My father grew up on a dirt poor farm in Jacksonville, Georgia near Lumber City and McCray. He and his two brothers and five sisters worked hard even as kids to survive. I never knew his father, he died before I was born, but his mother lived in Ocala, Florida with one of her daughters and I saw her a few times a year.

Daddy joined the Navy as World War II started when he was not yet 20 years old. He never talked much about his service, other than he trained to be a gunner and got deathly seasick on the troop transport to the South Pacific. He said he threw up for 30 days straight!

After getting a medical discharge for rheumatic fever he came home and lived with one of his sisters in McDuffie County where he met my mother. Like many of his fellow veterans, he went to college on the GI Bill and graduated with a degree in agriculture from the University of Georgia. After college they moved back to McDuffie County and I was born that summer. I was born in Athens since mama continued to go to her doctor there after they moved away in June of 1950.

Daddy was the agriculture teacher and shop teacher at Dearing High School. Part of that job was visiting local farmers and helping them out with everything from soil testing to hog castration. When schools consolidated around 1960 and the high school students were sent to Thomson, he became principal of Dearing Elementary and stayed there until retiring in 1977.

In the seventh and eighth grade he taught me math and shop. It was a small school so the principal also taught some classes each day. When I say small I mean small. I started first grade and went through eighth grade with the same 28 students, all in one classroom each year as we moved from grade to grade.

Daddy also bought a small farm and started an egg producing operation, starting small with four houses with about 1200 chickens each. When I was a teenager he added four more houses, much more modern and housing about 1500 layers each. Our 11,000 chickens provided eggs for most of the grocery stores in the area from the A&P and Winn Dixie to mom and pop country stores. And dozens of people came to our house to buy eggs in small amounts.

Daddy loved bird hunting and kept two pointers in some old chicken houses about a mile from our house. We fed them every day and could not wait until quail season opened each year. I spent many hours with him, following the dogs and hoping to find a covey of birds.

For several years I just walked along and learned safety and hunting etiquette. Then I was allowed to carry a .410 shotgun and actually try to hit a bird when the covey or a single flushed. I don’t think I ever did, although I was deadly with the shotgun on squirrels and anything else sitting still.

Since daddy knew many farmers well we were also invited to dove shoots every Saturday during season. I was daddy’s retriever for several years and prided myself on finding every bird he hit no matter where it fell. And again I was learning about dove shooting and safety while sitting in the blind with him.

I was really proud when I was allowed to take my .410 with me and had all my equipment in an old gas mask bag one of my uncles gave me. I still have that bag, more than 50 years later, and use it while deer hunting now. And a few times I actually hit a dove on those shoots and got to put it in my bag!

I can remember only one time daddy went squirrel hunting with me. I went many afternoons after school and even some mornings before school. One afternoon daddy went with me. I killed my limit of ten that afternoon, one of my best hunts, and daddy never killed one. But he never shot at one either, letting me kill all we saw. He was much more proud of me killing them!

Daddy didn’t like fishing very much and never went with me or mama. Mama loved fishing and went every chance she got. As he got older daddy did start crappie fishing with us in the spring at Clarks Hill. Not because he liked fishing but because he loved to cook and eat crappie.

I was expected to work on the farm from an early age. And daddy depended on me and my brother helping out. But I know he did extra work many times so I could go hunting or fishing rather than work.

Happy Father’s Day. If you can, enjoy some time with your father. If he is gone, like mine, rejoice in his memory. And if you have kids, spend some fun time with them. They will always remember fishing or hunting trips long after movies and games they like are long forgotten.