Daddy Was A Cowboy

If he hadn't died thirty-eight years ago at the age of fifty-eight, my father would have celebrated his 96th birthday today. He would be an age still within the limits of today's life expectancy.
My father was a cowboy. He could smell rain days away from its hitting the ground and he could see on the barest of desert soil enough green to feed a mother cow. He tipped his hat to women and allowed his eyes to tell you what he felt if you were brave enough to look right into them. He played the harmonica and provided the only music by which he and my mother ever danced -- the 'put your little foot right there' dance. Then they'd turn to the right. Then they'd turn to the left. Then they'd turn to the right. Then they'd turn to the left.
Once my Aunt Cassie admitted that her parents and her grandmother couldn't actually remember the date of my father's birth. Apparently giving birth at home in the early 1900s could be a fairly intense experience during which the participants could easily lose track of time. My grandparents, according to Cassie, figured that my father's conception took place just about the time Arizona became a state. As my aunt told it, election day in 1912 was on November 6th. And so in honor of the first election of the baby state's statehood, my grandparents declared that day the birthday of their only son. That and, as my aunt later remembered, there was a big storm that night and they didn't want to forget about that, either.
Happy birthday, Daddy.