Happy Father's Day

With Father’s Day turning up, I’ve been thinking about my Dad.  Mother was such a strong, outgoing person that, oftentimes, people who didn’t know us well, assumed she ran the show.  People who made those assumptions were just so very wrong.  They were a team.  At times, they were quite a volatile team, but a team to the end.  He would grump when she was off doing civic things, then go find someone to help her with the housecleaning so she had more time to do those civic things.  She grumped because he didn’t like dealing with the public, a kind of essential part of owning a small business, but then, she went down to the shop, set up an office (forced him to air condition it, she wasn’t a masochist) and took over dealing with the public so he didn’t have to do it. 

After we kids had grown, I heard someone say to my Dad that he had raised four good kids. His response, ‘I didn’t do anything.   Alene did it.  I just made the money.’  He JUST made the money. Well, we knew he did more than that.  He wasn’t the sort of Dad who attended recitals, mostly because he was working all the time  Just making the money.  But, he was THERE.  I am sure he would not have chosen to work six days a week, but he did it.  That was, as he saw it, his job.  He didn’t  whine that he wanted to do something else, that he may be tired of fixing cars.  He just did it.  He had a wife and kids who needed for him to do that so he did it.  I remember, once, one of his friends had left his wife and kids, because he needed to ‘find himself.’ I can still see the look of pure befuddlement on my Dad’s face.  He had no concept, whatsoever, what that meant.  ‘Find himself?’  What on earth did that even mean? My Dad had no clue.  

Daddy, quiet, though he was, taught a lot.  He kept his business receipts in two boxes in the office.  “Money In’ and ‘Money Out’.  Every Christmas, he would buy a brand new book, hand it to one of us kids and tell us to enter the receipts in the right places so that, in April, he would be able to pay his taxes.  When this job fell to me, I noticed : No minister in our town paid full price.  From this I learned that ALL faiths were worthy of respect.  Even the ‘Holy Rollers’ up the road. B. I would find bills in the box that had  not been marked ‘Paid’. When questioned, he always had a response, ‘That old boy has been out of work for a while.  He’ll be along directly.” From this I learned  charity.   Now, don’t get me wrong.  He LOVED people who paid. In fact, once he told me that he really enjoyed working on this one woman’s car.  ‘Why?” He smiled. ‘Because when she comes to pick it up, she always brings her check book.”

Mother was extremely talented; there was not much she could not do. She could not, to save herself, however, set or fix her own hair.  All of my life, if people were not getting their cars fixed, and we ate potato soup for days,  he made sure Mother had money to get her hair done every week.   From this I learned that he adored my mother and made sure she had what she needed in order to feel good about herself.   When I made up my mind to run off to Hawaii to see  the man I , later, married, but was not married to at that time (Keep in mind, this was the sixties, and we lived in Turley), he didn’t stop me.  He damn sure did not like it, but he didn’t stop me.  From this I learned, that you raise kids, you don’t own them.  When I  called home twenty years later with a broken heart and three little kids, he told Mother to send me money for a decent attorney.  He then waited till she was out of the house, called me and asked if I needed him to come up there and straighten some stuff out. I should have said yes, maybe.  Some one could  have done with a good ass kicking.  From this I learned, when kids’ do what they want to do, and it all goes to shit, you stand by them, support them and don’t rub their noses in their own failures.

Once , after I had begun to work in the prison, he and Mother drove up for a visit.  As they left town, they decided to drive by the prison to leave me some money. ( I hate giving the impression that I have spent my life being broke, but to imply anything else would be a lie)  Since it was a prison, the C.O.’s would not, obviously, send him back to my classroom, so I had to go out to the main lobby, say goodbye and get the cash.  When I got there, he was sitting next to the biggest Biker dude I ever saw.  The man was sitting, chained up, and had been  left by the county cops to be placed in the state inmate population. That old boy must have been pushing 350-400 pounds and was six foot six if he was an inch.  He dwarfed my dad, and I thought Daddy would be upset that the guards had set him next to this evil looking fellow.  I  took the money and walked him back out to the car to say good bye to Mother, too.  Daddy said, “Looks like they could have gone ahead and put that boy on into the prison so he didn’t have to sit there chained up like an animal.  That wasn’t nice.  He’s still a human being.”  From this I learned, tough, gruff exteriors, quite often, hide very tender , loving hearts.  

A lot of times, as people age, their children will take over the parenting duties.  At times, given mental issues, that’s what has to happen.  But, when Mother got sick, she and Daddy sat down with the doctor, determined what treatment plan was suitable, came out and informed the rest of the family  what decisions had been made.  From this I learned, as long as you’ve got all your marbles, don’t give up your power.

The last time he went to the hospital, he must have known he was not going to come home.  And, he didn’t.  Johnny and Tom, both, looked and looked for a will. Found the truck title out in the barn, but no will.  Weeks later, Frances, his second wife, found the will laid on his reading table.  He had left it there so it would be easy for the family to find.  It wasn’t his fault, we were too dumb to look in the obvious place.  From this I learned the last lesson he taught me:  First, last and always, he thought of us.  Happy Father’s Day, Daddy.  I think of you all the time.