My first recollection of my Dad was at a very early age, approximately two and a half to three years old. This is a very memorable recollection. I was raised on a farm. It was in the Winter time, rainy and very cold. We were in the house sitting by the fire. Dad had an "OLD" mule who's name was 'Old Sister'. I had been aggravating Dad for several hours wanting to ride 'Old Sister'. It was freezing cold and raining but after much aggravation Dad wrapped me in a blanket and carried me down to the barn in the rain and let me sit up on the old mule for about 15 to 20 minutes. He brought me back to the fire in the fireplace and got me dry and warm. I was a very happy little boy.The thing that Dad taught me that had one of the greatest impressions on my life was if you tell someone something "Do It" or tell them why. One of Dad's slogan's was "Always be on time. It is better to be 30 minutes early than to be 5 minutes late." Another slogan of his was "Shun the wrong and do the right in life regardless of the cost". Another of his sayings was "The darkest hours are just before the dawn". (Sometimes my son tells me it sure is a long night because sometimes he doesn't think it is going to get day light.) A good understanding in the beginning makes a long friendship. Also, if you owned your home without a mortgage, regardless of how hard times got and believe me they got hard on the farm; never, never let anyone have a mortgage on the roof over your head.
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| Welcome To My Dad's World.
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I have seen a lot of hard times on the farm. On the farm you have biscuits, eggs and what ever else that is available for breakfast. I can remember Mon telling Dad that was all the flour they had and seeing tears in his eyes and him saying that he didn't know where the next sack of flour was coming from. My family bought flour in 25 pound sacks. The best that I can remember a sack of flour cost about $.75 Dad didn't know how or where he could come up with seventy five cents.
I can remember Dad sitting on the back porch and looking out across the field. We wouldn't have had rain for as much as six weeks and the corn would fire up starting at the bottom. Dad would say you could strike a match to it and it would burn off.
Most times cotton was the cash crop. Corn was the crop to feed the animals and chickens and for corn meal to make corn bread.
I can remember some years when it would be a bad year and there would be as little as $100.00 clear cash to come through our house for the whole year.
My family either borrowed money from the bank in the Spring for fertilizer and seed to plant a crop or else bought the fertilizer and seed on credit from the store. When we would have a bad year I have heard my Dad say that it didn't look like we would make enough to pay for the seed in the Fall of the year at harvest time. But some how we made it due to Dad's hard work and wisdom. We never lacked for any of the necessities in life. We lacked for a lot of the wants in life but we always had food to eat and clothes to wear. We raised most everything that we ate except the staples that couldn’t be grown on a farm. But some how Dad would manage to sell some of the excess things that we would grow and be able to buy the other things that we couldn’t raise. We didn’t get the name brand things to wear or name brand foods. We always had what we needed. He taught the family to work. I was the youngest of seven siblings.
Dad lacked two months of being 50 years old when I came along. You see, at that time in life Dad was an old man when I was a teen ager.
All the times wasn’t bad. I remember a lot of good times, the fun things, the jokes and his laughter. I can think back now and hear that laughter and remember his chuckles.
Dad mostly left the farm in 1948 and went to work for Amite County in the road department. The farm was largely left in my hands to do the best I could until I finished school and left home in 1952.
Dad had colon cancer surgery in 1952. That just about ended his working days.
Dad loved his grandchildren and daughter-in-laws as all grandparents do but to him the grandchildren seemed to always be special. One reason I remember this so well is because I got corrected when I done things that he would say to their parents, “oh that is ok. It isn’t hurting anything”. But that is what grandparents are for. I remember when my siblings would come and bring their children and they would be small the parents would finely get one to sleep and after a little while Dad would go in and get it up and just hold it and sometime sing to it. Now that I am a parent I can look back and know that the daughter-in-law must have wanted to kill him. But Dad had a special relationship with his daughter-in-laws. Sometimes today I think that he loved them better than he did his own children. I know that he didn’t but he really loved his daughter-in-laws in a very special way. I just wish my mate and my children could have known him because I feel like they missed out on a lot of good memories. A daughter-in-law never come to my Dad’s home and went away without him going to the garden and gathering them a big bucket of some kind of fresh vegetable to take home with them.
My family didn't have a car. When we went to town or to the country store we went in a wagon. (This wagon I still own today.)
Dad believed if you had a piece of equipment it should be kept under a shed or in a barn. It was always to be greased or oil put on it before it was put back in storage. Dad believed that grease was cheaper than iron.
The wagon that I have at my home on display is still usable today at 65 years old. It will be given to the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum this next week. When I lost my Dad I was a grown young man that already knew everything and didn’t need to know anything else. Sometime as I look down where the wagon is on display in front of our home I think if I only could sit down and talk to Dad just thirty minutes what I would give but as always when you grow up it is to late. Dad wasn’t a smart man by the standard of education. But “OH” the wisdom that was in that gray haired man’s head.
Before Dad passed away March 4, 1955 (I was a grown young man) he wanted me to take him to town to buy himself a new pair of dress shoes. As we went along on our journey of about 10 miles he talked about the things that we were going to do that next year. It was some of the saddest moments of my life because we both knew his life was very close to the end because he had cancer. He wore those new shoes twice. "That hurt."
These are just a few of the things that my Dad taught me along with teaching me to work and that if a job was worth doing it was worth doing right and of this I have never been sorry. I have tried to live up to the expectations of my Dad to the best of my ability and have tried to pass these things along to my own family.
There is one other thing that I learned from Dad. When I obeyed him and followed his instructions I never went wrong or got into trouble.
Dad's favorite song was "I'LL MEET YOU IN THE MORNING". I am looking forward to that morning when I meet him up there what a morning that will be. The man that I have described was my Dad, Thomas Edgar Dawson, born August 28, 1885 and passed away after a lengthy illness March 4, 1955.
