Father's Day, 2012

Daddy Whittle was a hard-working, successful farmer, who gambled on Mississippi river boats during non-farming months. As a tyke, when he gambled in local gambling rooms in Canalou, Morehouse, Charter Oak and Hill's Store, he'd let me sit on his knee with two firm instructions: "Don't talk while Daddy's playing poker," and "Don't tell your mother where we've been..."

He was a "larger than life" figure to a little boy, and I never told Momma Whittle where we'd been...

He died when I was age 6, in a grinding car crash in 1950. I wonder what he would do and say about our world in 2012.