My father made his living as a linotype operator in Washington, D.C.  He was well known and sought after for the quality of his workmanship.   He labored on the night shift at the Government Printing Office so that he could be home during the day with his two daughters while our mother obtained her nursing degree.  His joyful input into our lives during that period of time was very much appreciated by the two of us, especially on the days when we had a free day from school.  He would drive us to school in the morning in his black VW beetle and pick us up after school – sometimes with the cat lounging in his lap.  The awards he received from the GPO for his outstanding service are now hanging in my living room.  
    He belonged to a bowling league with his co-workers at the GPO; they called themselves “The Night Typo League.”  He wore a yellow and black shirt and black pants.  When we had a day off from school, Dad would take Beth and me along with him to do errands, and one day he took us bowling.  I was amazed by the weight of the balls, and could not pick one up with one hand.  He told me I could use a duck-pin bowling ball and showed me how easy it would be to use.  In fact, pretty soon, I would be bowling as well as Fred Flintstone.  He showed us how to roll the ball down the alley, and we were all ready to go.  The one lesson proved to be the only lesson, however. Mother told him we didn’t need to be doing that sort of thing anymore.  Actually we needed it very much – it was called parenting.
    When the large shopping center was built at the end of our neighborhood, the empty lot proved to be an excellent place to fly a kite on windy days, and my father would take us and a few of our friends down there to do just that.  The empty lot is long gone, but the memories I have of my father taking the time to do things with us remains vividly in my mind.   
Dad was easy to shop for at Christmas because he never asked for anything, needed everything, and was happy with whatever he was given.  The year I was a senior in high school, I  transformed a photograph into a watercolor painting. Dad had taken the photo of his two girls standing in the early morning sun in the sand dunes on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was the only time in my life I ever saw him choked up.   
He was calm in a crisis.  When I was five years old, I fell out of our blue Studebaker as we turned the corner onto Mayapple Road. There were no seat belts in cars in the 1950’s, and apparently no safety standards for door locks.  It was dark out and winter.  I was wearing cloth gloves and when the door sprung open, I fell out, but somehow managed to grab onto the window ledge and was hanging there with my little brown saddle shoes dragging in the street.  My very surprised sister tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Daddy…”  He turned around and saw me, but to my disbelief, didn’t stop the car.  He slowed down very carefully so as not to throw me when he braked, and only then brought the car to a full stop.  He got out, came around and put me back in the car.  When we reached home, he hugged me and told me I was very brave to grab the door like I did.  Even though I was whimpering and shaken, he told me I was alright as he examined my scuffed up shoes.  Had I fallen into the street, I would have been crushed under the back wheels.
Although an intelligent man, my father was never able to realize his dream of a college diploma, simply because he was too busy bankrolling everyone else from various private schools, colleges and universities; even Mother acquired her diploma from his efforts.  I married young, and earned my own degree later in life after seeing my five children into adulthood.  When I crossed the stage at the University of Tennessee, he was the person I was thinking of and I know he was so proud.
Dad was a giver.  I watched him glue his glasses together, his dentures together, spend hours in the driveway wiring broken car parts together (in all types of weather), and making do in every way because someone needed a music lesson, contact lenses, braces, a new prom dress or a class trip.  I remember only occasionally, he would quietly request a piece of candy from an overflowing trick-or-treat bag or an overloaded Easter basket, but never anything past that.  He never one time complained.  Not once.  Not ever.  
Due to my small stature, I was sometimes bullied as a child.  He handled it by demonstrating various ways of hitting someone in the nose and sharing a story of his days in the Navy, when he had been bullied also.  There was one particular shipmate who thought it amusing to ridicule my father – who was also small at the time.  One day, Dad hit the guy over the head with his dinner tray and “beat the crap out of him while everyone cheered.”  He told me that one day I would get fed up and do the same thing.  I inherited his Navy uniform after he passed away, and  I can barely get into the top.
My father taught me how to be strong, how to stand up for myself, and how to deck someone with a right hook.  He pulled out my baby teeth with pliers (sometimes the wrong one) and read me stories until he turned blue.  He taught me how to fish, how to ride my little blue bike up the street (after the training wheels were taken off) how to be brave at the dentist, how to parallel park, how to stand up to an abusive spouse and how to be one of the bravest single mothers on the planet - but that part would come later.
The home he purchased on Mayapple Road in 1954 was always his pride and joy; he loved to work out in the yard, and to paint and paper the inside.  Dad finished the basement himself, and would not allow any dust or grime to accumulate in that part of the house.  Although I am sure he now abides in a grand mansion near the Secret Place of the Most High , my guess is that it bears a resemblance in some way to the Cape Cod where I grew up.  
A former neighbor has always handled our family home owner and car insurance.  I had a nice chat with him as an adult after my daughter enrolled in their insurance club.  He spoke so fondly of my deceased father, and commented that he was the “hardest working son-of-a-bitch that he had ever known in his life.”  I shook his hand and said, “I know.”
The information regarding his heroism during the War came to me by way of my Mother, and his records obtained from the Department of the Navy; he was not a braggart.  Because of the way in which he conducted his life and how very little he received in return, I wrote this book reviewing the events of our lives in the house on Mayapple Road, and which none of could have taken place without the events that took place in his life, and the outstanding effort he extended to give us, and everyone else, the very best of everything.   
I have a decorative plaque standing on a shelf in my bedroom which states very simply, “My father didn’t tell me how to live, he lived and let me watch him do it.”
This book is a tribute to my father, Art Powell.  I hope he likes it.