My Dad

What does a teenaged girl do when her dad starts singing and tap dancing in right front of her very best friends? She turns bright red and groans a lot, of course. How 'bout when he plays Babaloo on the bottom of the garbage can as he brings it in from the curb after trash pick up day? She hides in the juniper bushes, of course. And when he stands up at Camp Fire Girls banquets or at school functions and proudly states 'That's my daughter!' Well, she dives under the nearest table and prays for a fire alarm and a mass exodus from the building.

But that was when I was much younger and really didn't appreciate the fine art of being truly, unselfconsciously goofy. That is my dad's most lasting legacy to me, the ability to laugh at myself.

My dad was born Junior Ralph Bishop in Barnard, KS, on July 14th, 1921, the youngest child of three, and the only boy. He changed his name to Ralph J. Bishop when he moved to California just before WWII, where he joined the Coast Guard in 1943 and proudly served on the USS Muskogee for the duration.

Daddy was a meat-cutter by trade, and a fabulous gardener, even after my folks retired to the desert in 1984. He played the guitar, sang, was active in church, and loved to do paint-by-numbers--he decorated walls of the garage with them!

He and my mom were married on Sept. 5th 1946 and were together until she died in 1996, shortly after their 50th anniversary. Boy could those two cut a rug on the dance floor! A true and lasting romance. After he died in 1998, we spread his ashes on a hilltop in Wrightwood, CA, on the very same spot where we had spread my mom's nearly two years before. It was their 52nd wedding anniversary. And to celebrate in the grandest, goofiest style, we blew soap bubbles and let the breeze carry them out over Apple Valley.