Dad

My dad was born in 1928. He remembers things back as far as when he was two years old. I think that is pretty amazing. How many people can say they remember something that happened 80 years ago? Dad remembers the Depression, but not like a lot of folks do. One of his famous quotes is, "We didn't have anything, but neither did anybody else. So we didn't know any different." He talks about not being able to buy a car until the war was over. And he has told me on several occasions about being just a boy and going into a bar with his dad and having a beer. Dad vividly remembers the days when he and several other cowboys drove cattle to "Coker" which was a train station where ranchers drove their yearlings to load onto trains for delivery, probably in Omaha. He served our Country during the Korean War as a radioman in the US Navy. And Dad was a rodeo cowboy, riding rough stock in his younger days.

Now days, Dad is still a go-getter. He can and does do more work than most guys half his age. I kid you not...Last summer he built a fence by himself, setting over forty posts with manual posthole diggers in one afternoon. He still ropes and rides and is a damn good cowboy and cowman. He can still ride a buckin' horse, too. You can ask just about anybody around and they will tell you that Jim Doyle has good cattle and knows how to handle them. My dad is well respected by most in our area as an honest man who would do just about anything for anybody.

Lest you think I wear rose colored glasses when it comes to my dad, well, truth is, I just might. But I know the old fart has faults and isn't perfect. For one, he's a bottle ass. If you don't know what a bottle ass is, it's someone that blunders around. I inherited my dad's mechanical abilities...which are none. But I also learned and/or inherited a lot of cow knowledge from my dad, too. My dad hates conflict. He will do just about anything to keep the peace. This is a trait I admired most of my life, but I see now that occasionally Dad allows himself to become the victim in his effort to avoid conflict. I have vowed not to let this happen to me. So I end up shooting off my mouth, much to Dad's embarrassment....I am working on that, by the way.

I see that my dad is not as strong physically as he used to be. In fact, I see that a lot. I am now stronger than he. That is an odd thing for me mostly because all of my life, Dad has been larger than life. He could, in my eyes anyway, do anything. He has always been a very intelligent man, willing to try new things. His mind is still very sharp, but as he likes to say, "he is wearing out, not rusting out." Which means he is using every ounce of his body to work, not sitting around waiting to die. That, I admire tremendously.