Backwoods Blog

JOIE DE VIVRE

Backwoods Blog;

in the woods and on the road…

This is one of my favorite photographs of my father back in the day…I have no idea how he got on top of the post or how long he stayed there (perhaps the photographer got a quick shot?) but I think it captures his playful attitude and love for life.  Whenever I hear the phrase “joie de vivre” I think of my father posing on top of a post as if life was a grand thing indeed. I’m still trying to identify the man holding the post, but my best guess is that it’s Howard Wotton who had recently married Dad’s older sister Velma earlier that year. If there are any family members who can help identify the man holding the post please let me know. 

My father also had a fascination for new technology and gadgets. I remember him telling me about the time he sent away for a build-it-yourself radio from a mail order catalog when he was a teenager. The family didn’t have one of those new-fangled radios and Dad thought it was time they did. It was an exciting day at the old farmhouse when the small table-top radio arrived (even if it did require some assembly) and Dad assured everyone that he would figure out how to put it together in time for the radio shows that evening. Well, Dad was never known for following directions and he probably tossed the instruction booklet aside, but sure enough, he had the radio up and running (without too much trouble) by that night. In subsequent years Dad showed the same enthusiasm for victrolas, televisions, reel to reel tape recorders and VCRs as he did for that first radio set all those years ago.

When it came to driving somewhere in an automobile, I found it interesting that he rarely played the radio. It turns out my Dad was very zen. When he drove his vehicle he simply drove his vehicle. (He also tended to drive slow and look around a lot.) Instead of listening to the radio my father had the odd habit of whistling as he drove. I had the sense that he had done this for years, probably dating back to the days before cars or trucks had radios. On long road trips with my father we’d start out talking, but eventually the conversation would wind down and we’d ride along in silence (no radio).  Then, like clockwork, it was only a matter of time before the whistling would start. It wouldn’t even be a song, it was just improvised whistling; whistling simply for the sake of whistling. Over time I began to appreciate this odd, old fashioned habit. These days, every now and then, I’ll turn my radio off when I’m driving just to clear my head and I listen to nothing but the sound of a moving vehicle. I’m not much of a whistler, so I don’t whistle, but sometimes I do hear distant whistling in my mind. Find joy in every day.

In the woods,

Dave

April 27, 2022