Today I was thinking about Dad. His personal philosophy was "live a good life" and that came directly from his father, Charlie Berglund. And to clarify it a bit, live a good life meant to work hard, play fair, meet your obligations.
He did that very well. As children, we were never aware of money worries. Dad was always working or knew someone who needed work done.
Every once in a while he would come home and say that he had been "Two checked", which meant that he was no longer working for that particular entity and we would therefore be moving the entire household (conveniently held within a trailer house) to another location where Dad would work.
Food would appear on the table cooked by Mom. We were fed, clothed, kept clean, kept disciplined (or got caught doing something) and lived a fairly secure blue collar life.
Dad like to read Louis L'amour books. I got into the habit of scouting around for a new book each year for his birthday. Louis died in 1988 and there were no more books. I was left to give silly things.
Eventually I discovered Tony Hillerman but unfortunately this was well after Dad died in 1995. Tony Hillerman wrote his first book in 1970. I do wish I had known that but my own reading tastes would have completely precluded any interest in stories about reservation cops on the Navajo reservation. I was deeply committed to Science fiction.
I had been devoted to SciFi for a good 20 years and had a very large collection by the time I was recruited to Barrow, Alaska. I had to sell off most of them and had a yard sale. I advertised and had hordes descend to pick the books over. Most of them were sold. I kept a few favorites such as Anna McCaffrey etc.
I purchased and read all of the Tony Hillerman books and absolutely loved all of them except one. He wrote one called "Finding Moon" and it was not set on the Rez. I didn't even finish it.
I always discovered fascinating cultural things in those stories. When Tony died I felt very mournful. However his daughter has written a few books set on the rez. Joe Leaphorn lives!! The most recent fascinating cultural thing I learned was that Navajo do not eat fish. Fish are the messengers of their gods. So no fish. I think Dad would have enjoyed getting these books for father's day.
Happy Father's Day, all you Dads!!
He did that very well. As children, we were never aware of money worries. Dad was always working or knew someone who needed work done.
Every once in a while he would come home and say that he had been "Two checked", which meant that he was no longer working for that particular entity and we would therefore be moving the entire household (conveniently held within a trailer house) to another location where Dad would work.
Food would appear on the table cooked by Mom. We were fed, clothed, kept clean, kept disciplined (or got caught doing something) and lived a fairly secure blue collar life.
Dad like to read Louis L'amour books. I got into the habit of scouting around for a new book each year for his birthday. Louis died in 1988 and there were no more books. I was left to give silly things.
Eventually I discovered Tony Hillerman but unfortunately this was well after Dad died in 1995. Tony Hillerman wrote his first book in 1970. I do wish I had known that but my own reading tastes would have completely precluded any interest in stories about reservation cops on the Navajo reservation. I was deeply committed to Science fiction.
I had been devoted to SciFi for a good 20 years and had a very large collection by the time I was recruited to Barrow, Alaska. I had to sell off most of them and had a yard sale. I advertised and had hordes descend to pick the books over. Most of them were sold. I kept a few favorites such as Anna McCaffrey etc.
I purchased and read all of the Tony Hillerman books and absolutely loved all of them except one. He wrote one called "Finding Moon" and it was not set on the Rez. I didn't even finish it.
I always discovered fascinating cultural things in those stories. When Tony died I felt very mournful. However his daughter has written a few books set on the rez. Joe Leaphorn lives!! The most recent fascinating cultural thing I learned was that Navajo do not eat fish. Fish are the messengers of their gods. So no fish. I think Dad would have enjoyed getting these books for father's day.
Happy Father's Day, all you Dads!!
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