It was the fall of 1911, exactly 100 years ago, that my 26 year old father set sail for Canada from Glasgow, Scotland. The old sailing ship met with a furious storm in the Atlantic and while wild waves crashed and shipmen frantically lowered the life boats, young Garden Campbell Anderson scaled the main mast, and, in his rough Scottish accent, sang out over the screams of the passengers...
"ROCKED IN THE CRADLE ‘O THE DEEP...I LAY ME DOON IN PEACE TO SLEEP...
SECURE I REST UPON THE WAVES....”
Watching the waves bashing against our rocks this morning I remembered Daddy’s oft-told tale of his perilous climb up the slippery mast...and how the terrible winds tore the song from his lips...
Mother and I heard this story with a grain of salt. But more than 40 years later I was walking with my father on the streets of Regina, Saskatchewan, when, out of the blue, another old man stopped us...stared at Daddy, and said, “Could it be you, Gardy...you who sang Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep...when we were almost lost at sea!???”
Well, they fell into each other’s arms, and wept and re-lived that long-ago moment of panic and bravery.
Daddy went on to serve for Canada in World War 1, 1914 -1918. As a Sargent Major Instructor, he set aside his pacifist preferences and taught bayonet fighting and fencing in ‘THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION’.
He was a Victorian...(Queen Victoria herself being on the throne in 1885 when he was born), and, as such, he never truly believed in all the fancy modern things, like the automobile (which mother always drove, when we finally got one)...or the television which he saw as an abomination and pure nonsense.
After years as a business man, and then a preacher, he finally opened his own bookstore, a dream come true for my bookish Scottish father.
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