Radish Sandwiches

     My father was a strict, stern man.  A serious man with a firm hand.  He seldom smiled--I am not sure if this was because he did not enjoy life or if his past haunted him.  He was raised in an orphange, joined the Army (he preferred the airforce but his color blindness excluded him from that field).  He served in the Korean war, came back to the States and spent time as a firefighter.  He later became an over-the-road trucker.  I did not see my father much because he spent months at a time trucking through Canada and Alaska.  My father did not speak much.  In order to know what he was thinking, a person would need to learn how to read his eyes.
     One spring day, after the school bus dropped me off at the end of the quarter-mile driveway, I trudged through the slosh of the melting snow, scooting my boots along the snowbanks and kicking snow into the air.  I stepped across the railroad tracks and looked to see the house in which I lived.  In the driveway next to my house was my father's 18-wheeler.  Uh oh.  In my first-grader mind, I flashed all sorts of scenes: would he be mad because I was playing in the snow?  Is he going to spank me? Maybe he is sleeping?  Maybe I will be spanked for getting my snowmobile boots all wet and clogged with snow?  I stepped to the front door, glanced at my boots and decided to use the back door.  The back door entered into the utility room where I could remove my boots and hope that father would not notice.
     I removed my boots, removed my snowmobile suit and hung up my hat and scarf.  I quietly stepped through the hallway in hopes of not waking my father and as I entered the kitchen, I discovered my father sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich. I quietly stepped up to the table and whispered a "Hello."  I looked at my father, glanced at his sandwich and then back to him.
     "Are you hungry?"  Throughout the years, there is a couple of things I learned about my father: one is that he did not like to eat alone and the other thing is - is that he always offered food to people.  As an adult now, I realize that these actions of his stemmed from having grown up during the Great Depression.
     "What are you eating?"
     "A radish sandwich."  For a moment, I sat at the table watching him eat another bite of the sandwich.  After he finished eating that bite, he instructed me to get the radishes out of the refridgerator.  I stepped to the fridge, opened the door and looked for whatever radishes might look like.  "The radishes are in the bowl of water," my father informed me.  I reached for the bowl of water containing the small, round red things that I thought he was talking about.  I carried the bowl to the table.  By now my father had two slices of bread out of the wrapper and I watched as he buttered both slices.  He took the paring knife from his plate, reached a hand inside the bowl for a radish, and then I watched as he sliced the radish.  I watched as father neatly layered slices of the radishes onto the bread.  He took the salt and pepper shakers, shook a bit onto the sandwhich, placed the other bread on top and handed it to me.
     As I took the sandwich, a couple radish slices fell out.  "Hold the sandwich tighter," he instructed.  "Or go ahead and squish the bread down to hold the radishes in place."  I squished the bread, well, actually I flattened the bread.  I took a bite of the sandwich.  I felt my father watching me as I ate that first bite.  I tried to keep my table manners in check.  I took another bite and before I had even swallowed, I started asking my father questions.  "Why do you keep the radishes in a bowl of water?"
     "Keeps them fresh and crispy."
     "Oh."
     The conversation went on for the length of me eating that sandwich.  This conversation was one of the few I ever spent with my father.