September 19, 2022.
What a weird day. My dad Rick Karrasch passed pretty suddenly this morning out in Oregon. He felt weird, so my sis and stepmom took him to the hospital.
He made some jokes about the imaging machine with hospital staff and not long after, his heart stopped. He went out like many aspire to, quick and without suffering.
Dad was never an advocate of perfect health and by this point, I think he has had some deal with neighborhood cats to borrow lives, as he has been well past his personal nine for YEARS!
I wear my feelings on my sleeve as many know, so I’m obviously pretty damn sad. Just the way it is. Never had a poker face and never will.
Anyway.
I left work early, ate one piece of cold pizza and rode a few hours. Straight to bonk city. Didn’t bring enough water either. I did get a good picture of a 2nd Gen Dodge Caravan. He wasn’t one to overly plan things and I think would have appreciated all of it. Seemed right. Felt good.
I’ll throw in one of my favorite Rick stories as he loved telling stories haha.
He passed his Ford Ranger to me when I turned 16. It was a 93 Extra cab with a 5 speed MT and the 4.0 V6.
Like most 16 year old kids I was an absolute moron so took it deep into Talladega National Forest the first chance I got. I wrecked it and wrecked it good. Caved in the whole side of the bed. I had to walk hours to get someone to rescue me and the truck.
I played it cool when I got home and parked it with the wrecked side facing the fence where Dad couldn’t see it. Genius.
I parked it like that for 2 years then sold it. He never said anything so finally in college I asked him about it.
“Oh yeah, I saw it the day you brought it back, but figured it was your problem to figure out..”
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Top of Dunavant Mountain. 1989.
This is on Highway 25, that runs from Leeds to Vandiver. We grew up on the Vandiver side and it is one of my favorite roads of all time.
I was 4 years old and neither my Dad or I had any perception of his Nissan being a “paw paw truck” at the time.
Probably cause back then, most trucks were paw paw trucks!
This truck was my Dad’s and had all the requisite attributes of the genre:
Mostly stock
Camper shell
Extra cab
V6 with the 5 speed manual
I remember the jump seats in back well and so does my sister. They directly faced each other, and during drives to Missouri to visit family, the tension started high and got worse.
Dad obviously wanted me and Evangeline to stay close during these trips. We are still close to this day, and I’m proud to say haven’t kicked each other in years.
I suppose I always had an awareness of paw paw trucks, so my uncanny ability to find them was probably set in place as a youngster and I owe some thanks to Dad.
“People like hearing stories about other people.”
-Dan John
I found this poster in our office early this week. From the date on it, I think it is from Dad’s first year in Purdue’s marching band.
He was a trumpet player, and obviously a good one. Band stuff was him and Evangeline’s thing when we were kids. I always played sports, so it was just kinda understood we had our own things. (Evangeline says she was also a majorette which is a sport but I didn’t see it at the World Games so whatever)
She played clarinet, and he always helped her practice. He took me to my games and bike races. Simple enough.
Dad had a Masters in Political Science from Purdue. He ended up a car mechanic after college and was pretty good at it.
I know he sometimes seemed sour about not doing something more directly involved with his college education, but I was more interested in how he spent that time there and wasn’t into college basketball…
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Dad had relatively simple tastes in food, and never missed an opportunity to grab a treat for me and Evangeline.
In general, we ate healthy and had a giant garden shared with neighbors when we were little.
But yeah, I would say Dad exposed us to plenty of foods Mom might have missed 😂. Chili cheese dogs, Mountain Dew, and a large variety of candy.
I still remember the standoffs between him and Evangeline when he plopped down a SPAM sandwich in front of her!
I never quite nailed down Dad’s own food preferences however. My mother was and is a fantastic cook, and she also had a tough time impressing dad with meals.
I knew Dad liked room temperature, maybe warm, Folgers instant coffee. I also liked coffee, so decided once to make him my favorite coffee. I don’t remember what it was, but I made sure to grind it fresh and run it through the Aeropress.
He took one sip, set it down, and turned back to The Weather Channel. I was furious! He told me something like “oh it’s ok I guess” and that was that. Lesson learned.
I told my Mom about it and she had her own version from when they first got married.
He said he liked meatloaf, so she set out to make a great one. Like I said above, she was an awesome cook. He wasn’t impressed with the first few attempts…
“I don’t know, it just isn’t as good as my Mom’s” 😂
After a couple more tries, she was OVER IT.
She went to the store, got the cheapest ground chuck she could find, some French’s meatloaf mix, and ketchup.
Dad took one bite, his face lit up, and he said ,”Oh Linda, you finally got it right!!”
Dad was an absolute character and well remembered, which is all any of us can hope for when we are gone!
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Some vehicles don’t belong on dirt roads, and this was one of them.
This is The Queen Mary, Dad’s first Chevy Caprice station wagon. One of two, or maybe threes he had. I am not sure.
He really liked station wagons. So much in fact, that he got his first wife (my mom Linda) a Grand Marquis wagon once without talking to her first. Wood panels and all. I’ll let you guess how that went over.
This particular wagon here is the one he got us lost in Talladega National Forest driving. He was taking me to a mountain bike race at Cheaha and I had already been there a hundred times.
He pulled out a crumpled page of Mapquest directions and declared we would try a new way. I just told him alright, hand them to me and let’s go. I would read and he drove.
It only took a couple turn offs from pavement and we were in full gravel mode in the Caprice. No cell service. No map. For what it’s worth, a Caprice wagon is really bad with tight turns on loose gravel. It’s probably fun driving, but whoever isn’t driving will be scared as all hell. I was.
We had gone from being 90 minutes early to the race, to pretty close to being late to start. Eventually we popped out on pavement again, and made it up to the top of Cheaha.
I grabbed my stuff, begged the promoter for a plate and promised to pay when I finished. He laughed and let me race. Dad smoked his pipe in his camp chair like nothing had happened at all then drove me back down the mountain after the race.
This was the same day I got motion sickness for the only time in my life. I raced in the heat for two hours, then layed in the backseat of the wagon while he drove it down the twisty mountain.
Dad was super into cars, and that was probably my favorite thing to talk about with him…even if it was fighting over the best time of year for me to prep the entire wagon to paint by myself*.
The photo here is from a trip that went through Bryson City, North Carolina in the early 2000s. Dad was always happy to kick it in the parking lot for a few hours while I got a ride in.
*it’s never the right time of year to prep a Caprice for paint by yourself*
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