The Reluctant Community Leader

When you live on a farm, socializing is rare. There are cows to feed, milk and care for in all types of weather. Putting up hay, setting, plowing and cutting tobaco and keeping fence rows cleared are all in the farmer's job description.

For my Dad, not only did he do the farmer's job, he also worked 40 hours per week at Union Carbide, taught adult Sunday School and played with us.

I don't remember much about how we started going to the Culleoka Community Club, but we did. My best guess is that my grandparents were active in it, and at that time, there weren't any government grants to do improvement projects to public facilities.

The homeplace circa 1959

It was always a pot-luck affair, and because I was so small, the topics of discussion are a little fuzzy. There is one thing I'll always remember, the night my Dad was elected president of Culleoka Community Club in absentia. My best friend Martha invited me to go with her parents. When I got home, I ran to the kitchen and found Dad with his head under the sink working to repair an aging pipe so Mom could fix breakfast the next morning.

Dad spent many hours at the barn.

It wasn't that Dad was anti-social, he just had a full plate, and community club activities weren't high on the priority list. He ducked his head out from beneath the sink, and I announced in an excited voice that he had been elected president of the club for the next year.

My father didn't use bad language, but after that announcement, I think he was tempted. I thought smoke would come out of his ears. It was a little tense in the kitchen to say the least.

After much discussion and protesting with my Mom, Dad said he would do it.

My father was good for his word; regardless of the task, if he was given it, he would do it to the best of his ability. I remember fair booths that he and Mom designed and built for the county fair publicizing the club. It's amazing what the two of them could do with a stapler, duck tape and bailing wire. We made visits to other community clubs as gestures of good will. There were probably other activities, but I don't remember them.

Dad and Hal built barn #2.

The infamous sink!

The photos I'm using relate a time period when this would have happened  Dad didn't like to have his picture made, and it was hard to catch him still anyway.

Needless to say I didn't make any other "surprise" declarations; I had learned my lesson.

Hal and me in the 60's.

Dad at Myrtle Beach visiting
his first grandchild in 1972.