Another Adventure With Dad.

Hello everyone on this cloudy and very rainy autumn day! We have a lot of rain and cloudy weather lately. That is knocking a lot of the nicely colored leaves off the trees. Just when it was starting to look so beautiful with all those different colors. Oh well, there will be more yet. The temperature improved quite a bit yesterday though, however, it was cooler today, but it will be warmer tomorrow. Then, um, cooler next week again. Typical fall weather. Up and down.

Okay, enough with the weather reports on to adventures! Now, just so you don’t think this happened just the other day, because it didn’t, I will let you know right from the start, it didn’t happen just the other day. It was quite a number of years ago, in my younger days. Not that I’m old now, I just look that way to fool everyone. Inside I’m just as young as ever. Unfortunately my body disagrees with me about the young part. Anyway, on to the adventures!

One warm autumn day Dad and I went digging for old bottles. Dad liked insulators better. But occasionally we would go bottle digging. Anyway, we were looking around this old abandoned place and came across what we figured was an old well. Full of water. “Wonder if it is a well”, I pondered. “Most likely,” said Dad. He put his shovel in a little ways. “Looks deep,” he said. “You only put the shovel in a little,” I said “see if you can touch bottom.” “It will be too deep,” said Dad. “I’ll try then,” I offered.

“NO!” said Dad and he swung the shovel away before I had a chance to grab for it. Unfortunately the shovel hit the side of the well. And it slipped out of Dad’s hand. There was this kind of quiet ‘sploop’. We both stood there watching the shovel disappear from sight down the well. “My new shovel,” Dad said quietly. “Yep, it certainly looks deep,” I said. “Bonehead!” exclaimed Dad. That’s good. At least he wasn’t upset about losing his shovel. “Oh well,” he said, “now I won’t be able to dig for bottles.”

“Sure you can, you can use my shovel,” I said cheerfully, “I brought my extra folding shovel, so I will use that one.” I always liked to be prepared. Especially knowing how accident prone Dad was. Dad just looked. He used to do that a lot. We were digging quite close together in this one spot and finding a few nice old bottles. But not usually a good idea to be so close. Anyway, I was trying to pry something out of the ground and Dad finally stopped digging to see what I was doing.

Right then my shovel broke free. And dirt went flying. Right in dad’s face. Oddly, he had his mouth open at the time too. He was going to ask what I was doing and he ended up getting dirt in his mouth. So now he was sputtering and spitting. “Bonehead!,” he exclaimed again. Not sure how he could be enjoying a mouthful of dirt. Dad said Bonehead a lot when we were together so I finally figured it must mean he was having a good time.

Anyway, Dad decided to take a break and have some coffee and I kept digging for a bit. I found a really nice old bottle quite quickly and took it over to show Dad. “Look at this one,” I said. I held it right in front of him. Then I brushed a bit more dirt off the bottle. “Oh,” I said. We both looked down. The dirt landed in Dad’s cup of coffee. Dad just looked. And sighed. He used to sigh a lot too.

“You seem to be having problems today,” I said. “Today?” he questioned. “Here, I’ll get you some more coffee,” I offered. Then I reached for the thermos. “NO,” shouted Dad as he also reached for the thermos. Unfortunately it fell and we both looked. “You should have put the lid on it,” I said. “I should have stayed in bed,” Dad replied. Strange thing to say.

“And miss out on all this fun we’re having today?” I asked. Oddly, Dad just sighed and said “Why me, why me?” For some reason Dad didn’t enjoy digging for old bottles. I’m not sure why, looking for insulators was much more dangerous. Oh well. That’s all for today everyone, I hope you have a great weekend and God bless!

Steve. ©2026 Steve McLeod.