Dad's Felt Tip Halloween

This time of the year, I'm thinking of my father. To me, he's still just off on a short trip to Bass Pro shops, looking for fishing lures for one of his grandchildren. Or sneaking off to get something to eat. He'll be back soon, and I'll see him drawing on one of his mat boards or playing his piano. I can't imagine he's really gone.

Because he'll never be. There are so many ways he's still here. And he's especially with us on Halloween, courtesy of the witch sisters.

For a man who created so many timeless works of art in his lifetime, he could never match his sisters of the fall - even though it hangs in no gallery or museum or living room.

My father always told me that the best way to describe a beautiful work of art was the feeling that it evoked in the observer.  If the artist could express a feeling with his work, it became alive; true art. It became meaningful, relevant, timeless. Art without feeling was not art, it was just a colorful utility.

And, if you knew where to look, he kept proof of that everywhere - at home, in his gallery, and at his lake house. John T. McCutcheon's  "Injun Summer" was framed in the back room of his gallery; black and white photographs of once proud but now decaying mansions pinned to the wall; and brilliant green Irish landscapes, torn from the pages of a magazine, taped to his drafting table.

Back in 1966, when his career and his children were still young, I believe he did his best work. While he had fewer accolades then, he also had fewer pianos, bills and problems. Then, we were all young - and my father was at his innocent best. That's when he invented the witch sisters.

Three witch sisters, born on pieces of scrap-bin mat-board, floated into our childhoods like the wisps of smoke from burning piles of fall leaves - a sweet, unforgettable, and indelible thing.

My father would gather us together and, with his felt tip marker, he'd draw the witch sisters on those scrap mats. Each piece would hold a different part of the story. He'd develop the characters as he drew; funny and heartwarming and sometimes scary.  He was an unwitting Walt Disney before Disney was cool.

Like pumpkin spice and piles of burning fall leaves, the witch sisters evoke strong and wonderful memories. They help me remember my father at his best. Not by painting or writing or public speaking, But just being his most loving, creative, brilliant best - back when the world was smaller and we were all younger. Being a father.

Memories like these make me miss him - sometimes painfully.

But they also make me warm and thankful. My siblings and I will always remember dad's Halloween tradition of the witch sisters. It keeps him with us forever. It helps us see the magical in the mundane - like he's standing next to us as we look across October fields of hay and imagine that we see Indian tee-pees.

Perhaps that's why the faded "Injun Summer*" clipping spent so many years on the wall in his gallery's back room.

When my father passed away, we found a dusty box of mat-board and brown paper that had several witch sisters drawings he'd made. Some were from the 60's. They must have brought him beautiful memories as well.

And so, another Halloween comes.  And with it, the memory of my father in 1966, gathering scrap mats, pocketing his felt tip marker, and heading home under the fall skies and burning leaves.

Thanks Dad. We so miss you.

* John T. McCutcheon's Injun Summer Link