Guest Post: The Gambler

My mom has the best stories of our family. I have begged her for a while to start writing them down, and now she is under the guise of ’guest posting’. I know, how funny is that? Like anyone reads this blog. Anyway, here is one of her stories on her Dad, my grandpa. I’ll be back tomorrow with a Daily Rant and Daily Picture.

One of my favorite sayings that pops in my head is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” The same can be said of life. I just found out in the last few years about the man, the real man, that I called my father all of my life. He was called a lot of thing Calloway (his given name), Cal, grandpa, old man- but to his only daughter, to the day he died, he was always Daddy.

He was a hard working, multi-talented person (he could fix anything) who always thanked my mother for the meal she fixed, who loved his children unconditionally and was there for me whenever I needed him. Like the one time a kitten got in the garage and on my way to work at four in the morning I (gasp) ran over it! Who came and cleaned it up? My daddy.

The things I’ve learned about him in the last few years have been amazing. Calloway was forced to stop his “formal” education at the age of ten, and stay home and help on the farm. Think about that. The girls could go to school but the boys in the family could only go till the age of ten at the directive of their father. They were needed at home or as they say in Hazard, Kentucky- “down on the farm” I learned this from researching census records.

Daddy was raised in the hills of Kentucky, where coal is king. It was common then (and sadly, still somewhat common now) that once boys were old enough – about 14 or so- they were to go into the coal mines. Calloway decided he was going to follow a different path, a path that did not include dark pits, company stores, and black lung. He father walked out of those hills at the age of 14 and joined the army. This was in the 1930′s.

Daddy once told me that he saw a moonshiner kill another moonshiner ‘down thar in them thar hills’. I ask him what he did. ”Nothing” he replied, “if I had done something, I would have been killed.”

My grandfather was married five times. He outlived all of the wives except the last one. My father was married once. It was a marriage to last a lifetime.

My older brother in recent years has told me stories about dad’s days after returning home from World War II. Apparently, he made a LOT of money gambling when he was in the Army. One of the stories I heard was that guys that were playing cards and losing would come and get him to sit in for them and win the money back. Dad played on the US Navy ships; everyone knew what a card-shark he was but, of course, they all wanted to take him on.

The best story about Dad’s gambling happens after he came back from the war. My brother told me that when Calloway returned from the war (my brother had already been born and I was born in the mid-40′s)’; he continued his card playing, drinking ways. He was so good that one night in our home town of Louisville, KY, someone pulled a knife on him. Guess they weren’t happy about losing their money. But that knife made an impression. That was the last time my father played cards (well, at least with drinking and gambling involved- he still played a mean game of pinochle at the Thanksgiving family gatherings). Dad apparently said that he realized that he had a new baby girl at home and he had to take care of her.

And that’s how I came to be spoiled rotten.