Some birthdays are more special

A birthday post.

My mentor Lee Roy’s birthday was Feb 19th, the day after mine. We always celebrated together on the evening of one of them with a game of dominoes with some type of sweet dessert.

I remember one particular year my birthday fell on Presidents’ Day and I was outta school. I went to Lee Roy’s to work for the day, because whenever I wasn’t in school I wanted to work to earn lunch money or whatever.

It was a cold morning and I was gonna ride a breaking plow for the day, but that durned 4430 wouldn’t start (it wouldn’t start very good when it was warm), so Lee Roy said let’s go to town. I asked what for, and he said he needed to pay bills and get groceries which I thought was odd for being Presidents’ Day… but who was I to argue.

We go to town, first stop was the co-op. Then the fuel supplier, then the welding supply place. It was getting close to noon so he decided we needed groceries and some lunch. So the last stop was farmers supermarket.

I waited in the pickup while he did his grocery shopping and read a dusty old farm magazine that was lying in the dashboard.

Lee Roy come out and put the groceries in the back of the truck and came to the cab and threw me a pouch of Levi Garrett chewing tobacco and said “happy birthday”, he also had a couple cans of “viennee sausages” as he called them… some soda crackers, 2 cokes and a 1/2 gal of pecan praline ice cream for dessert.

We promptly ate those sausages and a few crackers and washed it all down with a coke.

Then he got his pocketknife out and cut that 1/2 gallon carton of ice cream in half, handed me half and said “happy birthday to us!” I kinda looked at him and I said “what are we gonna eat the ice cream with, we don’t gotta spoon?” He looked at me and looked around and finally grabbed those curled up lids from the “Vienee sausage” cans and said “here use this! But be careful and don’t cut your lip!”

We ate our lunch and ice cream right there in the farmers supermarket parking lot.

We got back to his house and unloaded the groceries and spent the rest of the day plinking cans with his Winchester model 06 pump .22.

Not that every birthday isn’t memorable… because they all need to be celebrated because that means you stayed alive for another spin around the sun. But, that was one of the most memorable birthdays for me as a kid.

I sure miss that man.

So next time some kid has a birthday, be sure and make their day by maybe sharing a half gallon of ice cream with them in the parking lot of a grocery store… just remember to get some spoons!

So thanks for all the birthday posts, messages and texts, you made me feel special again.

But especially to my wife for making me steak, taters, corn and salad for dinner!