So today is my dad’s birthday. He was born the same day as Dottie West and Eleanor Roosevelt, (but just a few years later), is an aficionado of all things Auburn, a lover of clean cars, freshly cut pasture grass, is great at being a grandfather to many, and today I want to wish him a long distance Happy Birthday! I just happened to be in Africa today, so, sorry dad, I’m going to miss your birthday party, but I didn’t forget it (as I’m sure your thrilled to see haha). I looked through all kinds of different shots from way way back like the Throwback Thursday photos from the 1950′s but I couldn’t find anything any more appropriate than this photo above. There’s always something about fall when our family can just hang out on a Saturday and watch Auburn football.
It’s so hard for me to even understand or describe the difference between being here in Uganda and being at home in Auburn, but my dad is a big reason why I am able to do what I’m doing right now and I’m so thankful for that gift. Happy Birthday, can’t wait to see everyone again when I get back home.
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Throwback Thursday today is from October 1955 and would be Larry Fillmer’s 7th birthday party. I just love these old black and whites. Apparently back in the mid-50′s you dressed up for a birthday party since one of them is wearing a suit and bow-tie and I love the card table, which was probably literally used as a card table. I’m not too sure about any of the history behind this photo, and the only reason I am saying the date is 1953 is because there are 7 candles on the cake, otherwise, there was no date or anything else on the photo. I’m sure someone in the family will tell me a little more about the image, but I’m almost 100% sure that’s my dad as the birthday boy from the way he is dressed, watch and all… always a snappy dresser. Pretty sure that is his brother Les Fillmer standing to the right of Larry.
So it seems, I’ve now been told, the photo was taken in Birmingham in an area called Oak Hills in Central Park, the puppets were Howdy Doody Puppets, and yes, they apparently played cards on that card table.
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It’s Thanksgiving week and that means that Auburn University classes are over for the holiday break. For the last few years this week has been the time which my dad, Larry Fillmer, takes a few days off from work and gets on the John Deere tractor and cuts the pasture grass for the winter. There is around 20-30 acres of actual grass to cut, so it usually takes most of the week. Today was a bit cloudy and cold, but, it’s November. I think there are a few people in his office that read my blog so I thought I would let you know what Larry Fillmer looks like when he is not in a suit and tie on campus.
I would love to hear from those who know Larry but don’t normally comment on my blog. Can I have a caption for the photo above??
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Father’s Day is an interesting day in the U.S. calendar (see my rant on Father’s Day called Why I Don’t Like Father’s Day // Top 10 if you are so inclined). To me, as I am sure with others, it is a day of reflection as well as one to honor the father.
We are told to honor thy father and mother, so today, I would like to honor my dad and my granddad as well. Not because the calendar says I should, but because I want to take a small moment in time for two people that have meant a lot to my life.
Time With Dad is Time Well Spent
I spent yesterday with my dad helping to wash the outside of their house and other general tasks we normally do on the weekend. I am lucky, I live within walking distance of my dad and at this point in my life I actually do get to spend quite a bit of time with my dad on a weekly basis.
So, happy Father’s Day dad, I hope you enjoyed spending the day “working” together yesterday, I’ll be over to watch Tiger Woods try to win the U.S. Open in just a little bit. It is a day of reflection too, and that is simply because the calendar says its Father’s Day. I think about my dad, my son, his son, but also my granddad whom I know only through conversations with my dad. He died when I was to young to remember him, but I have a fondness for him through my own dad.
Through the time I have spent with my own dad, I have learned everything my dad knew about his dad. As time goes by though, we are able to go deeper into what his life was like and I am always learning something new about who Don Fillmer was. I think he is much of what makes my dad who he is today, and some of who I am today as well.
Time To Relax and Take a Self Portrait
James Donald (Don) Fillmer worked at ACIPCO (American Cast Iron Pipe Company) most of his adult life (I believe around 30 years but that is an estimate), and died in the mid-1970′s while going back to work in Birmingham. As I mentioned above, I have since learned over the years about his work ethics, his faith, his love of family, and yes, his love for photography.
I like to think in some small way that the photography skills I have were in some way passed down from my dad’s dad to me. My uncle, Les Fillmer, was also a photographer of sorts, but better known as a musician and conductor with the Alabama School of Fine Arts. The only image I have that Don took that was not work related (or a family snap shot) is a self-portrait he took in 1938.
The Mysterious Dark Room in the Basement
I started taking college level photography courses long before I ever found out that my granddad was even remotely interested in photography. Don’s wife, my grandmother, Martha Fillmer, lived in the same house for many many years and I can clearly remember the dark room Don had built in the basement.
My dad, aunt, uncle, mother all probably know more about it than I do or did. I was probably somewhere between the ages of 7 and 12, but the dark room in their basement was something mysterious to me, only used by my uncle, and rarely when I was around. Full of very large equipment, weird lighting, chemicals, and paper, but it was not something I really ever saw being used. Although there are the usual family snap shots of Don, this self portrait is one of my favorite photos I have seen that he has taken.
He setup the shot, probably developed the negatives in his dark room, and used a large format camera to do it. The Large Format camera is almost a lost art form today with cheap digital SLR’s, but was and is still used by some great photographers like Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Paul Strand.
A Day in the Life of Don Fillmer
The shot shows him in what I think of as a normal day in his house. Sitting in a favorite chair, reading the newspaper. The fixtures and items around him reflect a more simple time, no electronics, no cell phone, just a hard working man at the end of the day relaxing with his paper, still in his suit and work shoes.
The detail in this self-portrait is amazing to me. I have tried a few self portraits and they are not easy to do, well. Anyone can setup a timer and put their face in front of the camera, but a self portrait should tell a story of the person behind the camera who is rarely seen in front of the camera. Although I was not around when this was taken, don’t know any of the circumstances involved, or what kind of a day or week he was having, it tells a story to me. I sometimes wonder if he thought this self portrait taken in 1938 would have meaning to his grandson, to be born 32 years later.
So happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, especially to my dad, and his. I hope you enjoy one of my favorite self portraits, A Day in the Life of Don Fillmer.
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Ok, so call me strange I guess. There are a few holidays that come up each year that I really don’t like, and Father’s Day is one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love my father dearly (see photo left), and I am sure I will make sure he knows that on Sunday.
In general, when you work for yourself, holidays just become a pain in the neck anyway. No one works, you can’t ship orders out, sales go down, and the entire world is “out” running around when they normally are not. But, fathers day is the topic. I will say that there is one reason why I like fathers day, to be able to honor my own earthly father, who to me is one of the greatest and most meaningful people in my life, and to remember that we have a father in Heaven that is better than any earthly father we could have in any form.
But there are more reasons I don’t like this particular holiday, what about you? Not a father yet? Well, here is what’s in store for you.
1. It is a Made Up Day
You can say this about most holidays in general, they are man-made, made up days. Father’s Day was a celebration inaugurated in the early twentieth century to complement Mother’s Day, and first celebrated in the U.S. on July 5th 1908
2. Churches Celebrate This Day in Services
For some reason, even though it has long since lost its Christian heritage it is still put forth as a day we celebrate in the worship service itself. I would rather see its spiritual meaning talked about than how important fathers are (yes, I know they are) to all of us.
3. Churches Don’t Seem to Know its Origin in Faith
No church I have been to in the last 35 years (yes I have been going to church that long) has ever explained to me the spiritual meaning on how Father’s Day was started. In Germany is was called Männertag and was always celebrated on Ascension Day (the Thursday forty days after Easter), and it was a day for men to go do something together, like hiking or some other manly activity.
In the Roman Catholic tradition, Father’s Day is celebrated on Saint Joseph’s Day, commonly called Feast of Saint Joseph, March 1, but it is pretty much a secular day or secular celebration. Here in the U.S., the first celebrated Father’s Day was in a church. The Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church. It was suggested to the pastor (some believe) because of a deadly mine explosion (called the Monongah Mining disaster) that had just happened killing 361 men. Another reason is Mother’s Day was first celebrated two month prior.
4. It’s Another Day of Required Gift Buying
Notice I said gift buying and not gift giving. I love gift giving, but I don’t like to be told by the calendar when it should be done. My wife and I have always thought this way. If you want to give someone a gift, give it to them, don’t hold back for some government made holiday. I don’t like the feeling of required giving that comes with holidays.
5. It Reminds Me How Old I Am
Remember back when Father’s Day would roll around and your mother would have prepared something for you to give your father or you would do something in church for your father. All designed to make sure you didn’t forget it (as a kid how could you remember it), but some day, you were required to remember yourself. Now my son is old enough to remember without being told.
6. It Reminds Me What a Lousy Father I Was
I have a feeling that some people don’t like Father’s Day because they had lousy fathers. I for one did not. My father took me to baseball games, football games, and all the normal fatherly stuff.
But that didn’t make me a good father (I say past tense because now that my son is out of the house I think that has made me a better father, haha). Father’s Day for me personally just reminds me of my shortcomings when my son was at home. My grandson William (see photo above of me and William) however is the cutest little guy ever (I am sure he doesn’t want to hear that) and I was thrilled to get to spend some time with him. He has a great dad. Don’t know where he gets it from but Bryan (my son) is such a fantastic dad to William.
7. It Reminds Me of the Fathers Who Are No Longer Here
Mother’s Day this year was different for my wife. She had just lost her mother to cancer less than a month earlier. This has to be the same thing with son’s who have lost their father over the last year. I know one in particular, Josh (see WILLIAM WALKER AGERTON), our Connections Pastor at the church.
I know he will be remembering his father this Sunday (although he is in Uganda right now) as my wife and I remembered Georgia on Mother’s Day. Others I know won’t get to see their fathers like my brother over at Worship Journey who’s father is a missionary in Africa.
8. You Are Reminded to Spend Time With Dad
Not that celebrating fathers is not important, but it usually has some time requirement attached to it. You can’t do this or that because it is Father’s Day. I spent time with my dad almost every day. I am lucky, yes. We usually walk about 2-3 miles together at the end of each day when he is in town and I am home. That usually equates to 3-4 days a week, but we often work together on the weekends or attend some sporting event together.
I don’t need to be reminded to spend time with my dad. I do it because I want to, not because the calendar tells me to.
9. The Restaurants Are Always Full
You can never get a table at a restaurant without waiting on Father’s Day. Being that it is on a Sunday (thank goodness for that), everyone finds it necessary to take fathers out for lunch after church. Don’t these people take their fathers out to eat any other time during the year? Same as with mothers day, if you want to eat after church (most do) you have to wait more than usual.
10. It is One More Day to Commercialize
And I saved the big one for last. Yes, it is yet one more day we can listen to a barrage of advertisements telling us buy buy tools and gift cards for our fathers. This starts just about when Mother’s Day ends. Walmart changes everything over the Sunday of Mother’s Day and that’s it, we’re toast.
For the next two months we are overwhelmed with advertisements from every angle, radio, tv, Internet, church, work, school, you name it. Somehow NASCAR and Father’s Day seem to go hand in hand now to. They actually take off on Mother’s Day and don’t have a race. How in the world could anyone who is actually breathing forget what day is Father’s Day. I love the Peanuts Christmas special. After the tirade that Charlie Brown and Linus goes on about how commercialized Christmas has become and then Linus reads Matthew.
We seem to be a society of one that moves from one holiday to the other commercially. There is no down time, we are constantly being told what holiday is next on the buying list. Do me a favor, don’t buy me anything for Father’s Day, oh, and by the way, I love you dad.
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Today was going to be one of those relaxing days of doing nothing and enjoying this unbelievably beautiful weather. Well, the weather was gorgeous today. I was looking forward to our worship time today since we have been out of town the last few Sunday’s, and it was incredible. A series on missions, which I was told ahead of time to expect something “different”. Well it was different all right, and very uplifting and challenging (see The Mission Field is Fluid for details) service.
Before we left for church I was able to work on some photo scans of old family members and add them to an older blog post piece. I love looking at and working with images of all kinds so this was an enjoyable start to the day.
There is Always a Tree to Move and Grass to Cut
I started working on a blog post over on scottfillmer.com and stopped to do some of my daily walk about. Short today, only about 2 miles but after lunch it was decided that a fallen tree on the road needed to be cut up and moved for fire wood for next winter.
I like getting the chance to work with my dad and working outside so we cut up the tree that Alabama Power deemed un-necessary and a bother for power lines. It still needs to be split up for fire wood, but it is better than rotting on the side of our driveway.
Of course once the tractor is out, better cut some more grass, there is always grass to cut.
Nature in View
This morning before we left for church we had 4 deer drink from the pond and then walk across a shallow section of the pond. This was about 8:30am, not when it was dark at all. We often have deer come by at night but not usually during the day. Probably has to do with the missing 100 acres of trees that was taken down last week bordering our property. It was nice to see the deer in the day light. We did have a visit by a very large woodpecker who found our Dogwood sapling a nice place to sit. The woodpeckers are all over the place now.
