This isn't really about genealogy research, but it's a story about my dad, so I guess it belongs here anyway.
My father, Merrill Hunt, was a hard person to buy gifts for. He wasn't really interested in stuff, except for tools, and what he couldn't afford to buy in that department he built out of spit and duct tape. Including a portable sawmill. There's only so many sweaters a man can use if he isn't named Mr. Rogers.
But he was a great reader, notwithstanding his lack of formal education. That and fishing were his main leisure activities as he grew old. (And I suspect he generally took a book along when he went out in the boat to fish.) So one Christmas I gave him a stack of paperback books to take along on his winter trek through the RV parks of the Southern states, to be traded for others as he finished them in the informal laundry-room libraries that develop in those places.
As he looked through the stack he saw Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey. His eyes lit up and he said, "I remember reading this as a boy." That moment felt like the only time I'd ever scored with a gift for him.
Fifteen years later, after he died, my mother handed me a box of books he'd collected over the years - all by Zane Grey. My gift had sparked a quest to track down as many of Grey's books as he could find in flea markets, rummage sales, used book stores - wherever cheap paperbacks are found. There were over fifty books in the box. So I spent that summer and fall reading those books. I was totally immersed in Zane Grey's universe.
The Grey-verse is a very consistent place. There are two kinds of men there - cowboys and villains. Cowboys are brave and honest and true. Villains are not. A cowboy who goes astray can be redeemed by the love of a good woman. But any woman who thinks she can reform a villain is asking for abuse, and she will have to be rescued by a cowboy. (Grey's women are strong and brave themselves, and are often the moral center of their families and communities. But they live in a world full of violent men and often need protection.) Cowboys also love the land. Villains acquire land because it's the key to power. If cowboys own land it's because they can't imagine a life without dust on their boots.
As I read these books I started to realize that my dad saw himself as a cowboy. These were the books he read when he was a boy learning how to be a man. He was never happier than when he was out on his land - planting corn, baling hay, harvesting timber. And he stood ready to take care of his womenfolk - no matter how many times we insisted we didn't need that.
His four daughters, coming of age in the 60s, lived in a world that didn't seem to have a place for men like him. We wanted to be independent, adventurous, self-reliant, and we thought he was hopelessly old-fashioned. Which he was. But now that I'm in the same position with my sons, I've begun to understand how much he shaped my personality. I may have scorned it at the time, but there's a basic core of security in my heart that came from the knowledge that my dad was always there for me. There's a moral center that came partly from him too, because his vision of how to be a good man was a pretty good pattern for how to be a good person. His love for the land was also passed down. When I was seventeen I was desperate to get away from the farm and live in a city. Now when I stand on that land, it's as if my feet are sending out roots to draw nourishment from the soil he tended for so many years.
I hope his grandchildren remember him as I do - a cowboy, brave and honest and true.