I may have been only three years old
or so, but I loved an adventure. I also
loved my dad – Mel Brady. I would go
anywhere with him – just to be with him.
That pretty much happened my whole life.
Dad was a dynamic man – always moving, quickly, to the next thing.
He and Mom (Randolyn Sharp) were
married on June 12, 1950. I was born on
November 19, 1952. Nineteen months
later, my sister, Cindy, was born. About seventeen months after that, my
brother, Jim, was born. Mom was swamped
with kid stuff, and I was a busy, curious, loud, fast instigator. Consequently, Dad became my nearly constant
companion. Wherever he went, I
went. Even to work. In those days, Dad worked at Kitchen Craft as
a commissioned salesman. As often as
possible, he would take me to his small distribution warehouse where he would
follow up on orders and make sure his product was shipping to his
customers. That small warehouse is my
very earliest memory.
It was somewhat dark, and a little
daunting. The shelves with boxes of pots
and pans were stacked high on metal scaffolding and looked scary. Dad told me that if I climbed on them, which
indeed was my plan, that they might fall over and I would get hurt. I believed him.
There was one item that fascinated
me. I’d never seen anything like
it. It was round, like a ball, but it
had a black, stickie-out-thing on each side.
It would sort of roll, but the stickie-out-things stopped it from
actually rolling. It would not bounce at
all. I decided that it was a really
terrible ball. But, it had some awkwardly
cute bird-like things on it. Dad called
them pen guns. I wasn’t sure what a pen
gun was, but it looked funny and I liked it.
It stayed in our family all my
life. Even after my parents’ death, I
kept it. I remembered all the times I
filled it with ice for a party. It
brings other pleasant memories to me even now.
If this is passing to you, I hope you enjoy it. But don’t try to bounce it. It’s still a really terrible ball.
