The word for Week 27 is Solo.

For my father it did not start out that way. My father, Harold Smith, was the second born child of Everett and Lillian Smith. He was born on August 29, 1928. He was born four years after his big sister, Lucille. Lucille died when she was six of Streptococcus that has spread to her bloodstream or as it is better known today, Sepsis. It was in the days before penicillin, it happen so fast and then she was gone.

My Dad was three when she died. He had no memories of her. Only photos that he had been shown from his parents. All he remembers was being an only child. He was a minister’s kid. You know the kind of a kid who had that little twinkle of the devil in his eye. He was a good kid with a plan.

One day playing with matches in a field behind his house, he started a small brush fire. I wish I had been there to see Everett and Lillian’s reaction to that! I remember him tell us that he took Grandpa Everett’s new car out on the ice to do donuts soon after he got his drivers license. I wish I had been there for that too.

He was a playful person his whole life. Always ready for a fun escapade that more often then not he had dreamed up. He and my mother married on May 28, 1950 and fourteen years later they had six children. When he married, he knew from the very beginning that he would have a big family. It was hard being the only child. No brothers and sisters to play with or get in trouble with.

He always had a sense adventure coupled with a silly, playfulness. He was always ready for a snowball fight in the winter or a water fight with the hose in the summer. In later years, he joined the grandsons in water balloon fights with a balloon launchers.

He thought nothing of following an old logging trail to see what we could find. We entered more that a few places that we should not have in a station wagon loaded with kids. On more that one occasion, he got the station wagon stuck in mud or sand. He had to hike out to the main road in search of help in the form of a tow truck.

This is from one of those occasions. We were stuck in sand in what was being developed as Algonac State Park. Dad’s curiosity got the better of him and we got stuck. He hiked out and found a tow truck but in the mean time seven of us sat in the station wagon and someone we all know and loved had a poopy diaper, the mosquitoes were as big as fighter jets and just as fierce. All memories that are just as vivid today!

Some of our adventures meant finding wildlife; bears, deer, elk, porcupine, skunks and raccoon. It was hard to afford to take a family of eight on vacation so we went camping! If it rained, we would go for a car ride adventure. What else can you do with two adults and six kids camping in a tent? We have gone to local dumps to watch the bears or any dirt road that might lead to wildlife. We sometimes would follow a fire truck to see where it was going…at a safe speed of course! No one ever knew what adventure was right around the corner or down the next road.

My father took exceptional care of his parents as they aged. My Grandfather, Everett, had MS and was wheel chair bound. Our family went regularly to Detroit to visit them. And brought them out of Detroit to rural Romeo to our house for every holiday. He did this in the days long before handicapped parking spots and vehicles equipped to move wheel chain bound people around. He bought a used panel van and retro fitted it for Grandpa wheelchair. He enlisted help from his friends to go with him to assist in the loading and unloading of his father and his wheel chair.

A few years later he found a van with windows so his father would enjoy the ride better. From the mid 1960 until Everett died in 1978, my father took his father everywhere he needed or want to go. Tiger ball games, church services, weddings, reunions, holiday events. If we were not taking them some where we were visiting them. As an only child, my father felt the strong responsibility he had to his parents. I remember him tell us on more than one occasion how lucky we were to have each other.

SO this is just a snippet view of an only child who had not planned on being solo but was…and how he made the best of it!

Happy Hunting,

Jan