Last year, when my brother and his wife built a new garage, they devoted a section of it to my father’s work. It’s a nicer work space than Dad ever had. All of his equipment, including a gigantic clicker and several sewing machines, are there.
A large portion of the section has shelves loaded with stock, a reminder of how much time the old man spent working for his living crafting leather goods. Even in a large garage, the work area stands out. It’s there partially because my brother and I would like to keep the business Dad built, WebbCraft, alive as long as we can.
During a visit today, I noticed that my brother and sister-in-law put the large display I designed for Christmas, which features several photos of Dad with family and six of the columns I’ve written about him, prominently in the space. I can’t think of a more fitting spot for it.
As my sister-and-law and I walked through the area, I told her that I’d been thinking about Dad a lot lately. While this isn’t a new development, I’d noticed for several months that I hadn’t thought about him as much as I had after he died in August 2019.
“I think about him every day, and I don’t expect that to ever change,” I said. “But I really hadn’t thought about him as much there for a while. But I’ve been thinking about him quite a bit the past few weeks.”
Those thoughts span a range of emotions. Sometimes, I smile thinking about his bluntness. Other times, I shake my head when I think about the pain he endured in the final months of his life. One day, I shared a moment with my wife after we’d been talking about him. As she walked over to me for a hug, she started crying and said, “I just really miss your dad.”
That feeling of loss is never going to go away. That’s something you come to terms with during the grieving process. You think about the good times, memories and lessons that last a lifetime. In that sense, Dad will always be with us.
Today, as I sifted through photos my brother and sister-in-law gave us from Dad’s storage, I came across one that reminded me of a story the old man told me as I interviewed him several months before he passed.
It’s a photo of a brand new Ford Econoline van taken in 1982. Dad was always proud of his vehicles. He talked about his 1955 Chevy all the time. He loved his Mini-Cooper, often referring to it as a sports car (we always laughed at that). He kept an old, beaten-up black cargo van for years. He couldn’t even drive it. It just meant a lot to him because his business took off when he used it at shows.
The 1982 Ford, though, was the pride and joy of his vehicles for a long time. We had that thing many years longer than we should have. He finally let it go when I was in high school, more than a decade later. Why did it mean so much? He told the story best:
“This is when I had you guys and I was on my own, and it was hard. It was so hard,” Dad said. “I was trying to take care of you and run a business. I had an old Ford van, and that’s what we did the shows in. But it was so unreliable. Sometimes it ran, sometimes it didn’t. I had to work on it all the time. It was on four bald tires all the time because we couldn’t afford anything else.
“I remember we went to a show one time, and the weather was terrible. In fact, there was a tornado going through there. Fortunately, we just got wind and rain. But we were sleeping in the van because I couldn’t afford a hotel. And you poor guys … the water was coming and you were getting wet. I felt so bad as a dad about that.”
Dad knew he needed a new van. The Monday after the show, he went to a dealership down the street and Joplin with little more than hope and his sons in tow.
“The first place I went to was a dealership off Range Line Road,” he said. “I went up to the dealer and said, ‘I need a new van.’ I told him the situation I was in, that I didn’t have much and that I had to have a reliable vehicle to support my family.
“I’ll never forget the guy asking me, ‘How much of a down payment do you have?’ And I said, ‘I have $50 and this van as a trade-in.’ The dealer shook his head, but we left there with a 1982 Ford van, brand new. I think the guy felt sorry for me because I had you guys with me. He sold me the van, and I never missed a payment.”
After hearing that story, for the first time, I understood his love for that old van. Forty years later, we’re still talking about it, another memory that will last many lifetimes.
