Dear old dad

If I still had a scanner, I would post a black-and-white snapshot that resides on my bookcase. It is over forty years old and features two men flanking a boy holding a long stick, standing behind a campfire. The hills of New Mexico are a soft grey in the background; by the shadows, I would say it was taken right after breakfast. I am the boy; my Scoutmaster stands to my right, my father to my left. They are the two men who had the greatest and most positive influence on my life. They taught me a lot more than camping skills.

Fast forward twenty years from the photo, and I am standing on a ladder in a house near the outskirts of town. A man named Edwin is telling me how he built that house. Hanging a ceiling fan in his living room, I am a captive audience, murmuring the appreciative, "Oh, you don't say. Really?" as needed. He tells me how he and his wife did every bit of the work themselves. Of course, the mortgage loan officer at the bank didn't like that idea one bit. The bank wasn't about to loan Edwin the money for that house if there were no subcontracters. So Edwin marched upstairs to his usual banker and told him to close out his accounts. The banker calmed him down and Edwin told him the story. So the banker had a suggestion. "What if I make you an unsecured loan for the materials you need to get started? You could start paying that off and when you get ready for more materials, we'll arrange another loan?"

"Well," says Edwin to me, "that's how we got this house built. Yessir, if it hadn't been for Harry Howle, we might not have had this house." That stopped me. Harry Howle was the man in the photo, the one on my left. He never talked about work when he came home at night. He just laughed and gave us hugs and gave Mom a great big kiss.