Vade Sr.

This blog is about my Dad, Vade Sr. I have been thinking about this for sometime but the death of Tim Russert this past weekend increased my desire to start this and record some of my memories of my Dad. Keep in mind these are my memories and not necessarily Terry's or those of my Mom who passed along stories to Todd and Shannon also. This is just what I remember.

You know, smells are one of those things that you remember from the past as you grow older. May you all have that experience. I vividly now recall how my Dad smelled. He was a working man in a general store or two that he owned. He was large, about 265 and about my height. If any have seen the picture downstairs in the basement, you will notice that he wore sweaters over a shirt with a collar that would turn up on the edges. In my early years, he wore a formal hat. He came from an era where dressing well was the expected and the thing to do. Back to how he smelled; he had a musty smell, a mixture of all the things he sold in his store. Feed, seeds, a few vegetables, meats and cheese, tobacco, hardware, dry goods, gasoline, and much more. He was as his motto said "Almost Everything". Now folks didn't bathe then like we do now every day. He took a bath maybe twice a week and I mean a bath. Even the old bathroom where I grew up had a shower which I discovered years later, he got into a bath tub and wow, did he make a watery mess. He would fill the tub to almost overflowing and get in and lay there along with washing his large body. Lots of water on the floor! I remember he took a long time in the "tub" as my mom used to call it. She would tell me to get in the "tub"for my weekly bath also. Back to my Dad, so after a few days, he had the smell again. I loved it as he would hug me and I knew that familiar swell.

For those of you wondering when all this started, my memories of my Dad start in the early 1940's. My first memories are from around 1943-44 when I was four or five years old. This was during World War II so I have memories that the US was involved in this war of what in those days was pictured and rightfully so as a struggle of good versus evil. We heard on the radio news how the troops were doing, we went to the movies and saw newsreels and I knew and personally experienced word coming that a family member had been killed in Europe and others losing sons who were my Dad's customers or people we knew. More on this later.

But, my Dad left this wonderful smell that I can remember so well as he liked to hug and kiss me all the way until just a few days before his death when I was 17 and he was 49. He would grab me and simply hug and kiss me the best way! I have missed that.