November 17

2.5 C and sunny.
It rained all day yesterday with strong winds from the east. Snow on the higher levels.
I've noticed that the juncos have pretty well taken over the bird feeders, this is good as they don't waste or eat as much as the english sparrows. There was a quick visit by the titmice yesterday, they come in a flock, eat for a few minutes then away they go.

To take a rest from some of my writing I am reproducing some of the little things that remain from my Dad's writings. Unfortunately the articles he wrote for magazines are long gone as is almost everything else. The few short paragraphs you will see for the next couple of days are all that survived after the flood in 1956.

JACK’S MUSINGS

  Jack, Red, John or Dad, he was called various names and perhaps there were a few not always complimenatary ones.  But mainly he was known as John by his mother and mine and Jack to the rest of the world.

For many years I had no idea that he liked to write and I was in my ‘teens’ when I first remember his excitement of having a story accepted by Field and Stream.  They accepted and printed more, but I have no idea how many. Unfortunately I also don’t know what they were about as none of them survived.  Apparently after I left home he continued writing for his own pleasure but while he and my mother were away visiting in California in the mid 1950’s a flood swept through their home and destroyed most of his papers.  The few things I reproduce here are all that survived.

The first. 

The other afternoon when I was out on the gulf trolling I chanced onto the most mixed up tug boat man in existence.  It was a beautiful, calm warm evening, even the normally cold waters were warm.  A tug was bearing down in my direction, barely moving over the glassy calm sea, a large log-boom in tow.  A man appeared on the fore-deck of the boat with a trumpet in hand, slowly as if his inspiration for music was coming from a dream he lifted the instrument to his lips.  As the beautiful notes came drifting across the water I was emotionally moved.  Even at that I found the whole thing ridiculous.  On this warm evening his repertoire consisted of “White Christmas”, “Silent Night” and all the other familiar Yule songs and carols.  Either the guy is a humorist or an Australian and the summer atmosphere made him homesick.