Pops (the other one)

My dad was Pops to Andrew (the only grandkid here when he died), so hence the title of this post. I have had all of these shirts of my dad's for years now and was looking for a good seamstress to make something out of them. So, while I was on maternity leave this summer, I found a quilter and asked her to make two quilts from all of the shirts (one for Caden and one for Ensley). It's just perfect...

From iph 11413

I remember him wearing all of these shirts. Since this blog is how I am trying to keep track of Caden and Ensley's lives and big events, I thought I would also share some memories of my dad, so that they will have them here as well. Caden is at the age where he is asking more and more questions about the man whose picture is right next to my side of the bed.

Robert Allen "Al" Johnson, Sr. (Pops) October 22, 1944 - May 8, 1999

Most of the shirts that were used to make the quilts were long sleeved, collared shirts. I don't have very many memories of my dad wearing shorts (I know he did in his earlier years, but later on, his staple was long sleeved collared shirts and khaki pants). He would wear t-shirts, but with khaki pants.

My dad also didn't cuss (at least we never heard him). Maybe some of my uncles could disagree :). If he was mad (which was rare), you could hear him say "hot dog-it", or "golly" (pronounced gaw-lee).

He listened to the oldies station all the time (or even tapes of oldies songs). And you didn't change his radio station in the car...Robert, my brother, once joked that Ryan and I were the only kids who knew all the words to all of the oldies songs in elementary school.

He loved to cook and he loved to sing when he cooked...mostly made-up songs. My favorite was "I got to go to Mexico, I got to get away to Mexicay". I'm not sure why, but most of his made up songs were about Mexico :).

There are so many more memories of him, but those were a few I wanted to share. I hope to tell Caden and Ensley a lot more stories when they are older so that maybe they will feel that they knew him, too...