Oh We Ain't Got a Barrel of Money

With all the hype surrounding the royal birth of the as yet unnamed baby prince, I wish Prince William and Duchess Kate all the happiness in the world.  But my thoughts this week are on another little baby boy, born on July 16^th.

While the new baby prince will be, well, treated like a prince, baby Isaac will never know his father, because his father died of brain cancer a few months ago. 

Brandon, Isaac’s daddy, was loved by many.  Our daughter knew him in high school, and our son-in-law knew him at college, so they had a lot of the same friends.

Last year, Son-in-law and Brandon ran in a good-time race they have every year up here in the Northwest called the Warrior Dash.  Participants run three miles, then go over and under cargo nets, huge walls, fire, and mud.

Before the race

This year, a crowd of friends gathered to honor Brandon at the Warrior Dash.  Our matching tee-shirts had Brandon’s picture from last year’s race on it, with “Team B” under it.  Team B for Brandon, but also because none of the runners considered themselves potential winners.

After the mud

After the slog through the mud and the resulting cheers, glasses of celebratory offerings were raised and we toasted Brandon.  Then we zoomed off to a backyard picnic at the home of some of the participants’ parents.

Sitting in the backyard, it was fun to scan down the 40 foot table at the horde of friends, laughing over the funny hats with horns that were issued at the race.  Children ran around picking raspberries, blueberries, shooting each other with squirt guns, swinging in swings suspended from grandpa’s apple trees, and stuffing themselves with hot dogs.  Grandparents clustered together and chatted, and young parents guffawed together and swung their children onto their shoulders.

So this is the society that baby Isaac will grow up in.  He WILL know his father, for so many loved him, and continue to do so.  Isaac will be swung up on the shoulders of “daddies”, he will swing among the trees with his “sisters and brothers” and be admonished to wash his hands by his “grandparents”.  In the backyards of many families, there will never be any of a daddy’s qualities missing, for they will be offered in abundance by friends who hold the princely treasures of a father’s love in their hearts, ready to offer up and pour out on this little boy as he grows up.

Team B?  Yes, B for Brandon, but I don't feel his friends are a second class team.  They are top-notch.  Winners.  Full of life and love and the gifts of friendship.  Royality.

There used to be a men’s chorus back in the 60’s led by a smiling, goatee-ed man named Mitch Miller.  We baby boomers loved to “sing along with Mitch” and the chorus.  A bouncing ball hit the words scrolling along the bottom of the TV screen, and families crooned in their living rooms in front of the black and white TV’s.  Ask any boomer if they remember this, and the answer will invariably be yes.  Not only that, they will probably burst into one of their favorite songs.

Here’s one of mine, and it makes me think of the good times and trials that surround any friendship.  I offer it up to Brandon:

Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money

Maybe we’re ragged and funny,

But we’re travelin’ along,

Singin’ a song,

Side by side.

Through all kinds of weather,

What if the sky should fall?

Just as long as we’re together,

It doesn’t matter at all.

Oh we ain’t got a barrel of money

Maybe we’re ragged and funny,

But we’re travelin’ along,

Singin’ a song,

Side by side.

Brandon on right