Dad Flavel Memories

It is mostly easy to remember good things about dad here in Danbury where he grew up. It was a tough region when he was growing up, and he had the mouth and temper of a lumberjack. Those were two of the things he struggled with as an adult, although regenerated by the Holy Spirit.

A lot of my memories with dad are about the out of doors. Sometimes with Becky and Mona and Lis and Leda, but usually with Chuck and me and sometimes just with me.

I was ten or so when dad taught me how to drive. We were at the dump, about a mile from our house. We had a 47 dodge truck that we hauled wood, and ice, and furniture and garbage in. It had a four on the floor manual transmission, along with clutch. Dad started home, then stopped in the middle of the road. He asked me if I wanted to drive. I was hardly big enough to push the clutch down, but he must have been thinking about it before. So we switched places. I killed the engine a couple of times, but finally got going about five miles an hour, and then I needed to shift. He told me to push in the clutch and shift into second. I pushed in the clutch, but it didn't shift very easy. I looked at what I was shifting a proceeded to drive into the ditch. He grabbed the wheel and steered us back on the road. All he said was, you have to watch the road and shift by feel.

That was a good memory without judgement even though I messed up.

When I was twelve I was able to deer hunt. The first day the season started at noon. Dad told me where to sit and where the deer would come out. So I went there about 11:30. He was walking in a circle and would come out where I was.
About 12:15 I heard some crashing out in the slough. It got real loud and I whistled and the noise stopped. Then it started again and a deer jumped out. I raised my gun and it wouldn't shoot. The safety was on. I took off the safety and it still would shoot. The bolt lever was raised. I re-cocked it and shot. The deer jumped and ran away. I shot twice more.
Later we found that my first shot hit a tree fifteen feet in the air above the deer. About five minutes later dad got there. He was disappointed I had not been able to get my first deer, but he was happy that I was hooked on hunting!
Another memory was that dad was working away all week when I was about 10.
Ronnie, my friend, and I built a raft on a pond. Dad came home on Friday night. This was probably in the fall. There was a school meeting of some sort, and I had made plans to stay overnight with Ronnie and then go down to the Ike's Dam Lake bright and early. So I saw dad across the gym and waved, and then left to Ronnies on that Friday night. We went down to the lake the next morning and about 10:30 in the morning dad walked down from the road and said it's time to go home. No problem there, I wasn't in trouble, and I went home. Then when we got in the car dad was choked up with emotion, sadness. That was the first time I knew he could be heart broken by something to do with me. Unintentionally on my part.

There are three memories.