Blog 3783 – 03.31.2026
Roses For The Living
One of the best prank that I ever pulled on my long time Teamster dad was a birthday gift that I sent to his workplace. For the last twenty plus years of his work life before retirement, dad drove a concrete mixer for Vulcan Materials in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After I completed my active duty Army enlistment in the late summer of 1971, receiving a ninety day drop in order to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my dad had helped me join the Teamsters local so I could load and unload freight part-time for spending money while I pursued a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education. (My University experience was short lived for I was soon distracted.)
Teamsters have always had a reputation for being no nonsense manly men and my dad certainly was one. He was a World War Two Navy Veteran and a proud unreconstructed son of the South.
Dad was fond of quoting sayings and song lyrics that especially appealed to him like the Nat King Cole classic, “Straighten up and fly right.” He often quoted the title and first line of the chorus of a Carter Family song that the he first and liked as a boy “Give Me My Roses While I Live.”
As a boy I loved my mother to distraction and as one of my favorite authors Pat Conroy said in his book Prince of Tides. “In the war that waged between my parents the only prisoners they took were their children.” As a boy I always took my mother’s side not realizing till I was a young man that there are always two sides in any conflict with neither party being totally blameless. It was only after I left home for the military that I began to see that my dad was not the “bad guy.” About that time a song came out with one of my own classic song quotes, “There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys. There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”
Here is the prank I pulled on my dad to show him that I loved him and that I had been listening to him all my life. I had a dozen long stem red roses sent to his workplace as a birthday gift. I wish I had taken a picture of the look on his face as he came home from work that evening carrying that bouquet of roses. He was speechless, a very rare thing for my dad and I am my father’s son. To quote another of dad’s favorite cliches, I had “gotten his goat.”
I miss you, Dad. And I am so glad that I came to appreciate what a great guy you were before you passed and gave you a bunch of roses before you died not just the ones we lay about your casket. May we all learn to look beyond our differences and disagreements and share our roses with the living.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Give Me Roses While I Live – The Carter Family
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