The dreams leave me feeling both happy and sad. Happy because it was a very pleasant dream, and sad that it wasn't that way with him in real life.

I do think he wanted to be a heroic dad, like John Walton from the TV show. That family was pulling together through hard times, and I believe in wanting us to be close like that, he artificially created the same circumstances, and then wondered why we didn't look up to him the way John-Boy and the others looked up to their father.

Why? Because John Walton was doing his best to give his children what he could. He wasn't deliberately depriving them. If you make your family poor on purpose, it isn't at all the same thing as being poor when you can't help it. No, there's nothing wrong with being poor--unless you don't HAVE to be. But my father couldn't grasp that.