Living Truly is a Gift

“The proper function of man is to live–not to exist.”
–Jack London

I always love the stories that my Dad tells about his life growing up and the many characters – relatives, friends and neighbors – that peopled them. When I was young, the stories were told to others, with me a quiet listener. They were told in old trucks loaded with hounds on the way to or from a favorite rabbit, pheasant or raccoon hunting spot; at November evening deer camps; or with the background noise of a rattling John Boat, hurtling down some gravel road to a fishing hole. Being a hunter and fisherman father, he knew how to spin a tale and to capture his audience. With stories that were both colorful and tragic. They amazed me--how it must have been to live then--with so many colorful characters and crazy, wonderful, magical circumstances surrounding his life. Some of the comrades that left on fishing and hunting trips were as colorful as any found in a Jack London story of the early 20th century.

Only later in life, when a child begins to see more than the obvious facts, did I realize that there were underlying, terrible sets of circumstances that he lived with. The stories that made us laugh and sigh with wonder must have been no less than horror stories in his mind. He grew up with alcoholism in his family, the end of the depression era, uncles that were POW’s in Germany during WWII, a rare-at-the-times mother that worked, and even 2 older sisters (which when he was a kid was probably YUCK, as we only appreciate fully sisters when we are older). Despite all that he still laughed and smiled mischievously to his family. He never stood still, was a constant moving being. He worked like a madman to give us the best he was capable of achieving through hard work, discipline and guidance.

His childhood, as he told us with his recollections, were filled with boyish adventure in a time when simple living gave simple pleasures. Where you could walk out your backdoor and start pheasant hunting (if you could afford a shell, and I mean a single or pair of shells). When you thought that the greatest thing you owned was your BB gun or slingshot or the best cur hunting dog in the neighborhood. Where impossible chores had to be completed, with shovels, axes and bare knuckles (like new outhouses to be dug or slaughtering the pig). Unexpected things happened to him along railroad tracks, in surrounding fields or even inside his ram-shackled house.

I remember Dad being gone an awful lot, but I never felt neglected. More often I was jealous, for he was truly living and breathing in his time on earth and experiencing everything, fully. I was stuck in school being denied a real life.

I understand the gift he must have gave his friends during his sporting ventures with them. As I got older my time with him, sharing the things he loved doing, increased. And I understood him more. He is the perfect companion if you just want silent company. But around a campfire or alone with him in a fishing boat, be prepared to listen if he wants to talk—listen to the stories he has inside him.

He gives me a role model for embracing living and experiencing every gift of our breaths of time. A lesson I am still trying to completely learn, if I ever totally will.


Photo: Dad with his redbone and redtick coonhounds, Bones, Smokey and Shane, who shared many nights with him. He is standing in the basement of the addition he built to our previously 1 bedroom house, so it could accommodate 4 kids.