Dear Neighbor,
It’s June, when we honor fathers, so, let’s talk about dads and how they influence our lives. I’ll start with mine.
My father was a farmer, and many times growing up I heard people refer casually to farmers as “dumb.”
It hurt and amazed me. Each time I heard that, I thought, you get up at 5:00 every morning, oversee hundreds of acres of crops, tend to livestock and milk cows twice a day, maintain an endless array of machinery, do your own taxes, and see how that goes. My father was my first professor in life. I learned to work hard from him.
He hated lying.
If my dad were to rank the Ten Commandments, the ninth — “Thou shalt not lie” — would come out on top. He often said, “Your word is the one thing you give and keep at the same time, in equal measure.” He taught me to tell the truth.
Dad was wise with money.
He and I often watched the ABC News with Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters. One night Barbara was on a roll with a Big Story about this relatively new thing called the credit card. She started by holding up a morbidly obese wallet, chock-full of charge cards from every store and gas station around, then panned to a Twiggythin billfold with one card that worked “everywhere.”
No more rooting around for the J.C. Penney or Amoco card; no more monthly bills from every store in town. “And the best thing is you get a line of credit — an automatic loan that you can pay in full or choose the minimum payment.” (She didn’t mention those wily finance charges).
Back at their desk, Harry praised Barbara for her great reporting, and she gushed, “These credit cards will change the laws of economics!” Dad was disgusted: “Harummph. The only law of economics anybody needs to know is that you don’t buy anything you don’t have cash in hand to pay for.” This seared through me. He taught me to live debt-free.
One invaluable lesson involves me at my worst. Behind our house was a huge, rectangular slab of cement where people parked, where we played basketball, and, in the summer, where the swimming pool from the hardware store was set up. This multi-purpose area was called, appropriately, “the cement.”
I was in high school, and it was late October. That Friday morning before I left for school, Dad asked me to sweep the leaves off the cement when I got home. “OK,” I said, went to school, came home, watched TV and lounged around. At supper, he noted that I hadn’t kept my word, that I needed to sweep the cement first thing in the morning. “OK.” Again, I didn’t. The same exchange took place mid-morning on Saturday and again at lunch. I still didn’t. Later that afternoon, I was watching a bowling tournament on TV, one leg slung over the chair’s armrest, when he approached me. And he was mad.
Dad wasn’t a yeller.
In fact, the angrier he was, the quieter he got. You knew you were in trouble when you could barely hear him. “Dorothy,” he whispered, “I’ve asked you half a dozen times to sweep the cement. You keep saying you will, but you don’t. Why not?” I looked up at him, and in words and tone that make me want to reach through a time machine and slap myself, said, “’Cuz I don’t wanna.”
His astonishing response: “Dorothy, I know the perfect way to get out of anything you don’t want to do.” I was wide-eyed and all ears: “What?” He continued, “You just do it. Then you don’t have to do it anymore.” And he walked out.
I sat there a few minutes, absorbing his wisdom. He was right. I got up, grabbed a push broom, and swept the living daylights out of that cement. Not a single leaf remained when I was done.
When he came in for supper, Dad looked at me and said, “The cement looks good.” I said, “Thanks.” And that was that. Not a day goes by when I don’t have something to do that “I don’t wanna.” But I think of Dad and just do it. He taught me — like it or not — to get things done.
What about your dad?
On Father’s Day, or any day for that matter, the best gift you can give your dad, whether living or not, is to carry on his best lessons and then one day pass them on to your own children.
Happy Father’s Day to all!
