Remembering Dad

I'm just going to begin this today. I went to WalMart and scanned the few pictures I could find of Dad. Guess we just didn't take too many when he was around. And we were out of the country for 11 years.... Here's the funniest one I have taken in 2000 after our first Johnson family reunion. There are four more on Flickr. I cropped them, but Flickr took the originals off the CD, rats. The quality isn't too good, but you'll get the idea!
More about Dad later. I'm wanting to finish painting that room before I leave!!

I finished the room, now I'll write a little more. If you've already started reading this, I guess you'll have to come back and check to see if I've updated it.

One picture I asked my sister to find is one of us two oldest, maybe Melinda is in it too, but we're at Lake Michigan on the beach and Dad is walking in front, and we are following behind trying to walk only in his footsteps. Not only is it a good photo, but it is a good lesson. Following in his steps.

I think we older siblings have different memories, and really a different Dad from the younger ones. He was only 20 when I was born and 26 when the youngest was born. He was athletic and musical. He was our active parent in sports. He took us swimming, ice skating, sledding, roller skating, and played in the water with us at the beach. He didn't just watch us do these things either. Usually he was chasing us, playing games, swimming underwater to grab our legs, teaching us to do figure 8 on the ice or skate backwards either ice skating or roller skating. He also taught us how to sing. "Breathe with the diaphragm; don't let the candle flame flicker; use your natural voice; don't yell". My sister probably remembers a lot more about that. We sang harmony from very early on. I don't remember ever having to learn it. Our mom always harmonized when we all sang, so I suppose we heard her, too. We sang three parts in the car, while washing dishes and just whenever we felt like it and had people to sing. I think Dad never wanted us to get a dishwasher because he would miss his after dinner concert from the kitchen!! He'd go take a nap in the living room while we cleaned up. He had a recording business of sorts, as a hobby mostly, so we had microphones and reel to reel tape recorders around. One time when we were very young, he set it all up at the bottom of the stairs while we were supposed to be taking our Sunday afternoon naps. That must've been fun to listen to; too bad the tape never got saved!