Hazel

My Daddy was a farmer and he worked for a man named Mr. Blinco. One of Daddy's jobs was to walk alongside a hay wagon pulled by a team of shiny black horses. The fifty-pound bales were lined up like soldiers at attention waiting for my Daddy to hoist them up throwing them over his shoulders above his head and landing squarely on the hay wagon. My Daddy was tall as the doorways in our house. He stooped slightly to come through those doors and his wavy, auburn-colored hair flopped on top of his head. My sisters and I happily flocked to his heals begging to be picked up and allowed to perch on a wide shoulder or held like a sack of Idaho spuds under each arm with a heavily muscled forearm encircling a tiny waist. There was always at least one little girl who preferred to wrap herself around a leg straddling a size 12 boot to enjoy the thrill of a boot ride. Back in those days, we didn't know anything about amusement parks and carnival rides. We could think of nothing better than boarding our Daddy and hearing his laugh and an occasional raucous song from his days in the Civilian Conservation Camps as he carried us around the room while we squealed for more thrills. Looking back, we didn't even recognize the raucousness of those songs because Momma would say, "Don't sing that one." Daddy's look of chagrin was quickly replaced with mirth and his hazel-colored eyes would sparkle with new exhilaration as he started a different song. Daddy told me once that he had "Hazel" eyes then he would wink at my mother and she would laugh at him. It was much later I realized the significance of this little flirt, because her name wasn't Momma, it was Hazel.