I can relate to what you're feeling. I lost my dad exactly 12 years ago today...and seeing the posts here brought it all back to me. From my teenage years on, I spent a lot of years trying to run away from what I was...I was a small-town kid who grew up in Dad and Grand-dad's tractor shop, answering the phone, working the parts counter, helping out with the wrenching, whatever it took. But I had big dreams, and my background wasn't gonna hold me back, nosirree!! But after reality set in a few years later, I was living in the city, managing the parts department of a big car dealer, I realized it...what I was growing up, wasn't so bad after all. My dad and I were pretty close over the years, and I've still never had a better best friend. He's listen to my thoughts and ideas, and respected them all, even the ones he didn't agree with. In the years since, my first wife has passed away, and I moved back to the county where I grew up...remarried to a local girl, who helped me raise my two kids pretty much the way my dad raised me. The garage closed when Dad died, and here recently I've been helping Mom maintain the property, which was neglected for a few years because...well, the garage and Dad were so much a part of one another, it was sometimes just too much for me to deal with. When Dad died, he was in the process of overhauling his '44 Farmall H...it's still sitting there, because my brother and sister have no interest in it and I just haven't been able to bring myself to deal with it, until lately. Now I plan to finish the work he started...just like I did with raising my kids (he really started THAT, too, because of how he raised me...). I don't farm--I live in a subdivision, for goodness' sake--but I want that H to be a tribute to the man my Dad was, and to what they both represent: toughness, time-tested, and pretty uncomplicated yet totally reliable. Your dad sounds like he was cut from the same cloth, so-to-speak. You have my sympathy, and my respect. May God bless you.
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