Dootnie Speaks: Last Trip to Cellar Mountain – Part 1
My Dad, Dootnie, died June 27, 2010 of complications from cancer surgery. He was 71 years old. I intend to write a full-length post about fulfilling Dad’s request to be taken to Cellar Mountain after he died, but I haven’t finished thinking it out yet. April 29 would have been his 72nd birthday. The day [...]
A Blast From the Past
I wrote a piece back in November about hunting season, and how it wasn’t going to be the same with my Dad not being around. I saw in my web analytics tool today where I got a referral link from the website of The Blue Ridge Bear and Coon Club. I went out to take [...]
Heading Out to NYC
My family and I are heading up to New York City for a couple of days. We’ll be driving – we find that to be less of a pain in the butt than the expense, headaches, and groping of flying. The city is great the week before Christmas – we first did this in ’03, and [...]
Dootnie Speaks (11): It’s Hunting Season
It has been almost five months since Dootnie died. It’s been two months since I last wrote a post about him. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about him; that happens every day, several times a day. One day in October I was reading the post about the day he died, and I had to [...]
Dootnie Speaks (10): The Things He used to Do
I was up at my Mom’s house at Pine Forest last weekend to do some work. Debbie and Lindsey and I took a power washer and spent the better part of the afternoon washing the house. She went to Crewe as we were finishing and brought back some pizza for us to eat. As we [...]
Pine Forest Nottoway – a tour, of sorts
I went out to Pine Forest yesterday to cut grass and fish a (very) little. I spent about four hours cutting grass and trimming around the pond, and maybe thirty minutes fishing. I’ve written about Pine Forest a lot, and I thought I would put together a post to show you what it looks like. [...]
Dootnie Speaks (8): Jacques Cousteau, move over
Dad told us lots of stories over the years about the things he did as a child. There was a page in Dad’s book that asked about a “clubhouse or hideaway” that they had as a child, and it asked him to describe it: Our hideout was the metal sided garage on the back of [...]
Dootnie Speaks (7): The importance of showing up, and school activities
As a child, my parents drilled into me the importance of showing up. Dad taught by example: In twelve years of school I only missed 1 day in Junior High School, and in 33 years of working for Southern States Cooperative, Vepco, and Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, I had perfect attendance. I thank God [...]
Dootnie Speaks (6): On Work
Dad was a hard-working man, and he taught me and my siblings about the value of hard work. Not through words so much, but through example. His diligent and progressively more responsible work over his teenage years and adult career earned him and my mother a comfortable retirement. We were not well-off by monetary standards, [...]
Dootnie Speaks: The Great Marble Drop
A brief introduction My Dad, Frank Reid Sr., passed away on June 27 – just a few weeks ago. After the trauma of his not-entirely-unexpected but too-soon death from complications related to renal cancer, my siblings and I have had some time to reflect and remember some of the things we loved about him. He [...]
Vacation Visitor
The Reid clan is enjoying our vacation getaway in Corolla, NC, on the Outer Banks. We had planned this outing at the last minute (vacation-rental-wise, anyway; you usually have to reserve one of these houses six months to a year in advance) for all of my siblings and their families to get together with my [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: The show must go on…
Image by nimboo via Flickr Five days, thirteen hours, and six minutes. That’s how long it’s been (at the start of this writing, anyway) since my Dad passed from this place to a better one. Our faith in God gives us assurance that this is so. Our faith in God also assures us that he [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: Three
By now, a lot of you that know me know that my Dad -Dootnie- lost his battle with cancer this morning. That little gem -”lost his battle”- is one of the fancy, but palatable, ways we use to say “he died.” I (we) now have a better appreciation for the grim details that are covered [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: Two
An update Dad at Pine Forest, Christmas 2008 Last night, nurses informed my sisters that Dad was off of both of the vasopressors (the drugs that raise blood pressure), and that he appeared to be regulating that on his own. They also said he was being fed through a tube – this would be the [...]
Dootnie vs. Cancer: One
Image of Franklin L. Reid Note: I’m writing this series of posts for two reasons: to fill the gap left when Dad couldn’t write on his own blog anymore (privately followed by our family and friends, it was his way to communicate what was going on with his chemotherapy treatments); and, because I can’t think [...]
The "Anti-Bird Machine"
I wrote earlier in the week about helping my Dad build an enclosure for his new blueberry plants. It’s an 8′x10′x8′ structure assembled from 1×2′s, a couple of 2×4′s, and some chicken wire. We finished everything but the door – I had framed it up, but it needed to be painted, covered with wire, and [...]
Save the blueberries!
Well, sort of. There aren’t actually any blueberries yet, but there will be. My Dad got some blueberry plants with the intention of growing them for the first time. He’s been doing gardens for as long as I can remember, but never planted blueberries. One of his brothers told him about growing them, so Dad [...]
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