It’s funny the little things I remember about my father. If you were to ask me what I remembered most about him, I would have to say he had large hands. They seemed twice as big as mine.

His hands were rough from years of working on the farm. They were tanned, scared, and stiff from being out in the weather, and building fences.

Before I came along those hands held the reins of mules that he followed through fields of cotton and corn. Those hands had been pricked by cotton bolls dried in the hot Mississippi sun.

Those hands held foals and broke unridden horses. They milked cows. Those were the hands of a small-time farmer struggling to get by.

Those hands held his father’s old shotgun that brought home rabbits, squirrels, and quail to put on our table.

During World War II his hands manned the guns on a Sherman tank while he served in Patton’s Third Army. Those were the hands that liberated a concentration camp and rescued a small boy that had lost his family during the war. His hands brought to America a small dog, named Yank, that had befriended and watched after him and the men in his tank all across Europe.

Those were hands that lifted me up when I fell and held me when I was a child. His were the hands that instructed me how to work on the farm. And those hands spanked me when I had done wrong.

Those were the hands that held the Bible he read at night and led me into church on Sunday mornings.

Those hands taught me how to drive a tractor and pop the clutch in our old truck. Those were the hands I shook before I hitch-hiked back to college after a weekend home.

Those hands welcomed my fiancé into our family and helped me restore an old house on the farm.

Those were the hands that pulled me close to him and hugged me when I told him how much I loved and respected him shortly before he died. I should have told him sooner and more often.

He loved the Black-Eyed-Susans that grew on the farm and those were the hands in which I placed one shortly before they shut the lid of his casket the day after my birthday when I was twenty-four.

I wish those hands had been around to greet my children and grandchildren but they were stilled years before they came along. Stilled and folded holding a single Black-Eyed-Susan for eternity.

There are days I sit and look at my own hands and wonder if they could ever measure up to my father’s. Have they done enough? What is left for these hands to do?

It’s odd how life works out – the things we remember. Father’s Day is upon us and his favorite flowers are beginning to grow and bloom in my flowerbed here in Kentucky. When I see them, I am reminded of him again. - All the things he did for our family. Our country. And me.

Yet, when the Black-Eyed-Susans come each year, all I can see in my mind’s eye are his hands. The hands that raised me.

Happy Father’s Day Daddy.

_______________
Rick Algood
June 14, 2019