Dad was born in Morgantown, West Virginia; his beginnings are right here in the place that I now experience as home. He lived many of his formative years in the community of Parsons, West Virginia. Parsons sits among the hills at the confluence of the Shavers Fork and Black Fork creeks at the headwaters of the Cheat River.  Parsons is the place that my dad identifies as the roots of his life, what he would call his first home.

The word home identifies the place where you hang your hat, or take off your work clothes or eat your supper, but the meaning of home is so much more. Home may be where you feel most relaxed, or where you go to get renewed. Home may be where you started your life or where you are right now. Home, for most of us, is where our family gathers to share, and laugh, and cry. Most of all, I think, home is where your heart continues to venture whether in being or memory, it goes there when life is good and mainly when life kicks you in the teeth.

In all of the places that I’ve called home, my dad has graced the space within the walls with his stories. The better part of the tales comes from the times in his youth running among the hickory and beech trees in Parsons. He recalls the antics of family and friends in a less complicated world where the kids were kicked out of the house in the morning and spent the day fashioning adventures of every type from the pickings of the earth. Most of the stories would get us all laughing to the point where our sides were sore. Mainly, his stories painted a picture of a world that is all but gone now, memories of people who passed through his life and became, briefly, part of ours.

In my home, and that of all my sisters, dad is called “Popo”, a term of endearment he gave himself upon the birth of the first grandson. So the stories retold under “Popo’s Porch Stories” are his, with some minor fabrication where I can’t recall the details, or need to add a name or keep an identity private. This is the living tribute to a gentle man who continues to be a giant in the eyes of his daughters and his grandchildren.

Dad, I hope you like these in the retelling.