Our last drive with the old man

Note: This blog was written, but not posted, on July 1, 2019, a little less than a month before Dad passed away on Aug. 5, 2019.

We took my dad out today for what might be his last trip outside, at least during the “living” portion of his existence. It wasn’t much. We drove to see two of the properties he lived on, one in the 1990s and the other for nearly a decade before his final move to Overbrook.

Knowing the place outside of Quenemo, Kansas, was his favorite, my wife and I offered to drive him there to see it one last time. We also decided to swing by his property outside of Melvern.

Even sitting up is exhausting at this point, but we thought it would be good for him to get out, at least as long as he can. Millions of things run through your mind during a drive like this. I thought about all the memories we have of these two random sects of land in the middle of nowhere.

As we drove down Highway 75, we crossed the bridge that runs over Dragoon Creek, just outside of Lyndon. That small river also holds a lot of memories. We fished there often, taking a small boat through muddy water to fish-heavy creases in the land, covered with thousands of overhanging trees.

I remember catching fish with my dad and brother, but I remember the conversations and will cherish those forever. 

As we drove into Lyndon, we passed the old shop Dad bought in the early 1990s. I always marveled at my father’s ability to build on an already-impressive skillset. In this case, in addition to the shop serving as the home base for his leather business, he ran a car wash in the back and a shoe repair shop in the front. He spent six months learning the latter from a cobbler in Topeka.

So, essentially, he had three businesses going at once. Throw in a pawn shop for a few years (a business he hated and eventually stopped due to the abundance of sad stories that came with loaning money for goods) and he did a little bit of everything.

It also reminded me that my dad didn’t put up with shit. After owning the shop for four or five years, he simply had enough one day and checked out. The story goes like this:

“I had a big sign on the counter that said, ‘We do not do repairs while you wait,’” he said. “I didn’t have time for that. We had next-day repair, period. But this clown comes into the shop, drops his sorry-ass, muddy boots on my counter, right in front of the sign, and says, ‘I need these in an hour.’ I said, ‘Did you read the sign?’”

Needless to say, the rest of the conversation didn’t go well, nor did it last long. As the angry customer walked out of the shop, my dad followed him, walking right past the guy and to the sign in front of the shop. Within a few minutes, the sign read on both sides: “For sale.”

Within a week, he was out of the shoe repair and car wash business. At that point, Webbcraft Leather was paying the bills. Like I said, Dad didn’t put up with shit.

As we drove past Melvern Lake, Dad asked if I remember staring at the pretty girls on the beach the first time we visited. I was 13 at the time and don’t remember that. But, in that moment, I did appreciate the fact that even though my father’s life was/is fading, his memory was/is sharp.

The property outside of Melvern wasn’t anything special to the outside world. It was a small farm area with an old, two-story house, a shed and barn on its last legs. When Dad bought the property in 2003, it was mostly a dump. The floors of the house were full of holes, the plumbing barely worked and the people who lived there actually threw full trash bags into the backyard, which was thick with shoulder-high grass.

Dad worked on that place for two years when he had time, rebuilding, rewiring, refurbishing. He spent hours upon hours cleaning up the yard, manicuring the grass, planting flowers. He added a large pond and filled it with fish. He turned the old shed into a work shop.

After living there for nearly a decade in what was his paradise, he sold the house not long after his first health scare, a heart attack suffered while lifting weights at age 68. 

Five years later, the family that bought the house sold it to a wealthy neighbor who treasured his privacy more than my father. So much so that he bulldozed the house, which was in great shape by that point, along with the shed. 

We’d known this for a while, but I could feel the anger and sadness in my father as we drove by the property. What a waste. But it doesn’t change a lifetime of memories.

The Melvern house is the one I moved to when I left the newspaper business. My father took me in, no questions asked, at age 33. The only stipulation he had that was that I was going to start working out again with him or he wouldn’t let me live there rent- and bill-free.

That was the beginning of my journey from 320 pounds to 200 pounds. At age 65, Dad walked, ran, played basketball and lifted weights with me daily. 

We headed west for Quenemo next, a route I hadn’t taken in at least a decade, maybe 20 years. The town is on the edge of extinction. There are no businesses. There’s no school. The winding dirt road leading to the property hadn’t been worked in months, and standing water near the railroad tracks forced us to reroute.

We drove through Pomona and around the backside of the property, driving slowly down the steep dirt road by his favorite place, a large, wooded area with a big pond, trailer home and large shed he built for his shop.

Unfortunately, the owners haven’t taken as good care of the property as he did, as overgrown shrubs and trees blocked most of our view. Nonetheless, that doesn’t block our memories. Hours spent fishing on the pond, long walks talking about life, me leaving a lawnmower at the top of the hill, only to watch it slide down the hill and into the pond.

Dad lived here after my parents divorced in the early 1990s and stayed there for several years. I think that was a period where he wanted and needed privacy even more than he typically does. My brother and I stayed in Burlingame during the week to stay at the same high school, but we visited often on the weekends.

Some of my fondest memories are of waking up on Sunday morning to the sound of my dad cooking us a big breakfast, which usually included biscuits and his famous gravy, bacon and fried potatoes (also famous).

I also remember that he quit drinking beer while he lived in Quenemo. I remember that because he asked us to take part in a ceremony of sorts: We took turns shooting unopened cans from a case of Natty Lite. That was 1993. He didn’t touch another beer for at least 10 years and rarely drank more than one drink a day the rest of his life.

I noticed that Dad was teary-eyed as we drove past the property one last time. I can’t imagine what he was thinking. All I could think is how fast life moves. I’ve been thinking that a lot lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was thinking about that as we drove home, finishing up a long day at the end of a very good life.