Chat
09-20-2020, 06:31 PM
Thanks. I had so many photos it was hard to pare them down to fit into the three songs my mom picked out. The first song was my dad's all-time favorite. It's a very obscure flash-in-the pan that was a local hit on one radio station in Dallas for a very short time in the early '70's by a guy named "Cooker." My dad had it on a 45 record and would play it for us when we were growing up. Cooker's voice always made us laugh, as did the line, "...or you wouldn't even though of it." The photo of my dad in the curly gray wig near the beginning was of him performing as Cooker and lip syncing the song at a talent show party we had when I was a kid.
One thing I'll say about my dad... there's almost not one photo where he doesn't have a huge smile on his face (unless he's making a funny face!) and that's how he was in real life too. He had a great smile and an even better laugh.
Something you would have appreciated, Herb, was his love of cars. I believe his first car was a '72 Buick Skylark in dove gray with a black top. He special ordered it with a cassette player instead of an 8-track which was pretty cutting edge. He also had that old 1940's pickup truck he called "Fred". Fred had no muffler, belched clouds of black smoke, was missing floorboards (you could see the pavement if you lifted up the floor mats), the bed wasn't bolted on, and it rattled your teeth out. But he had an Oldsmobile 454 engine in it so it was powerful and pretty darn fast. My dad's mother-in-law planned out my parents' whole wedding and was super picky about every detail. She even forced my dad to wear that horrible gray tux with the floppy tie and frilly shirt. So he got the last laugh by driving Mom away from the wedding in Fred. My grandmother was horrified.
My dad bought a broken-down '69 AMX when I was in high school. He fixed it up and painted it "Big Bad Orange". Did you notice the license plate? "UR2LOUD". He also had that Hummer for most of the 1990's and did 4WD tours around the Alpine Loop. He loved scaring his customers by driving real close to the edge of the cliffs and he loved teasing them mercilessly. He got struck by lightning on one of those tours but lived to tell the tale. He also did towing jobs with the Hummer and had some pretty crazy stories of people he pulled off the mountain.
And then there was the medical skeleton he buried in a cave (Phil and my brother Tim were accomplices to that one) and caused a huge ruckus and ensuing investigation when it was uncovered by a hapless tourist. I have so many crazy stories about my dad going way back to his childhood. It's a sure sign he lived a great life!
One thing I'll say about my dad... there's almost not one photo where he doesn't have a huge smile on his face (unless he's making a funny face!) and that's how he was in real life too. He had a great smile and an even better laugh.
Something you would have appreciated, Herb, was his love of cars. I believe his first car was a '72 Buick Skylark in dove gray with a black top. He special ordered it with a cassette player instead of an 8-track which was pretty cutting edge. He also had that old 1940's pickup truck he called "Fred". Fred had no muffler, belched clouds of black smoke, was missing floorboards (you could see the pavement if you lifted up the floor mats), the bed wasn't bolted on, and it rattled your teeth out. But he had an Oldsmobile 454 engine in it so it was powerful and pretty darn fast. My dad's mother-in-law planned out my parents' whole wedding and was super picky about every detail. She even forced my dad to wear that horrible gray tux with the floppy tie and frilly shirt. So he got the last laugh by driving Mom away from the wedding in Fred. My grandmother was horrified.
My dad bought a broken-down '69 AMX when I was in high school. He fixed it up and painted it "Big Bad Orange". Did you notice the license plate? "UR2LOUD". He also had that Hummer for most of the 1990's and did 4WD tours around the Alpine Loop. He loved scaring his customers by driving real close to the edge of the cliffs and he loved teasing them mercilessly. He got struck by lightning on one of those tours but lived to tell the tale. He also did towing jobs with the Hummer and had some pretty crazy stories of people he pulled off the mountain.
And then there was the medical skeleton he buried in a cave (Phil and my brother Tim were accomplices to that one) and caused a huge ruckus and ensuing investigation when it was uncovered by a hapless tourist. I have so many crazy stories about my dad going way back to his childhood. It's a sure sign he lived a great life!