By Jan Jackson
The late Milford L. Kellar
I want to tell you a story about my father. To do that, I’m going to go back 45 years to April 1, 1981. And I’ll tell you without giving a spoiler alert, I thought this story was funnier than he did.
First a little about him. He was a smart guy. He was a logger, a longshoreman, a musician, a carpenter, a gunsmith, a fisherman, and a voracious reader. When he was home, and he loved being home more than anything, he was usually sitting in “his” either playing the guitar or reading. He only read nonfiction – newspapers, magazines, and books.
When I said he loved being home, I’m saying he DID NOT LIKE TO TRAVEL. My mother did. She went on almost every single tour I ran. She would come home with stories and photos about everything she saw and did and that was the way he liked it. I did get him to go on one tour; it was to Death Valley. He loved it but having done it, he wasn’t interested in doing any more.
Mother also left him well taken care of. She prepared food ready for him to just heat up or put in the oven. Except for the time he ate the hamburger meatloaf raw (like a Dane), and a little bowl of cold gravy he thought was pudding which even a Dane wouldn’t do, leaving him thus worked out well.
On this day, Mother had just come home from my weeklong cherry blossom tour to Washington DC. On the kitchen counter was a large platter loaded with little baggies filled with raisins, nuts and miniature marshmallows. She said, “Milford, what are these little bags of food for?”
“Well,” he said indignantly from his chair, “You left without leaving something for the trick or treaters, so I had to come up with something on my own!”
She said, “What made you think it was Halloween?”
Still indignant, he said, “Well, I read it in the paper.”
With that, he got up from his chair, picked up the newspaper, walked into the kitchen and handed it to her so she could read it for herself.
And there it was. In a Peanuts Cartoon by Charles Shultze. Lucy sets up a stand to offer Halloween treats to Charlie Brown. Dated Wednesday, April 1, 1981.
Want a takeaway? Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. Especially the funny papers.
