My Daughters

I met my two daughters on June 12, 1976. My 30th birthday.

I was living in an apartment in Oak Cliff and working for a boat dealership…Lone Star Sports. I was the sales manager. That meant that in the off season I was the only salesperson and during season I managed between 5 and 10 full-time or part-time salespeople. After a couple of missteps I was picking Lela up for our first date since we were in high school. I got out of the 1976 El Camino Laguna Classic and headed for the front door of the little frame house on Trammell St. Freshly painted with a big Lantana bush in the middle of the well kept lawn it just spoke to who she was and is still. She stepped out and I saw the woman that had replaced the girl I knew. I was pleased.

The babysitter was blocking the two girls from moving thru the door until Lela told them to come out and meet me. I will never forget the 6 year old Traci being careful to stay well hidden behind her 8 year old sister Kim. Kim had a way of sizing up new things and I could tell she was not going to give me a smile or telegraph to Traci that everything was alright. Polite and with full eye contact she let me know she wasn’t easy to impress. Even as I am with them today…I can close my eyes and see them then.

I took their mother to Benihanna to celebrate my birthday with a planned outing to a club I knew in north Dallas. As we were in the car after the meal she said the babysitter was expecting her around 11. Now back in those days I would sometimes leave my apartment at 11 to go out. And it was that night I learned to plan our outings and activities a lot earlier in the day. Later, as a family, Lee and Kim are early to bed and Traci and I roam the house late at night.

From that first night till we married in December of that bicentennial year…our primary vehicle was my El Camino. Now it had a color coordinated topper on the back but that didn’t add any passenger room. The only thing that saved us was…the kids were small and no one used seat belts in those days. When we would pile into the car to go somewhere, and we were always going somewhere, it was a race to see who said it first…” We have got to get a bigger car”.

I smoked back then and at first I started limiting that while I was around them and finally quit when it became apparent to me that we going to be a family. Now they called me Yogi back then…and seemed to enjoy my name making jokes about the bear and the other bear. I used to say…”never heard that one”. But one morning in early 1977 when they were heading back to school after Christmas break…I was off on Mondays and was getting them off to school… when Kim came to me and asked what they should call me now that I was not just their mothers boyfriend. We sat and listed some possibilities excluding Dad, because they had a Dad. She settled on Papa…skipped into the other room and informed Traci and it was official. Thru the years it has shortened to Pop with the grandkids still using Papa. I have been called a lot of names but Papa is by far my favorite.

Now I have 44 years of stories since that June day and most revolve around Lee and my girls. Too many to put in this but here are a couple that make me smile.

One Sunday after church we were at a cafeteria and as usual the girls zeroed in on the big round booth. I guess because it gave them a lot of freedom to move around. After paying the check I put my tray on the table and started to transfer from my chair to the seat. During that time and for many years after I was very strong. Just a byproduct of doing everything with my arms. Normally a transfer like that was a piece of cake and done without any thought. On that day I guess I should have thought about it. Because somehow I wound up on the floor in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Everyone in the place heard the crash…everyone in the place held their breath and you could have heard a pin drop. After a few seconds my girls broke the silence with laughter. Loud, hooting laughter. I quickly jumped back into my chair and finished the transfer, trying to regain my composure and salvage a little dignity. They continued to laugh and hug on me and laugh some more. They acted as if there was just us and I had done something incredibly funny. I remember how pleased I was with their reaction. I wish I could stop them from worrying about me now.

Another story that comes to mind happened almost every Saturday over a long period of time. We had built a house in Rockwall County which we occupied on Groundhog Day of 1980. Kim halfway thru the 7th grade and Traci the 5th. The house sat on 2.5 acres plus half of a gravel pit of about 6 acres. Good fish, great place to have a small boat…lots of snakes. I’ll tell you how we got rid of the snakes another time. I had a 14 HP garden tractor. Really just a lawn mower with a manual 3 point hookup. I spent most Saturdays mowing, working on the tractor, mowing some more, more tractor work….repeat, repeat & repeat. With better equipment, a two hour job. In practice…all day Saturday. So we developed a cadence … I would start my Saturday and Lee and the girls would dress and go out to shop or spend the day with Lee’s sister and cousins or…whatever occupies women that can take all day long. At lunch I would stop work and come inside the house to eat and rest some. I can’t remember how it happened the first time but became a regular thing after that. I sat up on the arms of my chair (I haven’t had arms on my chair in many years now) and pulled a stack of papers and things from the top of the refrigerator. It was a bunch of receipts and forms and correspondence about a lot of different things. All things that Lee and both girls were involved in but nothing I had any knowledge of. Nothing shocking just artifacts of transactions and plans and wishing….you know…the stuff they probably said “No need to tell Pop about this”. I finally realized this was where they put things to keep my opinion out of it. At first I was a little wounded but later decided that if these were the secretes they held, they were pretty innocent and my hurt turned into amusement. I didn’t say anything that first day or any Saturday after. I would just occasionally audit the stack to see if there was anything that might need a man’s opinion. There never was. I think I came clean when they were in college and we moved to town. They denied everything and said it was just a good place to keep stuff. As I write this today there is a stack of things on top of our fridge. Its not worth the trouble to see what is there.

My Mom always told me I would do something important and I spent much of my life looking for what that would be. As I watch my girls, now Godly, capable, educated women raise their children….I think I know.