Question: Write about some places you went with your father.
This is a great question and the answer may be rather long. My mother was a real estate agent so I spent most of my growing up years with my dad.
There are 4 or 5 special places I went with my dad.
1. Fishing. We had a pay lake in back of our house. We lived way out in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. Our yard and the lake property was divided by a barbed wire fence. Daddy was friends with the owner of the lake, so he told Daddy he didn't have to pay to use the lake, just to crawl over the fence any time he wanted. My dad was always working around the house, fixing things, working on the cars, doing "man" stuff, so he didn't have a lot of time to fish, but when he did, it was a big event. He would mix up his special recipe of fish bait. We would put on our old clothes, grab the fishing rods and tackle box and off we went. We would always catch fish and I remember playing with crawdads that burrowed into the bank of the lake. Fishing has some very good memories and I love to fish to this day!
2. Montgomery Wards. Most of you won't even know what this is, but it used to be a store-nationwide. It's biggest competition was Sears. Well, there was a huge Wards store near downtown Kansas City and when my dad wanted to paint the house or needed a new ladder or tool, we went to Montgomery Wards. My uncle worked in the tool department, so we would always stop to talk to him, catch up on how his family was etc. BUT, the thing I remember most about this store was the Hot Tamale man who was always in the parking lot. His shiny metal cart was always full of the most delicious, delectable hot tamales you ever tasted. Daddy would always buy me one and the best days were when I got two -- one to eat right then and one to take home!!!
3. Hi-Boy Burgers. There was a locally owned burger joint close to our house -- Hi-Boy. They had huge yummy hamburgers and homemade, hand dipped onion rings. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about them. Like I said earlier in this blog, my mom worked in real estate. She worked 7 days a week and many evenings. When I got home from school, my dad was already home from work and he would be hungry. We would jump in the car and go to Hi-Boy. If Daddy thought Mother would be home that evening to fix dinner, he would tell me, "Now don't tell your mother we came here, ok?" I knew better than to tell her. She would get mad because she had planned to cook for us. If she came home and fixed dinner, we would have to eat that too --- ha! -- I wonder if she guessed that we had already eaten earlier.
4. Swap - N - Shop. Our local drive-in theater had a swap-n-shop every Sunday. Venders and just regular people would bring all their junk and yard sale items and pay a fee to set up and sell. Then the rest of us would go there and it was like a huge, huge yard sale. Daddy was always buying a whole cardboard box full of tools from little old ladies for 25 cents (back then that was a fair price for a box of junk). He would always find good tools and things he needed for his work shop in those boxes. He was like a kid in a candy store. I would always find a toy or something for 5 or 10 cents and I would be happy too, but the fun was getting to spend a day with my dad.
5. The Mall. My dad secretly loved to shop, so when he "needed" a tool or some "duct tape" or some "spray" for the yard, off we'd go to the mall. We would always go to Sears and sometimes we'd go to Western Auto. It depended on what he needed at the time, but I loved going to the Mall with my dad. When I was in Jr. High School, he would let me go look at clothes and jewelry, etc. and meet him at a certain time.
I am so lucky to have such great memories of my dad. He died in 1984. He was 79 years old. So he got to see me grow up and he got to enjoy his grandchildren. I think my Daddy had a good life and I was definitely a Daddy's Girl!!!
