My Dad’s Cross Country Adventure

“Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, storytellers and singers of song.” ~Unknown

Happy Father’s Day to all of you – those who are dads and those of us who have dads. There’s nothing like a dad, but it’s also true that our dads weren’t always dads. They used to be boys and then young men looking to the future, trying out their wings, finding their independence. This picture is my dad on his motorcycle long before he became my dad. The year was about 1932 and he was getting ready to take off across America all the way from Kentucky to Oregon.

What a way to see the country! What a way to say I’m ready to be on my own now. His mother wasn’t happy with him. I’ve never heard anybody say what his father thought. Maybe that he wouldn’t make it. That he’d turn around and come home before he got a hundred miles down the road. Or maybe he was proud of him for wanting to do something a little daring. Or he might have been worried he’d never come home. Lucky for me, Dad did come home and meet my mom some eight or nine years later.

But that trip was Dad saying I’m old enough now to do what I want. His parents weren’t happy about it, but he went anyway. All the way across country on a motorcycle. I’ve always thought I got my grab hold of a dream or goal and keep on keeping on spirit from my mom, a very determined woman. But now that I think about my dad and this trip, I’m seeing he had plenty of that perseverance and focus too. He wanted to go, so he did. And all his life, it was something he looked back on with pleasure and pride. Riding by the Grand Canyon. Nearly running out of water in the desert. Eating nothing but cantalope for a couple of days because someone was selling them cheap by the side of the road. So many adventures.

I look at the young man in the photo above. That was before I was even a thought he might imagine. He was young, footloose and fancy free and he took advantage of that.

Years later when he was almost forty, I came into his life. His last child after two other daughters. I remember the motorcycle. It sat in the corner of the garage for all my childhood years. Dad didn’t ride it. I think it needed repair. But he kept it for many years. A symbol of freedom. Of independence. He finally sold it and I think regretted the sale almost immediately.

I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for a farm boy like Dad who had probably never gone farther than Louisville (about 60 miles from here) to just take off. To shut his ears to his mother’s pleading for him to give up such craziness. My mother remembers Dad saying his mother even offered to give him money she’d hidden away for a rainy day if he would stay home. In her heart it was storming for sure. No cell phones back then for him to stay in contact and allay her worries. I have no idea if he called when he got to his relatives’ house in Oregon. Maybe he sent a postcard.

Now I wish I could hear more of Dad’s stories about the places he went on that motorcycle. I wish I knew the Dad before there was me. And I wonder if my children ever wonder about the girl before the mom. I think that’s sort of what we all want – for our loved ones to see us as we see ourselves. Unique, one of a kind, our own person.

That’s what writers need to do with our characters too. To know them is to breathe life into them. And some of them are fathers. I’ve had some good dads in my stories, but maybe none better than David in my Heart of Hollyhill books. He was a dad anybody would treasure. Then there’s Victor in Angel Sister. Victor loved his daughters and yearned to be better father in spite of his flaws and troubles.

My dad wasn’t perfect either. But then who among us is? But he was a good dad and he surprised some people by buying a motorcycle and heading west. Maybe himself most of all. I’m sorry I didn’t ask more about that trip. More about when he was a kid. More about so many things.

If your dad has passed on the way mine has, what do you wish you had asked him while you could? Or if you still have your dad with you, what stories do you most like to hear from him? 

Thanks for reading. Since I’m still working hard on getting edits done by tomorrow, I grabbed some of this post from my archives, one I wrote in 2011. If you read it then and amazingly enough can remember it, I hope you will enjoy reading about Dad again.