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Muddy Ditches

2 Mar

So I was thinking about my drama and I remembered this incident from a few years ago.  It made me chuckle to myself, so I thought I’d share:

Back then, my husband and I and 3 kids lived next door to my parents.  I don’t consider it “out in the country” because we lived on a paved road, but it was 18 acres and on a well, not city water.  So some of you all might consider that country.

I had just returned home from something breezy and fun.

My dad was knee deep in a muddy trench and water was spraying at him from a broken pipe like a fire hose.

The water finally slowed to a slow gush, and I walked closer.  I forget what the exact problem was he had been trying to fix.  In any case, there were 2 lines, a main trunk line bringing water from the well, and a spur line that was for just such a thing as adding a hydrant or adding a waterline to somewhere new.  Not having been the one who laid the original lines, my dad called the man who did to double check which was the main and which was the spur line.  The man told him backwards, so when dad cut what he thought was the spur, the geyser began.  Now he had a whole new problem an addition to the one that had required digging the ditch in the first place.

So there dad was, up to his knees and elbows in mud, in a ditch he had dug,  struggling against water spraying from a pipe that he, himself, had cut.  He kind of leaned against the side of the ditch and looked over at me and said something like,

“I know Lehi tells us that there is opposition in all things.  I have faith  in that principle.  I don’t need any more opposition to learn it.”

I think what he was trying to say was, “I think I’ve had enough opposition for today.  I’d like to be done with opposition now.”

Sometimes when I have a particularly hard day, that memory of dad in the ditch will flash through my mind and I’ll smile to myself.  And then I’ll remember how hard he always worked for our family, and that gives me the strength to cheerfully  keep on keepin’ on.

****

2Nephi 2:11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one;

Funny Dad Friday

26 Oct

So a friend of mine invited us all to blog about the funny things our dads say.  Immediately my mind went blank and stayed that way all week. I know my dad is funny, and appreciates a good joke, but I couldn’t think of any.  The ones I could remember had 1 of 2 problems.  They were either

A-the kind of jokes that are funny if he tells them, but not if I tell them.  (I had to learn that the hard way.  In high school, I told my co-workers one of my dad’s jokes that was always so funny when he told it and they all just looked at me, horrified. awkward.)  Kind of like there are some songs that only Willie Nelson can sing.

B-the kind of jokes that sound kinda racist in print–you gotta be there in person to hear them. ( “You hear about them new I-talian cars?  Dego through ice, Dego through snow, Dego through anything, and when dego flat, dego wop wop wop.”)

Anyways, my brain finally unfroze so here goes.

My dad, the stand up comic

My Dad really likes funny little songs and poems, like this one by Austin Dobson:

Rose kissed me today.
Will she kiss me tomorrow?
Let it be as it may,
Rose kissed me today.
But the pleasure gives way
To a savor of sorrow;
Rose kissed me today
Will she kiss me tomorrow?

My dad also likes food. (Who doesn’t.)  AND he doesn’t complain.  He will eat anything that my mom cooks and he never complains.  As long as someone puts a plate of food in front of him, he gratefully and happily eats it.  He will eat a huge salad bowl of chopped cabbage and talk about how good it is. 

However, if someone cooks zucchini, he will make a token protest. He’ll say, “I like everything, so I have the right to choose one vegetable to dislike and I choose zucchini.  Why would anyone want to eat zucchini?”

I’ve always thought it was pretty funny that he would fuss about zucchini when obviously he ate and liked everything.  But then, come to think of it, maybe it isn’t a token protest.  My parents have never planted zucchini in their garden, not in my memory of 30+ years anyway, and they grow things no one else does, like asparagus and rhubarb, and bok choy.

My dad back in the ’70s.  More than 30+ years ago.