A Deeply Rooted Story
By Larry Mixson  

This story is dedicated to my father Morris Darlington Mixson  
who would be 100 years old today.

(1926-2020)

Part 1

A dust bunny the size of a Tribble

I was picking up my iPad from my nightstand when the iPencil fell off onto the floor. I didn’t see it right off so bending down on one knee I found it had landed on the bottom shelf of my nightstand. My nightstand, which I built twenty or so years ago, has three levels. On the top are items of immediate and everyday use, my iPad as I mentioned, phone charger, Kindle reader, and holder for pen and note pad for taking notes of those immediate thoughts while in bed. Yes, I still use pen and paper. If I was reading a book, it would be there too, but I more often these days I read books and magazines on my Kindle or iPad.

On the second shelf I keep a couple of journals along with reading material that I intend to get too next which does not necessarily mean soon.  There were a couple of Tom Swift books I bought at a second hand store out of nostalgic memories of when I read them as a child. I’ve been reading them then putting them in the neighborhood leave-one-take-one book stand in hope that some young person will read them and be inspired to study science as I had. I taped a card inside the back cover so that readers could record their name and date before passing the book on. I put my name first, Larry – 1960, and then, Larry-2024. 

There was also a small paperback with the cover missing titled “The Atomic Blonde”.  No, not the  2017 American action thriller by the same name that was made into a film, but rather a 1947 copy of “The Atomic Blond”, a three-act play by Jay Tobias that belong to my mother when she was in the Lake Weir Theatre Guild in 1949.  It’s been on the second shelf a few years but remains on my “read next” shelf. I tried reading it a couple of times, but when I opened it to the list of characters, there in Mom’s handwriting next to each character were the names of the students that played each part. Seeing Mom’s handwriting brings back memories, I can’t seem to get past that page. Mom’s been gone sixteen years now, it is more about seeing her handwriting on the pages than reading the play. It gets returned to the second shelf.

On the bottom shelf are items that I intend to read but are at a lower priority, I might get to them in a month or two, well… sometimes longer. Seeing my iPencil hiding in the dark recess of the bottom shelf I reach in and grab it, coming out not only with the iPencil but a dust bunny the size of a Tribble.  Now I can’t say that I was all that surprised about the dust bunny having not looked at any of the items on the bottom shelf in a while, from the size of the dust bunny, apparently a long while. I am well versed in dust bunnies having two cats who are prolific generators of dust bunnies, which like Tribbles, grow and reproduce rapidly. Having cats for over forty years, trust me,  I know about dust bunnies. No matter how much you vacuum or Swifter, you still find them lurking in the dark corners under the bed, in the closet, or in this case, in the dark recesses of my nightstand.

Since I was down on my knees pulling out  dust Tribbles I thought I might as well clean the bottom shelf finding a book, three magazines and a brochure. The book, a historical novel by an old high school friend has been on my “to read” list for a while. I had read his previous books on my Kindle, but this one was an actual book which my brother had loaned to me. Being of lower priority it went to the bottom shelf, apparently for quite a while since my friend has recently come out with another book which my brother immediately read and loaned to me. Both books get promoted to the second shelf. The three magazines were issues of the Saturday Evening Post.  Now I don’t subscribe to the Saturday Evening Post, nor have I ever subscribed to it, the issues were sent to my father. I’m not sure how or why Dad got the Saturday Evening Post, it’s not the type of magazine that he would get, much less read. Dad was more of a newspaper kind of man.

Dad read the local newspaper The Gainesville Sun religiously every day for seventy years. While growing up I don’t ever recall Dad reading a book although my sister said he would do so occasionally. He did read magazines, Life and National Geographic, but I think he was more of a read-the-caption under the pictures kind of magazine reader.  But Dad did read the newspaper. He would always be the first one up in the morning and by the time I got up he would be sitting at the kitchen table in his underwear and robe with a cup of coffee reading the paper.  It was a ritual for him, he would get up, start the coffee brewing, then go outside wearing his white undershirt, boxers, and flannel robe and get the paper then sit at the kitchen table to read it.   

I think it was the comics in the newspaper that I first started reading, I remember Mom patiently reading the Sunday comics to me and explaining what each said, a ritual we did until I could read them on my own. The weekday comics were often on the back page of the sports section of the paper which was the section Dad always spent the most time on, so I wouldn’t get the comics until he was done. Not wanting to wait for him to finish, I would sit across from him and try to read the comics on the back while he held up the paper in front of him to read.

While Dad was not much of a reader, Mom certainly was. Mom was always reading something, Ladies Home Journal, Life magazine, Readers Digest and many Readers Digest Condensed Books. Mom also got Collier’s magazine for a while, but I don’t remember it for I was too young.  I know this for after Dad died, I found in his things a copy of the October 26, 1956 issue of Collier’s magazine with a note stapled on the cover in Dad’s handwriting saying, “Last issue of Collier’s, keep” and then again in bigger letters, “KEEP”. The mailing label was addressed to, “MRS M D MIXSON.”  No Dad was not a Medical Doctor, that was his initials, Morris Darlington Mixson. Back when there were phone books Dad would be listed as M.D. Mixson so we would sometimes get phone calls asking for Doctor Mixson, which Dad always found amusing. There was an actual doctor Mixson in town, but he was a dentist.

It was Mom who inspired us kids to love reading. On their meager budget, Mom would still buy us books, lots of children’s books, even a complete set of the original Dr. Seuss books which we acquired one a month for a year.  Mom’s mother gave us a complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia which I would randomly pull out one of its 21 volumes, open it, and find something interesting to read. Sometime in the 70’s, with the kids all out of the house, Mom was going to give them away, so I saved them and hauled those 21 volumes, taking six feet of shelf space, around for over twenty years. If only I could have saved all of my brother’s and my old comics from Mom’s cleaning.

It was Mom who introduced my brother, sister, and I to the public library. As soon as we could read, probably even before my younger brother could read, Mom would take us to the public library every other week in the summer.  The library had a summer reading program for children which you would get a green sticker placed as a segment of a bookworm for each book that you read. You were allowed to check out six books at one time, which was always a challenge as there were so many books to choose from. I could have stayed at the library all day looking and reading the books, well that at and the library was air conditioned. Summers are hot in Florida and our house, like most built in the 1950’s, were not air conditioned. It was a wonderful experience to go from the summer heat into the coolness of the library. I could have stayed there all day for the air conditioning alone, but it always came time when Mom would tell us it was time to go. By that time, I would have more than the allowed number books and I would have to quickly narrow them down to just six.

After some prodding by Mom, I would choose my books and Mom would lead us to the checkout counter where she would check out her six books first, then followed in order of age, my sister, me, and then my brother. Each book had a card in a sleeve inside the back cover with the date and people who had checked out the book. When you got to the counter, you would write your name on the card, and the librarian would stamp in with the date it needed to be returned. The librarian would then keep the card, putting another with just the due date back into the book. Something is lost with modern checkout systems using barcodes and computers, the old card system would tell you how popular the book was by how many names were on it and, occasionally you might see the name of someone you knew. The memory inspired me to put the card in the back of the Tom Swift book I put in the book box.

Having the six books read in two weeks was never a problem. Leaving the wonderfully cool library, we would get into our very hot, not air conditioned, 1955 Chevy for the drive to our not air conditioned home. I hardly noticed the heat for I would have a book open and  have it half read by the time we got home. I would have all my books read in a few days but would have to wait another week to go to the library again.

It was at the library that I first discovered science fiction. There on the back of my “Reading Achievement Certificate” for the summer of 1963 were the books I read, two Miss Pickerell books, Miss Pickerell Goes Undersea and she goes to Mars. There was Rocket Mouse, Freddy and the Spaceship, Sprockets a Little Robot, a couple of Space Cat books who went on more adventures than my cats ever have, but the one that had the most influence on me, and the more serious book, was Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein.  From that summer on for many years, I read almost exclusively science fiction books.

While we got several magazines at home, it was at the 7-11 convenience store I discovered Popular Science magazine. In the early 1960’s they built a new 7-11 store across the street from our neighborhood which we frequented for a number of things. Mom would send my brother to get milk and a loaf of Wonder bread which was no easy task for young boys. The store wasn’t that far, we lived in the third house from the end of the street, but then we had to cross two busy roads that merged right in front of the 7-11. Then after buying the milk and bread we had to carry it home, well I carried the milk for I was older and my brother carried the bread. Let me tell you, a gallon of milk is heavy.   They were always playing the jingle “Oh, thank heaven for 7-11” on the TV and radio.  Every time I went to the 7-11 I thought, “Oh, thank heaven I made it across the road to the 7-11”.   I had nightmares years later about crossing the intersection to get milk. To reward us Mom would sometimes let us use the change to get a Slurpee, a frozen slushy drink which was like a cross between a snow cone and an icicle. In the early days they only had three flavors, red cherry, blue raspberry and Coca-Cola. Blue raspberry was my favorite even though raspberries are not blue and it didn’t taste like raspberries.

The wondrous scientific things I read as a boy in the 60’s sparked my imagination, some coming to be, others not. While we don’t have flying cars, we do have satellites, rockets, space travel, and men traveling to the moon.  The Tom Swift of my childhood with his spaceships and travels to the moon is today’s Elon Musk and the space travel futurized in Popular Science coming true with SpaceX.

In the spring of 2018 I moved back to my hometown of Gainesville Florida to be nearer to my family, particularly my father. Dad was doing OK, but at ninety-one he was beginning to need more help even though he wasn’t willing to admit it.  I had been planning the move for a number of years to happen after I retired on my birthday, the winter solstice of 2018, but through a series of fortunate events, I got to retire in August which allowed me to move back to Florida early.

Okay, there were a few things I needed to do first, sell my house, pack up everything I own, and have a new house built in Florida.  I wrote in my journal,

“Sometimes life moves fast, sometimes life moves slow. I would think at my age it would move slow, but that is not the case.  So many things are happening in my life at this time my head is almost spinning. What a ride it will be. I smile, I laugh, I’m almost on the edge of freaking out. But then I step back and think what a wonderful life’s ride and just let it happen.”

By the end of April things had mostly wrapped up at work and what little I had to do could be done remotely. My house in Virginia, which I thought would take a month or two to sell, sold in one day.  I had no reason not to move to Florida, well other than my new house wouldn’t be finished until September, so I called Dad.

“Hey Dad, guess what?”
“What?”
“I can retire in August instead of December.”
“Well that’s good, what you going to do?”
“I thought I would move down early.”
“When’s your house going to be done?”
“Not until September… I thought I would stay with you until it is done.”
…a moment of silence
“Yeah, that would be OK.”

And so it was decided, I would move down in May and stay with Dad until my new house was finished. 

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Part 2
Living with Dad
Coming soon…
Excerpt

It had been almost fifty years since I lived with my parents. I had moved out the summer after I graduated from high school and never moved back. I did return for a few days, even a week,  two or three times a year, but that doesn’t count as living with them, I was just visiting. Living with your parents as an adult is a whole different thing. Dad had been living alone since Mom died five years ago so technically, I would be living with just Dad. I don’t know if that would be better or worse. Dad and I got along well enough, we always had, we never fought or even had cross words, we just really never said much to each other. When Mom was alive, she was the one to call and write letters which she always signed “Love, Mom and Dad.”  Dad didn’t say much and when he did it was usually short and to the point. So I was a little anxious about living with Dad, even though it would only be for a few months.

Updated: 2026-08-23