Telling Dad “Hi”

When I was about 15 year old, I decided that I was tired of just ducking my head and trying to be invisible when Dad got home from work. I decided that I would make the effort to at least tell him “Hi” when he came home. For a while, I would just get a […]

Building the Ham Radio; Helping Dad see color

Dad bought a Ham Radio that was “some assembly required” or in other words it was delivered as a kit and had to be assembled from scratch. The radio had hundreds if not thousands of transistors that had to be soldered on the board. The transistors had color stripes on them that told you what […]

The starter in my Mustang… (Don’t buy parts from Shucks)

The starter on my Mustang had died.  So I went down to Shucks and got a replacment starter, took it home and installed the new starter.  When I tried to turn the car over the starter would just smoke (literally).  After messing around with it for about an hour trying to get it to work […]

Purchasing the Mustang

Once I joined the Air Force and got through tech school, I decided that I was finally ready to get my own car. I didn’t have any credit and the only way the bank would give me a loan was if someone co-signed for me. I asked Dad and he was adamant that he didn’t […]

The tub and the duct tape

There was a hole in the bathtub. I don’t remember how the hole got there, but it was there. The tub was one of those shower tub combo fiberglass units. It was the only semi-working tub in the house and since the family like to take soaker baths, what did we do? Replace the tub? […]

Coffee Maker for Christmas

One year I was looking a good Christmas present for Dad. I looked and looked but couldn’t find anything that I wanted to get him.  Dad was always driving down to the Circle K (at the time) getting coffee, so I decided I would get him a little 4 cup coffee maker.  I knew Mom […]

The Homemade camper

Back in the ’80s, my Dad decided to build a camper for our F-150 since we did a lot of camping and we had a family of 8.  My Dad who was a pretty handy guy built the camper out of tube steel that he welded together and then attached plywood to it.  It was […]

Dad’s stroke

This is a fairly long story, so you will have to bear with me. I was living at Middleton Idaho at the time which is about 40 minutes from Boise.  I decided that I wanted to get a new DVD player because the one that I had at the time was acting up.  So I […]