most days in 10 steps and not get your knees wet. It did have a broad flat river bottom, though, that was about a mile wide and just right for the small municipal airport that was home to the local agricultural spray plane and a few private planes belonging to local pilots. The road next to the airport was elevated above the low river bottom and lined with deep drainage ditches to keep it above the periodic floods when spring rains overflowed the "Tark Crick," as we used to say (and we thought southerners talked funny).
Suddenly the car filled with smoke and we realized that we had not removed the burlap sacks from the trunk. They had been smoldering back there and the fresh air flowing into the windows had fanned the coals to a near blaze. If you know anything about the way cars are built, you know that the gas tank is generally right below, or in close proximity to, the trunk, so not the greatest place to have a fire.
We quickly pulled over, grabbed the smoking sacks, and threw them to the bottom of the ditch where there was about a foot of standing water. Unfortunately, the wind caught mine and it landed not in the water, but next to it. I started to climb down into the ditch to put the sack directly into the water, but, Dad stopped me and said, "It's okay, let's go."
The next morning my sister and I were driving to school, the smell of smoke still detectable in the upholstery of the car. When we topped the hill and descended down onto the river bottom, we saw nearly a mile of charred vegetation in the roadside ditch and out onto the airport apron, nearly to the runway. Apparently, the fire department had been called out to keep the whole airport from burning.
When he came home from work that evening, Dad looked at me and said, "did you see?" "Yes." That was all that was ever said in the Macrander household until my sisters and I were swapping Dad stories after he died and trying to communicate who he was to the new minister who had the task of speaking at his funeral. We ended up laughing until our sides ached. At the end of the usual funeral assurances of "a better place and watching over us," the minister said that, through talking to his family, he had come to understand that Dad was quite a character and asked that those attending share their favorite Emmett story. At the cemetery we were treated to a series of aging farmers dropping by to tell stories of shared shenanigans, 'oh shit' escapades, and warm memories of pranks pulled. We came to know that he walked tall in the community of his peers.
To this day I am constantly reminded of some of the things he taught me. I can throw a shovel full of mulch (corn or snow) 20 feet and have it land in a compact pile precisely where I want it. I try to mow the lawn in precise straight lines remembering that a farmer is judged from the road by how straight his rows are. Unfortunately, I cannot drive a 10 penny nail in three hammer blows, or, without bending every 3rd nail. These may not be skills that are highly valued in the academic or professional world that I have inhabited, but, in a world where men of all walks are still expected to have skills, I am thankful. And even the shortcomings taught me by example, to put that damned fire out.