Dad

Dad
in his backyard haven

Thursday 12 April 2012

One of my favorite stories about Dad

When I got married I lived in a different state than Mom and Dad. I did a lot of the planning and tried to make it stress free for family. I did happen to assign one important task to Dad.

Dad was responsible for choosing one song for us to dance the father/daughter dance to at our wedding. I even went so far as to send him a CD of "Father/Daughter Dance Music" made for the occasion.

Before he and mom flew out for the wedding I asked him - "Dad, do you have the CD?" "Oh, sure. Yes, it's all ready."

Fast forward to the wedding night. The DJ is doing his young, uninformed thing and it's time for the Father/Daughter dance. Dad and I start out to the floor, doing some sort of waltz steps. (Dad, by the way, is a great dancer. I think we can attribute that to Catillion and strong parenting from Vern and Betty.

As we head around the dance floor a few times, I notice the sound of a locomotive's chug going on in the background. There was no bass, no tempo. Just the chug of a locomotive.

"Dad, is this the song you chose?" I asked with an endearing smile on my face? "Sure! From your CD!" he replied.

After a few chugs, there comes the whistle of a train.

"Dad! What is this?!" I asked in panick.

"Oh, the wrong CD must have gotten in the case! You know your mother. This is the Denver and the Rio Grande..."

we quickly waltzed over to the DJ...

"Go to backup!" I order. "Go to backup!

Dad and I kept dancing that night. All throughout the beginnings of a locomotive ride through the Rio Grande and into some other song that I will never remember now. I really don't know if anyone in the crowd noticed as much as we did. It will forever be one of the highlights of my wedding.




4 comments:

  1. Don't forget his extremely sunburned head. Dad had been skiing days before and managed to at least apply sun screen to his face. But when he took off his hat because he was warm he didn't reapply. Poor dad had a super red head and I'm not talking about hair color. Your pictures must have been touched up!

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  2. Katie: I remember the red head too - I was just going to add that part. If you look closely you can see the red dome.

    Now, as for that "your mother must have switched the CD's" - like, REALLY? When would I be listening to D&RG? love you - m

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  3. Haha! I would also like to add that at my wedding, Dad was a way better dancer than Ryan. I feel like when Ryan and I danced we were in middle school. Dad had me twirling and spinning.

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  4. One of my earliest memories of dancing with your father include our regular escapades to the Hollywood Palladium where Lawrence Welk and Band played on Friday nights for radio and TV. Dennis would try to impress me with the finest places; so we went dancing at the Palladium! At one point Welk played his famous polka ~ everyone was on the floor! The men wore large cuffs on their slacks back then and we women were in stilettos. Picture THIS - my heel got caught in some strange man's cuff and down we went, dominos - the whole floor!

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