Seems my father had good life figured out

The last time I saw my father was on Father’s Day in 1990 — 13 days before his last breath.

Slowly dying for four years from asbestos at an east Texas steel mill, he had no interest in gifts. All he cared about was breathing and spending time with his large, extended, diverse family.

Guy Sloan loved the outdoors and it seemed cruel, after years of back-breaking labor, he was only able to enjoy retirement for a few months before developing asbestosis from the job that allowed him to feed so many offspring — but killed him at 71.

His last few years he coughed so hard it sometimes broke his ribs.

While he read Scripture — including “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” — on his deathbed from where he told me he wasn’t afraid of dying, Mother took comfort in him growing closer to the Lord.

Toward the end, he got baptized in our bathtub — shouting “Glory” as they pulled him up while it took off some skin.

Last Sunday, the day after I attended the ZZ Top/Jimmy Buffett concert in Frisco, Texas, I received a South Pacific “blast from the past.” A Navy woman, whom I served with as electronic spies on Guam in the 1970s and had not heard from since, contacted me through Facebook. She asked if I was the Wendel Sloan from Guam who liked Ogden Nash.

In Nash tradition, I replied, “Yes, unless you express a transgress you’ve repressed for me to redress.”

After searching through old photos, I found several of her (and me). Since we were strolling beaches, conquering cliffs and exploring jungles, we must have been dating (possibly even engaged briefly) — before the beauty got tired of the beast asking her to get out and push his car backward because the reverse didn’t work.

(Who took the photos is long forgotten, but maybe I had an extremely long third arm and invented selfies.)

I also discovered several photos of my father — including black and whites I had processed in college classes he helped pay for.

Guy was fishing in neighbors’ country ponds (when they weren’t around), walking down railroad tracks while hunting quail with his regionally famous bird dogs, riding four-wheelers with my mother, using his carpentry skills to build sheds on the “20 acres.”

I hunted with him a few times, but my aim was so bad I endangered his buddies. So, I started shooting with a camera.

My father seemed accepting of my choice and, when he saw the photos, I think he thought we’d both turned out fine.

Despite never owning a cell phone or computer and only getting three grainy channels with an outdoor antenna we manually rotated, Guy was never idle, bored or uninformed.

While I thought his country lifestyle was boring, now the photos make me envious of how fully, humbly and naturally he lived a life that valued people over ephemeral distractions.

This Father’s Day I’m left behind to ponder how a fifth-grade graduate beat his master’s-educated son in figuring out just where it is we go and what is this all about.

Contact Wendel Sloan at: [email protected]