My dad was raised in a restaurant.  His father started the first restaurant this side of Arkansas--down in south Oklahoma, in Wilberton in the late 1800's early 1900's.  They fed any number of outlaws who used Robber's Cave to camp out.  It sounds like a western movie.  It was, it just didn't get filmed.

Belle Starr, the James boys, Pretty Boy Floyd.  All of them knew where to get good food. I have a picture of my grandmother  standing in front of the restaurant.  There was a great big plate glass window behind her that read Swan's Restaurant.  It is straight from the old west.

My grandfather, was shot and killed when my dad was seven years old.  Dad was left to care for his mom and keep the restaurant running.  He never got to be a kid.  He slaughtered hogs, washed dishes, whatever needed to be done.  He was the youngest of seven boys.  Three died, one was disabled by the measles, and the oldest two rigged the underbelly of their dad's Studebaker so that they could run liquor into "Dry" Oklahoma and left home.  My dad was left to care for his mother and brother.  And he did.  He dropped back a year in school to help his brother Harvey catch up.  My dad's name was Elmer.  He and Harvey were both such sweet men.

They never found out who killed my grandfather.  Getting shot wasn't that unusual back then.  Oklahoma wasn't even a state.  My grandfather had made a lot of money running cattle in western Oklahoma,  which a fellow named Edge absconded with and left Grandmother penniless.  Sounds like a wild west story.  Which it was.  But my dad lived through it and never had a day he wasn't working in the kitchen up to the day he was ninety-four and came to live with Ken and me.

Psalms 55: 22 "Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you: he shall never suffer the righteous to moved."

My dad was righteous.  I never once in his life heard him complain.  About anything.  He was a servant.  He was a caregiver.  I often think about how blessed I am to have had such a father.