My dad and the gap between my teeth

I have a gap between my two front teeth.  My dad has one, too.  This makes us inexplicably similar.

This is me.  

This is my dad.

Named Richard Evelyn McNeill.  His mother named him after me. Usually, he signs just an E. I like that the E stands for Evelyn. Richard E. likes words, the way they sound, their origins, their meanings.  And he likes puns.

My dad has tools.  A train car full.  The train car lives in his backyard.  He feeds it more tools to ensure it doesn't get hungry.

When my dad was a young grown up, and a young married man,  he silversmithed for money.  He created silver and stone jewelry.  He liked turquoise. And squash blossom necklaces. Maybe it is my mom that likes the necklaces.  And something about shadow-boxes. He retired from jewelry making for a living, but some of my best dad memories are making jewelry with my dad at Christmas.  We had a cold room in our brown building that had a sliver smith table, a torch, the stamping supplies, and a little heater to keep us from becoming hypothermic.

This is a recent photo of my mom and dad.

We would design the piece first.  Over a few years we made a bracelet, earrings, a necklace, and a hairpiece. I remember cutting the silver from a larger sheet.  We would cut the piece about the size of the stone we selected, but a bit larger.  I always liked black stones.  The torch was connected to a propane tank, and my dad had a flint and steel clamp contraption to light the flame. It would make a loud sound when it was lit, and always made me jump.  My dad would touch the silver pieces together and would have a long wire of silver, some liquid that he kept in a lime juice squeezer and he would solder (which I've always pronounced "sodder") the pieces together with that torch and the long wire, and that liquid. He also had a little tweezer thing that he would use to reposition the stone, and sometimes prod it while he worked with the flame.  After the flame he plopped it in a container full of cold water.  What was that liquid in the lime juice squeezer?  It didn't smell like lime juice.

I remember keeping my hands in my pocket as much as I could to avoid the cold.  I would pick out the stamps and my dad would hammer designs onto the piece.  He would paint black something onto the jewelry.  It made the stamps darker. Then we would polish it.  I loved the polish.  He had different wheels and bars of something that looked like soap or chalk and rub it onto the wheel.  Then he would hold the now black silver piece and rub it against the wheel.  That wheel would whirr against the pressure from the stone and his fingers.  Then the wheel would get hot and he would take a break. There was a fluffy wheel that looked like a shaggy dog that I liked the best.  When it would spin the long shag on it would stand straight up and it looked like a spinning cloud.

Richard E. loving the ocean after retirement.

My dad.  He is a thoughtful man.  A smart man.  A man of commitment.  He is respects people, the way they think, and the challenges of life. He is content with little. I've never known him to be ambitious, but he makes the best of where he is and what he has.  He likes movies.  He can watch the same movie over again a hundred times.  He can quote the entirety of Lonesome Dove.

My dad is a good man.

My mom always made him a German Chocolate Cake on his birthday.
I love German Chocolate Cake.