Those were the words of my father whenever he was in distress. He often said them to me when things weren`t going well. He considered Chuck to be his own dad though he wasn`t. Chuck was my Mother`s dad. He, in his own way, adopted my dad as if he was one of his own children. Chuck taught my dad how to hunt and fish, how to do woodwork, to be a handy man, to accumulate his own cache of tools, of guns, of fishing gear. Chuck taught him plumbing, how to be an electrician, how to lay sewer pipe, how to repair cars and trucks, how to be an apprentice and how to work with others who had the tools of the trade. In short, Chuck taught my dad, how to get along and to fend for the family. Eventually, my sister and I came along. When we were young children, Dad got an acute form of cancer in the reproductive system. He had emergency surgery, but some cancer was still there. Then he underwent Radium treatments. Mom had to go to work to help with expenses. She was tending to Dad and working as a clerk in a drug store. Chuck worked some distance away but every day he came to the house to spend hours with Dad and tending to my sister and me `till Mom could come home. This was the first time I remember my Dad saying "I`d like to talk to Chuck one more time." And he did, every day for a couple of years. That cancer went away. Mom continued working, and after a year, Dad went back to work. Both Mom and Dad still worked to pay off bills. Again Dad got cancer. This time, surgery was successful but the bills accumulated. Chuck helped as best he could. And still he was there for Dad. And they would talk a lot. When it was time for me to consider college, I knew Mom and Dad couldn`t help. They still had a heavy burden of bills. But that was all right. I had been paying my way, buying my clothes, doing chores around the house, and I had several part time jobs around the community. I went to college for several years working my way along and got an engineering degree. My Dad also earned an engineering degree at night school while Mom continued to work. Then Chuck had a series of strokes and was incapacitated. Again, my dad was saying "I`d like to talk to Chuck one more time." Later I began hearing it often when Mom was deathly ill with heart problems. She had a valve replacement, Temporal Arteritis and loss of vision in one eye. Then she got a severe case of shingles. She died a couple of years later. After Mom died, Dad got ill. He knew he was on the way out for good. He was lucid to the end, still wanting "to talk to Chuck one more time." When I was so sick, while in Hospice, I thought a lot about Dad`s wish "to talk to Chuck one more time." And I thought about my daughter and wondered if she`d "Like to talk to her Dad one more time," after I`m gone? And that`s when I personally dedicated my articles of "Trouble in Cedar Key" to Melanie, who is a writer in her own right. The articles are now about five hundred in number, each article a conversation with her... "One more time." You can find Trouble by e-mail:
tnckgebe@yahoo.com | 
