Roots To Routes

door window and saw him fall to the ground.  Mom knew something was bad wrong and called for help.  After five days at Community Hospital in Roanoke, he died that Friday around 3:00 pm.  Dad had just passed his 65^th birthday September 9^th and was planning to retire in June from the Catawba sanatorium where he had been a convict guard for 18 years.  They all liked him and called him Captain Bob.

My Dad was not just my Dad, he was also the best friend I ever had.  He was the most honest, trustworthy man I have ever known, and when he told you something you could depend on it.  I only remember one thing he told me about when he was growing up in the mountains where he was raised.  One night he heard a panther scream, and it had scared him so bad that it made the hair on his head stand up.  I had some questions about ever being scared bad enough to make my hair stand up and I was not quite sure Dad had told me the truth.  A few years later, when I was 14, Clyde Beard was the first girl to invite me to her birthday party.  It was a very dark rainy, drizzly, Saturday night.  I left home a little before dark and took an old lantern and left it in Dad’s car, where he always left it in bad weather, which was half a mile from our house.  I had an old flashlight with very weak batteries that I took on to the party, which was over one and a half miles from our house.  Clyde had a very nice party and I had a good time.  The party was over at midnight.  I just made it back to Dad’s car before the old batteries were gone.  It was still very dark and damp.  I got in the backseat and lit the lantern, got out and closed the door, when a wild bobcat squealed behind me.  My very first thought was, Dad, you sure did tell me the truth.  My hair did feel like it was standing up.  I was so scared, I think I would have stayed in the car but it had a window out, so I thought my best bet was to go home.  Dad had also told me that wild cats would sometimes follow you with a light, but he had never known anyone to be hurt by one.  I never did run, but that was the fastest walking I’ve ever done.

Dad had to quit school in the third grade to help his family with all the work they had to do.  Dad did teach himself to read the Bible.  He would get me on his knee or sit at the table and would read the Bible to me.  He would also play with my brother Frank and me a lot more in the winter months, when he was home more, and not away cutting timber.  After we moved from the mountain place in March of 1946, I finished the rest of that year in the 6^th grade and I quit school at age 15.  I had failed three years in school.  When I quit school at age fifteen in 1946, I didn’t quit because I didn’t want to learn.