My dad was a farm boy and the phrase "Kee Heep" was used to call the cows. It was a singular throat sound. The shrieking and shrill "e" phonetic of kee heep carries a distance and was clearly pleasing to the recipient cows since it meant an event and they came ambling back together.
If one of us was at a distance and dad wanted to get our attention he also hollered " kee heep". My dad was not a soft spoken man. If dad wanted to make himself available he always said, " Holler if you need me." It was not as if he was hard of hearing. Holler, for him was both a figure of speech and a literal remedy. It was particularly useful in ball and hockey games, then generally ornamented with colorful phasing when disgusted with the play.
My dad always whistled while he worked as a younger man and particularly as he rode his bicycle back and forth from his job. As he became older he stopped whistling while he worked but could still whistle a little if he sat and caught his breath a while. He stopped hollering and stopped calling at us, kee heep. You need breathe to holler . "kee heep" and to whistle. The cigarettes had finally caught up with him and he became progressively more disabled with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD. He remained cheerful but much quieter when confined eventually to his chair for much of the day anchored to the oxygen tank. The day before he fell and cracked his hip and two days before he died the oxygen man had visited him and wrote a progress note, "Mr W is doing well , and is cheerful in his slippers and doing the breakfast dishes.".
Wellness is relative and finite. He has been dead almost 40 years but I still think back to the hollering kee heep and the whistling merrily with the same monotonous tune as he rode back and forth to his job. My brothers remember his regular tune "Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you". He rode the bicycle because he never had a car in those days. You could always tell where he was coming from or going from a long way off. His sounds were still part of us for a very long time.
If one of us was at a distance and dad wanted to get our attention he also hollered " kee heep". My dad was not a soft spoken man. If dad wanted to make himself available he always said, " Holler if you need me." It was not as if he was hard of hearing. Holler, for him was both a figure of speech and a literal remedy. It was particularly useful in ball and hockey games, then generally ornamented with colorful phasing when disgusted with the play.
My dad always whistled while he worked as a younger man and particularly as he rode his bicycle back and forth from his job. As he became older he stopped whistling while he worked but could still whistle a little if he sat and caught his breath a while. He stopped hollering and stopped calling at us, kee heep. You need breathe to holler . "kee heep" and to whistle. The cigarettes had finally caught up with him and he became progressively more disabled with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or COPD. He remained cheerful but much quieter when confined eventually to his chair for much of the day anchored to the oxygen tank. The day before he fell and cracked his hip and two days before he died the oxygen man had visited him and wrote a progress note, "Mr W is doing well , and is cheerful in his slippers and doing the breakfast dishes.".
Wellness is relative and finite. He has been dead almost 40 years but I still think back to the hollering kee heep and the whistling merrily with the same monotonous tune as he rode back and forth to his job. My brothers remember his regular tune "Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you". He rode the bicycle because he never had a car in those days. You could always tell where he was coming from or going from a long way off. His sounds were still part of us for a very long time.
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