Talkin’ Trash

When I was a little girl, I’d spend hours at the kitchen table spinning elaborate webs with my father. At times, he’d be drinking, and we’d make plans for all the things we were going to build and the places we were going to go. My mother called this talkin’ trash. But I didn’t care because for those few hours I had Daddy all to myself.

 Once, we’d planned to build a lake on our twenty acre lot. I reveled in his every word. He even pulled his ink pen from his shirt pocket and started drawing the plans on a paper towel. I actually looked forward to the hand shovel digging as well as the backhoe digging. I imagined pulling the large rocks from the earth and placing them to the side to use as foundation to hold our piece of mastery together.

 Then there was the time that Daddy had me convinced that we could become peanut farmers. I think that time, he brought home a big bag of peanuts still in the shells. We sat at the table and smashed the shells, savoring the taste of peanuts and salt, and he laid out the facts of how one goes about growing peanuts. Then he said , ”you and I can do this. You in?” I shouted back a “you betcha”, and the plans continued until I got too sleepy to stay up any later.

 Often the theme came to getting horses. This was one I loved until it came down to the details. We’d have to house it at my grandmother’s house at the base of the mountain which was a mile uphill. The kicker was that the horse would have to be fed every morning which meant I’d have to get up about five o’clock to walk there and get it done before school. That dream quickly lost its luster.

 All three of those ended up being probably more work than fun. But there was one such plan of his that I never grew tired of.  My father had owned a Harley in his younger days. He would say that he was going to get another one with a side car for me. We were going to take a road trip from Virginia to sunny Florida. My vision of a side car was that of a VW bug somehow attached to the handle bar and tire of the bike. Yes, not feasible, I know…and it was many years before I actually ever saw a bike with a side car. He’d go into detail about the places we’d stop at and how much fun we’d have. We actually did end up taking a car trip to Florida which was nothing compared to what a motorcycle trip would have been.

 Thinking back, I wonder how much talkin’ trash he was really doing. As adults, we often hold in the things we’d like to do for fear of being scoffed at. But through the eyes of a child, anything is possible. I always love the dreaming, creative side of my father. Now, I still get to get a few hours of his undivided attention at his kitchen table. At almost eighty, he isn’t spinning tales of the future but he’s feeding me the rich and colorful tales of his past. And you bet your bottom dollar I love every minute of it!