Why does a boy grow up to be a writer? In my case, It all started with my dad, Lee Baker. To his friends and family, he was a quiet genius who could fix anything. To those who he worshiped with, he was a reflective wise elder. To those he worked with, he was a different sort, but talented way beyond his duties, or education. To me, Robert Lee Baker was my ultimate, all-time, forever hero.
I am told that at age two I was found crawling under a car that dad was working on to get it running. That does not surprise me. Some of my earliest and deepest memories are of dad and I with our heads under a car hood together. Many of those memories bring back the words; “get that light out of my eyes, son”. It seemed that every time I started holding the flashlight on the part he was fixing, somehow the light found its way to his face and in his eyes.
In his eyes, that is where the stories started. They simply must have since he had seen so much in his life. I didn’t try to move the light to his eyes, it just happened. He would start telling me a story as he worked and I would become enthralled with the story and my dad. The light just gravitated to where the story emanated, I guess.
His stories carried me away to where they were set. I walked beside him in the woods where he grew up. I rode beside him on the tractor as he plowed in his youth. I hid behind him as he fought in the war. I sat on his knee as he told me of his faith in God, sometimes in a song he was singing.
He told me the stories over and over until I could have told them myself, but I did not dare speak a word as he rattled on through the events of his life. I could not have listened any closer if I had realized that the day would come when I would never hear his voice again, but a boy cannot grasp such things.
A boy is shaped by the man he follows around. When the boy is loved as my dad loved me, he is drawn to be the man he sees in his dad. I was drawn to the stories. He told them. I write them. Am I the man that my dad was? Please don’t tell me yes. I simply can’t let you bring down my hero to my level. I am still his son and he is still my dad.