Dad Redding was a good sort of fellow to have around. He opened the store every morning before the streetlights were turned off, or the Atlanta newspapers were thrown onto the loading dock from the Seaboard Air Line train as it slowed down nearing the depot. People inside the lit-up dining cars were already having breakfast as the train coasted past the station then lurched forward with great impatience resuming its eastward race toward a spreading pink sky. It was like that every day before just before dawn. The sun would slowly peek around the corner of main street, and Dad Redding’s fellow workers would magically appear at the warehouse door just as he coaxed sausage, eggs and biscuits out of an old cast iron stove in the back of the building. Dad Redding never heard of “the human resources department”, but he sure knew how to get people to work on time, especially in depression days. Nobody could pen it down, but most folks figured Dad was born in the late 1860’s. He was wiry and lean and had that rare quality of being able and available whenever help was needed most. He grew up on farms and worked at almost every odd job imaginable during hard times. He was full of common sense, know-how and wisdom acquired from listening more than speaking. Dad Redding was as much a part of the town as the library and the courthouse, and he was also the jack-of-all-trades, and right-hand assistant for the owner of the town’s furniture store. In addition to all of that, Dad was the trusted advisor and confidant of the eight-year-old son of the store’s owner. Dad’s main responsibility was managing a temperamental and distrustful old blue-gray mule who pulled the furniture delivery wagon. Oddly enough, the mule’s name was Ulysses. Whether or not he was named after the Union General could not be determined, but it is interesting to note that the name Ulysses is said to mean “wrathful or full of anger”. According to sources, Ulysses, the mule, lived up to this appellation. Apparently, his disposition played some part in his eventual retirement to plowing vegetable gardens. For many years, in good times and bad, Dad Redding was a loyal employee and a trusted part of the store owner’s family. In those days, Saturday was by far the busiest day of the week, and stores would remain open until nearly midnight. After a day of selling ice cream or boiled peanuts or sugarcane on the sidewalk outside the store, the owner’s young son would end up worn out and sound asleep among the cotton bales stacked under the store’s awnings. Dad Redding never left the store on Friday or Saturday nights without first retrieving the sleeping young entrepreneur from among the mounds of cotton and carrying him home on his back. Dad Redding worked at the furniture store until it closed. He lived a long time after that surrounded by a very large family.
It is comforting to remember people like Dad Redding. Thank goodness our history is full of so many stories like this; stories of folks who can only be described as wonderfully unremarkable. God bless the simple, decent people who have lived on this earth and asked for little more than just the opportunity to live a quiet life and to do some good in whatever fashion they can. In the midst of this world we live in today, their lives are still inspirational, heart-warming and examples of why we are here in the first place.
