Memories of Mickey

My Dad was such an inspiration

As the man I looked up to in my early childhood

As I listened with rapt attention

To his stories of how great it was riding a motorbike to the west coast

And hangin’ out on Long Beach, seeking a life of freedom

Thinking when I grow up, I’m gonna do the same

Rollin’ two wheel thunder through the rockies

To see the freedom of the open road, and standing up to the challenges

it offers, hail balls on the cliff edged highways, or camping out in the rain

Just like he presents us with here and now to honor him

Hay River in the winter time,

flights in the thousands of dollars to go on

at the end of a road seldom salted or plowed

Where they stopped sending the bus years ago because it broke down for 5 hours

When it was forty below and the people on it nearly froze

and many more would be here to honor him

The man who changed all our lives

With his soft spoken presence, his larger than life stories

Building a church on MacKay lake

Cabin turned church with stain glass windows to offer sanctuary

To contentious objectors in times of war

Later to be reffered to as

“that religious cult I was in back in the early 70s”

But I couldn’t see a difference between it

and other churches sponsering refugees,

just theirs came from the USA,

Church turned cabin where we went on so many fishing trips

Filled my younger years with adventure and fun and the pride

Of eating of what you have caught yourself

Allowing us to miss weeks of school to make the point

That “there’s no education so valuable as knowing how to feed yourself”

With both a rod and a gun

Helping to make me the great radio show host I’ve become

With a song for every occasion

Its “fearless Heart” when he’s looking for love

Or “Last thing I needed” when his first born daughter runs away

He says to me “there’s a song about people who quit school in grade six”

When I was never going back after lunch one day

And he makes me sit there and listen to Murry Macloughlin, songs from the street, Honkey Red

I had to go to Edmonton last month

and thank him in person for being my Dad

For being such an example of a decent human being

Wish I could be there myself to honor

Memoies of Mickey,