Today's Feast Day...

Today is the date of my Father's death. He was 83 years old and as I told in another blog, was the Father of all ten of us!!!! It is, in the Catholic Church, the Feast Day of St. Joseph, the Foster father of Jesus. How appropriate that my father would pass away on this Feast Day! Dad was a good, hardworking man and like St. Joseph, was kind to all of us and we never went without a meal in our lives! And even though it wasn't (what, in these days, is called State of the Art), we always had a rood over out heads! He converted to the Faith shortly after marrying Mother and never let his Faith down. He was, in fact, the only one of his family that had any religious affiliation. I seem to remember, way back, when I was a very small child hearing the family talk about an Aunt Effie who would attend whenever a traveling preacher, or whatever came to the area. I don't even remember much about her except that she was very tall and had married, at that time, a second husband, who according to the "family Gossip" was a real loser!! Poor Aunt Effie! Her first husband, I understand had left her! I do remember the family telling how clean she was and the couple of times I saw her, she always had the whitest apron on!!! Enough about her! This is supposed to be about Dad! He was a farmer when he met Mother and had gone into partnership with an older brother to buy a big ten room house and after Mom and Dad were married 11 months I came along!!! My Uncle and his wife had two children, my cousin Cecil, who was 5 years older than I and he had a sister Eva. She got into a bottle of aspirin when she was a year or so and they couln't get her to the Dr. in time. My Uncle died also a little later on and my Aunt, to put it bluntly took over the house! So Dad and Mother went to Everett, Washington where he found work down on the docks on Puget Sound, loading and unloading ships!! Then, by this time he and Mom had six children, the youngest was born just outside of Everett in a small community when he got word that my Aunt wanted him to come back and take over the big 10 room house in Wawawai! (This incidently is where, my sister Genevieve, brother Bob, and even though we lived in Wawawai, my brother Laurence was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho more Mom's sisters and her father, my maternal Grandfather lived. Grandma had died shortly after, maybe two months, after we came back to Wawawai and she died in Coeur d' Alene!) But to get back to this and I may have to finish it after "Merry Maids" have gone. Bye. Continued in a few minutes!!!