When my father died in 2009, I believed there was nothing left unsaid between us, no questions left unanswered, and no misunderstandings of where we stood in our own truths. I believed we knew each other well, and we loved and respected each other. This was the greatest consolation in my grief—that I had done everything I could to ensure we had made the most of our time together. Yet, it seems my father still calls me from the Great Beyond as though he has something left to say. On one day just last week, the first thought I had upon waking in the morning was that I must locate my father’s harmonica. I followed that inner voice and found his old silver harmonica still in its case sitting on my bookshelf in the living room. I held it in my hands and admired its craftsmanship, still shining as it did in the sunlight when he had played it while riding his horse with me holding onto him from the back of the saddle. I could not have been more than four years old at the time. While we strolled through the prairie grass my father played my favorite folk song, "Shenandoah." I loved the sweet, melancholy melody. According to a website, bellsirishlyrics.com, the original song lyrics were written in the early 19th century, and they tell the story of a “canoe-travelling trader who falls in love with the daughter of the Native American chief called Shenandoah”:
Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you,
Away, we’re bound away
‘Cross the wide Missouri.
The old Missouri is a mighty water
Away, you rollin’ river
Indians camp along her border
Away, we’re bound away
‘Cross the wide Missouri.
A white man loved an Indian maiden
Away, you rollin’ river
With notions his canoe was laden
Away, we’re bound away
‘Cross the wide Missouri.
Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away, you rollin’ river
Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away, we’re bound away
‘Cross the wide Missouri.
Oh Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you
Away, you rollin’ river
Oh Shenandoah, I ‘ll not deceive you
Away, we’re bound away
‘Cross the wide Missouri.
Remembering this moment with my father and reflecting on the lyrics, I can only guess that what he has to say is he misses me and wants me to hold on to the old folk songs he cherished. He wants me to revisit them, sing them again, and, yes, learn to play his harmonica, so I will always have at least a part of him still in my life.
The lyrics to Shenandoah fit Phil’s personality. He had a romantic, poetic soul, and I’m sure he identified with the trader canoeing down the Missouri river. In fact, he had taken our whole family with him, including my brothers, sister, and mother, to do just that. We canoed the Missouri river, and it was a wild adventure, one of many our father took us on. Come to think of it, Phil might be calling me to remember these nature vacations too. But, seriously, how could I ever forget them? They were all so amazing.
There could be something else he is trying to tell me too. As I reflect on all that Phil had done during his lifetime, I realize he was not just a man of his time. In some ways, he was a throwback to times long before he was born, and in other ways, he was a man of the future. He enjoyed learning how to be a blacksmith and make his own tools. He taught himself how to be a stone mason. He collected boulders from everywhere in the state. He split them open by hand using his own tools, then carved out individual rocks to place into his walls, with the inner, sparkling sides showing. He had built our house on a small farm, then added these rock walls to every room in the house. In the living room, he built an enormous fireplace with these rocks that sparkled by day in the sunlight and by night in the glow of the fire. In our bedrooms, and even in the shower of the bathroom, we enjoyed the beauty of Phil’s rock walls. In addition, he built rock walls everywhere around the house. Even the detached garage he had built with rock walls.
The farm itself was a bit of a throwback in time, a way of living that was beginning to die out in this country. Small-time farmers were becoming a thing of the past as big-time corporate farms took over. For this reason, Phil discovered his small dairy farm could not compete with the corporate farms, so he went to work for an engineering firm as a surveyor and an apprentice to the civil engineers. He learned civil engineering so well, in fact, that he invented new ways to build sewer systems and ended up with a few patents. However, Phil kept his small farm as his hobby. We had goats, sheep, chickens, cattle, and there was a time when Phil decided to play with horses.
Phil never stopped working, but he loved his work, both on his job and his farm, yet he still had time and energy to take us on vacations every year, and during the summer, nearly every weekend. We hiked canyons and mountain trails. We canoed lakes and rivers. We pitched tents, and we sang a lot of campfire songs, always with Phil playing his harmonica. In the winter, we skied, sometimes in the Rocky mountains.
As much as Phil lived in the past, he also lived in the present and the future. He was intellectually curious about current affairs, and he was one of the most politically active people I have ever met. Imagine, if you will, a hippie with a crew cut. On one hand, Phil was a GI guy who had fought in World War II. At the age of 16, he believed so strongly that the Nazis had to be defeated that he was eager to be involved, so eager, in fact, that he lied about his young age to get accepted into the army and, later, into the 82nd Airborne Division. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and he could never understand how he survived it when the majority of his war buddies did not. He was proud of his service to his country, but when our government decided to send troops to Vietnam as “police action," he was one of the very few who protested, loudly, everywhere he went, even in the barber shop. In fact, he was the only person in our town who took issue with the Vietnam “police action." Much later, Phil stood with the draft dodgers and the protestors. When the Vietnam draft lottery came about, Phil was prepared to pack up his sons and send them to Canada. Fortunately, both my brothers narrowly escaped the lottery.
Phil also supported every civil rights and environmentalist movement, giving generously to all of their causes. He encouraged his children to go to college, including his daughters, and he paid for our educations as well. He was a man of science, and although he did not believe in anything supernatural, he had the moral compass of a humanitarian, and he appreciated “watching Christians having a good time.” He knew all the lyrics to their hymns and sang along. He enjoyed some of the melodies, apparently. We celebrated all the Christmases. We even went caroling with the neighbors and their families.
Phil was a social person, but he also enjoyed his own company. In addition to all his farm hobbies, Phil was a writer and a photographer—self-taught again. He wrote poetry, and he wrote his memoirs, which he called, The Borrowed Time Stories. This title reflected his belief that he was always living on borrowed time because, in his mind, he should have died in the war with his friends. The only reason he survived was he had left his fox hole to relieve his bladder in the woods. When he returned, he found his friends, dead. I remember Phil saying many times, “I’m a time bomb! Any day I could explode!”
I think Phil wanted to go out of this life with a bang, but he left as an old man, with his crystal blue eyes still sparkling and every red hair still on his head, in a crew cut, of course, until the very moment he died peacefully in his sleep. I guess maybe I’m still hearing from him because he didn’t want to say “Good-bye,” and, you know, I’m okay with that. He lives in me, and I don’t mind saying “Good morning” to him every day, and, yeah, I think it is time to learn to play his harmonica and have some more fun. Maybe we will see each other again in that Great Beyond, get back up on that horse, and give it another go.
Happy Father’s Day, Pop, and, no worries, I am with you, always.
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