A Few Words About Dad
Dad was a mild-mannered man. He was not prone to emotional outbursts or instant uncontrolled anger. I never saw him lose his composure. A witness at my trial, an older lady who was a head bookkeeper, when asked if she had ever seen me angry, replied, "I've seen him provoked, but not exasperated. I would say the same of Dad. When disappointed by others he would take a deep breath, contain his emotions, and deal with whatever it was later in his own time. Dad was reliable in that way. I never saw him fly off the handle, or yell and scream, for any reason.
Dad was a transplanted Iowa farm boy who recreated a little piece of Iowa at our homestead in Midway City. CA. Dad liked critters and always had some around - chickens, ducks, cats, dogs, parakeets - and he just enjoyed tending to them. Once Dad acquired a chicken that could not walk more than a step or two without stopping and whirling in circles. It was involuntary. After trying several human meds that didn't work, he put the chicken on small daily doses of vitamin C, and astonishingly the chicken straightened up and walked normally. Dad was adamant about giving the chicken a chance. He grew a multitude of plants and had a small garden always growing corn, like in Iowa. Dad grew numerous trees: 2-3 apricot, 2-3 peach, one nectarine, a pear tree, avocado, 4 loquat trees. There were cherry tomatoes growing up the side of the garage, and strawberries in a converted washtub, and boysenberry vines, about 30 feet of them. They all produced food for us. Dad also grew decorative plants: a huge philodendron, hibiscus, poinsettias, sweet peas, rose bushes, gladiolas and more. Our homestead in its heyday was a lush island of greenery in Midway City, a wonderful and loving place for a boy to grow up.