Daddy

Well, I have dreaded begining my dad's story. It is a sad one, but he was never a sad person. It was the family who could have been so much better off had he been more ambitious. Every week of my life, after I left home at 18 to enter East Carolina University, I wrote a letter to my mother. I don't know if he chose to read them, but I knew she looked for it every week, and I never disappointed her unless I was out of the country with no way to post a letter.

After she died I did not feel obligated to write to him every week. Occasionally I would write, but he never wrote to me. One day I got a letter from my cousin Helen saying that he had asked her to write and tell me that he had cut his finger and couldn't write. I wondered, after all the years, what the other excuses might have been. Emmett Roland Stroud was a very intelligent man. His last year of school was grade 5, when his report card shows scores of 100% in every subject. It looks legitimate, but knowing the reputation held by himself and his three younger brothers, it does make me wonder. I wonder if she (the teacher in the one room school house) was attractive, easily charmed by the future ladies man, or if she was encouraging him to stay in school. I believe that was the last year, and in order to advance he needed to go to a boarding school. His older sister's husband recognized that he had a good brain and offered to finance him, but he wasn't interested. They were building a consolidated school, and my mother was able to go there through seventh grade, but Daddy did very few thing that he did not enjoy. Life was about good times, and sometimes it took a little work

I do know that he was an avid reader all of his life. Aunt Ruth found a subscription receipt from a newspaper he subscribed to when he was only twelve. He was hungry to know the political news. I remember when Roosevelt ran for his second term. Two men came to our house in a Model T Ford. I sat on the running board and listened to them persuade Daddy to vote for the Democrat. He never missed an election, and loved to argue politics. I did not know he had switched politics until Richard Nixon was about to be impeached and he and my husband got in a big argument. Ted was furious, but Daddy just laughed and never got mad. He just stood his ground, and he was well informed, not intimidated at all by the high and mighty university professor, no matter how many times Ted called Nixon a crook.

When Daddy was the youngest going to school, my grandparent's house burned down, and as neighbors always do, they collected clothing to give all the children. There were not perfect matches in every case, so the oldest brother had to wear a girl's coat to school the remainder of the winter. On the long walk to school one morning they heard the rumbling of thunder. Uncle Hubert sarcastically remarked that it was probably another load of girl coats. When they got together at family picnics, I loved to hear the stories of the "old days" when every student took lunch to school in a coffee can. Inside could be anything from fried chicken to salt pork and cold corn bread. Punishment was having to stand behind a screen hung with coats called the cloak room. On the floor was the line of coffee cans. Everyone knew who usually brought the best food, even a slice of cake or pie sometimes. It was worth getting punished to have a chance to exchange your lunch with a better one.

They always told the one about the outdoor toilet and the boy who was fishing in the hole under the toilet seat. I don't think the word "gross" was used back then, but they had some equally repulsive criticism, "Why would you want a coat covered in that filth?" they asked when he said he had dropped it in.

His answer was, "But my lunch is in the pocket!"

My dad's favorite trick was to unsnap every boy's cap which had been hung on a nail over the coat, so that when they ran for their things at the end of the day, and hurridly put them on to go home, every boy's cap came down over his eyes.

The brothers would hide behind bushes when they heard a buggy approaching and jump out to scare the horse. They told about stealing an egg from Grandmammy's hens on the way to school, and as they passed by the store they would have one brother go into the store and trade the egg for penny candy. The storekeeper would take the egg, place it in a big bucket of eggs, turn his back to get the candy, not seeing the boy take the egg back. Then when the same egg was produced from a different pocket, the boy would ask, "Could I get a piece of peppermint with this egg?" And on and on, digging deeper each time, and producing the same egg until he had traded it enough that each of the boys could enjoy a treat.

I can remember taking two eggs wrapped in cotton and going to the country store near my school and trading them for a small spool of thread for my mother. Ah, the country store, with boards that squeeked under your feet, a front window covered with fly specks, Coca Cola and small packs of Planters peanuts which we poured into the bottle to get a mix of nuts with each swig. What a treat! Only when the hens were laying especially well could we afford such a luxury.

I knew men who had much worse habits than my father. They used dirty language or drank openly, smoked, beat their children, slapped their wives, and he did none of those things. We just felt neglected, unimportant. I think perhaps it was good for me to want to do well to gain his attention and respect, but mostly I did my best because I wanted to make my mother feel good about something.

I hated the way she had to ask him for money to buy school clothes for us. One day she asked if he would take us to town before school started. He parked the car and stood on the street corner. We all stood there with him, the sun shining in my mother's face, making her squint. Maybe he had forgotten why she wanted to come to town, because he asked, "Well. what do you want?" She reminded him that she needed money to buy us some shoes. He took out a roll of bills from his pocket and slapped it in her hand as he told her to stop grinning like a monkey. She did not cry on the street, but I did, to see her so humiliated.

We never wore shoes in summer. Daddy joked that when we started back to school at the end of summer, he had to put a little sand in our shoes to get us to wear them. Actually, I took mine off and left them in the school bus. When I got home my feet were always black on the bottom. One day I knew they were taking group pictures, so I wore them all day, and I was the only one in the picture wearing shoes. Some of the little boys only wore bib overalls - no shirts!

One day a neighbor asked if I wanted to make some money. He paid me to thin his corn seedlings by pulling all but the healthiest plant in each hill - easy job, and he paid me a dollar. I was so proud of my earnings. Daddy asked me if I would lend it to him. I ask what he wanted to buy. He asked why it mattered, didn't I think he would pay me back? I told him that if he wanted to spend it for beer, I wouldn't lend it to him. He got so mad, and stalked away. I felt so powerful! I was six or seven at the time.