Appreciate Dad while he's still around

I must admit that my life has been so rich and full that any regrets I still have are few and far between, and rightly so. Four wonderful children. Three exquisite grandchildren who, all by themselves, are sufficient reason to look forward to each day. Seven great towns in which I've lived, each of them creating great memories, experiences and friends.

I do, however, have two or three regrets, and there's nothing at this late date that I can do about them. One of those regrets is that I didn't appreciate my father nearly enough until after his death.

Perhaps it's the approach of Father's Day that has me thinking about him again.

Come the first week of September, Maynard Acheson Knox will have been gone for 43 years. He was born in 1895 when South Dakota was only six years old and raised in a dirt-poor family (I think, in those days, every family was). The Knoxes lived off the land in the Little Bend country of far western Sully County on the wild Missouri River, just a few miles below the mouth of the Cheyenne on the opposite shore. He went to Europe with the U.S. Army during World War I. He met my mom after she and her parents, the McConnachies, came out from Illinois so my mother's dad could build the high school in Onida.

My dad was 43 when he and my mother were married, and he was 44 when I was born the following year, so it was to be expected that, once I got into my mid-20s and beyond, Dad would be reaching the age when any additional year of life is a gift.

After his cancer was diagnosed in 1962, he survived 3 1/2 years until Labor Day weekend of 1965. He made it to age 70, the age I will be as soon as next year. Dad lived long enough to know his first grandchild, my niece, but only as an infant. She was barely past six months old when he died. My own married life wouldn't begin for another 5 1/2 years, so Dad never knew my wife nor any of my kids or grandkids. He would have enjoyed them so much.

My dad was such a good and decent man and so highly respected in the community. I remember hearing that so often at the time of his funeral and afterward. And without a doubt, he was a rock-solid pillar of any group to which he belonged.

Though the Onida Presbyterian Church probably could have survived without him, it didn't seem so to me back when I was a teen-ager still living at home. He was an elder in the church, but it was the things he did for the church that he didn't have to do that left an indelible impression on me. If a door needed fixing, he did it. He saw to it that the lawn at the church was mowed long before our own grass was cut (I suppose that's only fair since he had two teen-age sons to mow!). The sidewalks at the church were shoveled and plowed before there was ever a path out to our garage or out to the street alongside our house. He saw to it that any problem that arose with the minister and his family and their house was solved.

He was a proud and devoted member of the American Legion. In his possessions we still have his Legionnaire's cap. I well remember him in the color guard at the cemetery or at Memorial Day programs.

The Masonic Lodge and the Eastern Star chapter, though I never understood just what they did or why they existed, were important to him. He served in every official capacity either organization had. If he missed a meeting of either one, there must have been a very good reason.

I don't know if the fact that his love of the outdoors didn't carry over to me, his older son, was a disappointment to him or not. I didn't ask, and he didn't say. He was an avid pheasant and deer hunter, and he was a state championship trapshooter.

One of my fondest memories is all of the trapshoots we attended all over the state. I wasn't a shooter, but I was one of the best trapshooting scorekeepers there ever was, and getting to post the scores on the clubhouse scoreboard after they came in from each trap was a treat.

Maynard Knox was the epitome of hard work. He had at least three jobs, each of which seemed full-time to me. Dumb kid that I was, I couldn't get it through my head that he worked so hard and so long for us---Mom, John and me.

First there was his mail route. The Onida post office, with all due respect to anybody who followed him, never had a mail carrier better or more devoted than my dad. On summer school vacation days and sometimes on Saturdays, I got to ride his route with him. Rural Route 2 went out of Onida to the west, then circled around to the north and northeast. The Ripleys, the Seamans, the Weischedels, the Brookings, the Lomheims, the Pierces, the Todds, the Westphals, the Hoovers---I can still see in my mind where their mailboxes were. In those days mail carriers had to reach across their front seats and put mail in boxes through the passenger side windows, so, in my mind at least, having me along was a help to my dad. I don't know if he thought that I was or not, but geography nut that I was, it surely was a kick to see where all people's mail came from before I placed it inside their boxes.

One of the jobs Dad had for many years in his afternoons after he arrived back in town from his mail route was as handyman for Bess and Agnes, two spinster companions who owned and operated a great deal of farmland and rental properties as well as owning the county's abstract business. They always had a long list of things for him to do. One of the perks of Dad working for Bess and Agnes was that they were fond of me. Occasionally they took me inside their house, the biggest house in Onida for sure, for treats. When older and more responsible, I got first pick at a summer job in their abstract office.

The other opportunity to spend quality time with Dad, though I never considered it as such at the time, was on his rural assignments with the county ASCS office. For many a summer, I was Dad's "partner" as we criss-crossed Sully County to get test samples of farmers' grain from out of their bins. We bagged them, hauled them back to town and saw to it that they were mailed to the state office. I recall how exhilarating it was to hear, when Dad got into town from his mail route, that we didn't have to go out for the ASCS that day. I wish I had a few of those days back.

The most vivid image of the day we buried my dad was sitting in the car at the cemetery, waiting for what seemed like an endless line of other cars coming from town to join us. As my mom watched those cars, inching their way along the gravel road toward the cemetery, she mused, "He meant a lot to a lot of people, didn't he."

Just the other day I was writing in this blog about some of the fun things I am enjoying doing with my almost-4-year-old grandson this year and next in Vermillion. Hours in the park on the playground equipment, running bases in the empty baseball park, walking the dog, watching big semis thunder by from the rest stop out on the interstate, and on and on. As I was writing, it became a nagging worry to me that I couldn't remember doing hardly any of those same things with my own kids.

Had I just forgotten such priceless moments? Is my memory not what it used to be? I surely should be able to remember clearly what would have taken place within the last 30 years!

Oh, I well remember their school activities, of course. They never went to a music contest or enjoyed a band trip when I wasn't along with the group. A treasured memory is the Christmas Eve services at church---it almost became tradition at the Methodist church for the Knox kids to sing with their dad accompanying them on the piano. There were the summer Broadway musicals we shared---"Music Man" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Fiddler on the Roof" and others, usually with the kids on the stage and me in the pit orchestra. But did we ever play out in the yard? Did we ever take Buppy for walks? Did we ever take time to swing at Griffin Park or play catch?

As I sat here at the keyboard that day, trying to squeeze an experience or two out of my memory bank, I almost panicked as if there were anything I could do about it now with all four of the kids 28 or older!

I'm thinking there probably weren't all that many such occurrences, and I know why. I was always working, that's why. For 17 of the best years of my kids' lives, I was publisher, editor, newswriter, photographer, bookkeeper, advertising salesperson and No. 1 worrier for the weekly newspaper we owned 32 miles from where we lived. I was gone constantly, and it was not fun. It was genuine work, and I despised it. Thank God the kids had their mother.

And for all of the years the four kids were in high school, I was working at another full-time job as well, this one from early morning till early afternoon, the other one from early afternoon for as long as it took, and it usually took evenings, sometimes all night, and most weekend hours. Now that I look back, it all was quite ridiculous. But at the time it seemed necessary.

The fact that I'm getting to spend so much quality time with Dylan at this stage in my life is a blessing I don't take lightly. Kicking a soccer ball in the yard or watching the "Dumbo" CD for the umpteenth time or fixing his favorite Tuna Helper lunch (again!) are memories I hope Dylan remembers, years from now, even though he isn't yet 4 years old.

But while I'm still around to read and remember, there's something I want my kids to do between now and next February when I celebrate (is "observe" a better word?) my 70th birthday. I don't need a new tie or a new watch or a new shirt, but I'd like them to write down some memories (especially the happy ones) they have of their growing-up years, things that I apparently don't remember. There surely must be some! I wasn't working around the clock, was I? Put 'em in a book, tie a ribbon on the front, and that's the best birthday present I could imagine.

In the meantime, not only this weekend when it's Father's Day, but year-round, if you readers are fortunate enough to still have your dad, count your blessings and share your memories with him.