16 December 1928 - 18 June 2008

• He was Dan, Daddy, or Paw Paw.
• His eyes were light blue.
• I never saw him wear any type of shirt other than a button-up. After his strokes he insisted on relearning to button his shirts even though it would have been immensely easier for him to start wearing t-shirts.
• He was as stubborn as a mule.
• Every time I went to see him and Gee Gee, he was sitting in his armchair to the right of the door. He would always reach out to the side to hug everyone as they walked in.
• He didn't like pizza.
• He loved fried fish and knew how to sop his plate with a biscuit like nobody's business.
• He loved to tell the story of how I leaned over Sarah's bassinet and told her to "BE QUIET!" the first time Mom and Dad brought the two of us over to Gee Gee and Paw Paw's for supper.
• He remembered all sorts of little funny moments that nobody else could.
  • "Dan, you've got a mem'ry like an elephant."
• He smelled like chewing tobacco.
• He always had a dog.
  • Anna and Mack were his last.
• He kept a vegetable garden and a pomegranate tree in the backyard until he no longer could.
• He drove a light blue pick-up truck. I don't remember the make or model.
• He always kept orange and grape soda in the fridge of his workshop.
• The first time I went to see him in the hospital after his first bad stroke, he was unconscious but he held my hand when I touched his palm. It made me sob.
• I smelled chewing tobacco in my room the first two nights after he died and again at his funeral. I believe that it was him letting me know that he was okay.
• He called all the women in his life "shug."
• His catch phrases - if you could call them that - were "Oh me!" and "Yah, mule!"
• One of my fondest memories of him is when I was five or six and we were visiting his family in Opp. He, Sarah, and I went and sat beneath a pecan tree in the yard and he cracked pecans for us to eat. It was autumn.
• He only ever listened to old, twangy country music.
• He loved old Western movies - horse operas. Before he died, we got him several Western novels on CD that he listened to often. I got the CD player after he died.
• He was quiet and kind, but he sure could pout.
• I only ever heard him tell three stories from his childhood.
  • He had thirteen siblings, and he used to tell us that his daddy nailed sixteen tin plates to the table - one for each person - and no one was allowed a new plate until they'd sopped the heads off the nails. This is how, as he told us, he learned to sop with biscuits so well.
  • The second story was his first time working in the fields all day. (His parents were sharecroppers.) That day he only brought an apple to eat and nearly passed out because he got so hungry. From that day on he brought an entire pail full of food to eat while he worked.
  • The third story was of the time he went to visit his aunt, and his mother told him that he better not ask anyone for food because they'd all be eating shortly. He hid behind a door just outside the kitchen and said "huuuuungry, hungry, hungry" quietly until his mother found him and shooed him outside.
    • Now, during family gatherings, whenever the cooking is going too slow someone says "huuuuungry, hungry, hungry" until they get chased out of the room by the cook(s).
• He dropped out of school in the eighth grade. After I graduated eighth grade he told me I was officially smarter than him.
• He loved coconut cake and chocolate cake.
• Occasionally, I dream that I visit him in the former master bedroom of my grandparents' house. He's sitting in the armchair that my great-grandmother sleeps in when she stays with my grandparents. I hug his neck, and then we sit and talk for a while. I never remember what it is that we talk about. I wake up from these dreams feeling quite happy and comforted. It is as though he visits me in my sleep.
• When I sit in the old garage or explore the old garden sheds, for the most part untouched since he died, I feel close to him.