Grocery shopping with my dad

By Katie Lashbrook

Even though my Dad has been gone these

30 years

I never go to the grocery store without him right behind me.

A union plasterer, like his dad, he worried that poor people

couldn’t afford

good food with the way prices were in his day.

As I go up and down the aisles of beautiful food options

Dad’s along

stunned by the high cost of food today.

A hungry child of the Great Depression,

he became a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps,

working in the California redwood forest. He sent sweet,

longing letters home to Dorothy, his friend, future wife, our mother-to-be:

“Dear Girl,” the letters began. He was 20 years old.

Dad had a nice stash of canned food in

the basement,

once he could afford to do that, years later.

He enjoyed showing his five children how prepared

he was

to cope if the bottom dropped out again.

We’ll never go hungry, he promised us.

– Katie Lashbrook lives in Lawrence.