With this being Father’s Day weekend, I’m reminiscing about my Dad today. One thing that amazes me is how seemingly inconsequential things that he said during my time with him have stuck in my brain, although at the time I didn’t understand where they came from - I just figured it was Dad being Dad. Since he passed though, I occasionally will hear them in their original context and finally piece together the bits and have a wonderful “aha moment.”
An example of this is whenever we would see a goldenrod flowering, typically in mid-July when the early goldenrods would flower, he would hum “summer’s almost gone, winter’s coming on.” To this day, I can’t see a goldenrod without hearing him sing that line in my head. Until recently I never knew that he was actually quoting a line from the Kingston Trio’s song “Gotta Travel On.” It is interesting to me to see how the meaning was changed in Dad’s mind, being more of a lament about the passing of summer and the coming of winter instead of a young man’s need to travel.
I enjoy such moments as I realize Dad was an audio sponge (just like I am) and its really cool for me to be transported back to the 1940's, 50’s or 60’s through a random memory of a jingle he'd sing as an older man.
In memory of dear ol’ Dad, here’s a video of Gotta Travel On, although I’ll take a little creative license and link y’all to a Bob Dylan cover of it which I enjoy more.
Happy Father's Day all!
