Barefoot Lily Lady

Memories are stirred when I find an old photo here – a notebook or binder there. Even though he’s been enjoying his heavenly home for 15 years, I am still occasionally stumbling upon some of his things, like the cardigan sweater I see every time I open my closet.

Speaking of my closet — that closet seems to always be in desperate need of a major sorting, rearranging and dusting. Not long ago, I spent a little time doing just that. As I sorted, one of the memorabilia binders I created for my dad’s funeral service in 2008 caught my eye. Right next to that binder was another one which said, “FALK” on the spine. I decided to take a little break from my cleaning to explore the pages of the second notebook. I slid the 3-ring binder off of its shelf, then plopped on a guest room bed for a little page-turning reflection of a slice of dad’s life.

It soon became obvious that this binder contained items Mom had saved from dad’s years of working at Falk Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were some cool black and white photos of the giant gears he worked on in his career as a mechanical engineer.

There was also an envelope tucked in the back pocket of the binder. I opened the envelope and found a number of newspaper clippings related to an explosion that occurred at the plant in December of 2006, after dad had retired. Sadly, three people were killed and forty-seven others injured. Cars were reportedly flipped through the air and debris scattered over several blocks. An investigation of the cause of the disaster uncovered leaks in a pipe running below the plant building, which supplied propane to the heating system.

Of particular interest to me was one slightly damaged photo which showed him as a young man dressed as I remembered him, right down to the well-appointed pocket protector.

This photo brought back a childhood memory. Most little kids don’t really have a handle on what their dad does for a living. I certainly didn’t. I proved that point one day in kindergarten.

We were seated on the linoleum floor in a circle around our teacher, Mrs. Kramer, who had just read us a story about the jobs that people do. She then asked us to share what our daddies did for their job. I listened as my classmates each took their turn sharing about their dad with great pride: there were firefighters, a doctor, a teacher or two, and there was even a dad who helped build houses. All sorts of cool jobs. My turn came and I was still clueless, so I said the coolest thing I could think of at the moment. “My daddy works in a candy store,” resulting in all sorts of “oohs and ahhs” from my friends. I beamed with pride.

Well, my parents learned of my daddy’s newly fabricated job description when Mrs. Kramer brought it up at parent-teacher conference. It gave them quite a laugh. I didn’t get in trouble for that, but my parents made sure I went to work with my dad a time or two so I could see what he did. Turns out that mechanical engineering is not quite as cool as working in an imaginary candy shop.

But, those giant gears were pretty incredible.

The company also had a little newsletter called, “The Falk Reflector.” Mom had saved a few copies over the years. I noticed mom had marked a few pages, so I turned to the pages she thought were worth noting. Mom marked a paragraph sharing this funny bit of anecdotal shop-talk concerning my dad.