He Was a Carpenter

My father was illiterate. I suppose that would seem ironic to those who know I was a university English teacher before I retired.

My grandfather died in the difficult days of the Depression, and his children had to go to work so the family could eat. So my father lost out on most of his education. My mom taught Dad how to read after they married. His handwriting remained a mystery to most who tried to read it.

I used to dream about what life would be like if my father were a banker or a businessman. All he could manage was sharecrop farming, sacking groceries and driving trucks. During World War II, my dad learned how to carpenter while building the barracks at Camp Barkley in Abilene.

He then managed to clothe and feed three children, rebuild an old house for our residence, and he always had a waiting list of people who needed his skill.

He was a quiet, proud man who always wore a hat (straw in the summer, felt in the winter). His favorite things were reading the newspaper and watching westerns on television. Ollis Elton Brandon was not a religious man, although he became a Baptist as a child. He was loving, good, hard-working, but not a spiritual leader. I never saw him read the Bible, or heard him lead a prayer, and we did not talk about God. However, I did watch him care for my mother when she was dying from cancer, ill and vomiting from chemotherapy, crying from pain--he was there to the end. He taught me a valuable lesson I needed later when my husband was dying of cancer.

Thank you Lord for my dad. I miss him.