it comes in pints?

Father's Day

I’ve never tried to put anything like this to paper (or pixel) before, but for many reasons this had been a year of reflection on the past, on family, on life. And so with hope that it doesn’t become too maudlin:

For Father’s Day, a word about the finest man I ever knew

The finest man I ever knew was born in a sheep camp in rural Oregon during the Great Depression and grew up with practically nothing. He learned early on the necessity and value of hard work, and this hard work helped to improve the family’s financial condition after the depression.

He was never academically inclined, though he graduated from high school. He was far more interested in sports and working than in books, and these interests produced in him a toughness that sometimes outweighed common sense. Weighing only 112 lbs., he played center for the varsity football team. One might expect that such a small player would get hurt in the middle of a varsity line, and one would be right: he broke his back and spent six months in a body cast. Of course, being a hard-headed country boy, he didn’t learn from this and managed to break both thumbs in a single boxing match. Fortunately, I learned to learn from his mistakes.

Growing up in a ranching family, his favorite sports (after hunting and fishing) were rodeo and horse racing. He raced locally as did most of his family, though he was too big to be a professional jockey like the uncle he idolized. Instead, he became a bareback bronc rider, winning a championship buckle he wore for the rest of his life (and which now rests on a family mantle alongside the flag which draped his coffin). He finally gave up rodeo for the responsibilities of family, but watching it remained a passion he passed on to his children.

After high school, he worked fulltime alongside his father at the ranch until the Korean War came along. He was exempt from the draft but saw many of his friends go off to fight. As the war dragged on, he felt he could not stay home and volunteered for the Navy. His family understood and was proud of him, though losing an able hand ultimately wrecked the family’s finances. The family lost the ranch and his father died early. He never dwelled on it but I don’t believe he ever quite forgave himself.

There were good things about his stint in the Navy. He remained in contact with his best buddy for the rest of his days, and through this buddy he met his future wife, whom he married after his discharge. He and his buddy each named their oldest son after the other.

With only a high school diploma, his post-Navy job prospects were few. He never complained about this; he had not applied himself in school and accepted full responsibility. He worked construction for a couple of years, returned to the cowboy life at his father-in-law’s ranch in California, then headed off to southern California for a better job. The family followed a few months later, and they stayed in the southland for the next 30 years.

The new job (rather, jobs, depending on season) paid better than the old, but it was brutal work. Summer was up to 16 hours a day in 100-plus degree heat on a D8 Caterpillar, often seven days a week. Winter was a little lighter with fulltime tree work. Hard as it was, he managed to arrange enough off time to work with the Boy Scouts and Little League when the kids were older.

After years of this, he collapsed one night with a blood pressure of 220/180. He was hospitalized for several days, recuperated for a few months, then landed a part-time (for him) job at only 40 hours per week. He continued to supplement his income with free-lance tree work, and it was tree work that provided his boys their first paying jobs. He intended that they would have better jobs in the future, but he was never so proud as when they worked alongside him, as he had with his father.

In 1981, he suffered the greatest tragedy any parent can face: the loss of his youngest son at the age of 18. Though outwardly he seemed to recover, he was never the same and just a few years later took disability retirement.

Early retirement didn’t sit well with him but he looked forward to his wife’s retirement, when they would move to the her family’s ranch in northern California. He kept himself busy making plans to pal around on the ranch with his brother-in-law, two old pals just having a good time hunting and fishing. Then, barely a year before the planned move, his brother-in-law collapsed and died. He and his wife still moved to the ranch, they traveled some and played with their grandchildren. But the hard life and harder losses had taken their toll, and he lived only three years longer.

He will not be remembered except by those who knew and loved him, and left no lasting legacy but his descendants. But what he taught us by his example (and in some cases, the example was “look what happens when you do what I did”), is being passed on to his grandchildren, and that is the greatest legacy of all:

He taught us to shoot (Mom taught us to shoot accurately)

He taught us to hunt and fish, and the ethics of sportsmanship and conservation. He taught us to skin a buck and clean a fish, to take our game cleanly, and to respect the game what we take.

He taught us to ride a horse.

He taught us to sit in Auntie’s garden and eat tomatoes right off the vine (a tradition I happily carry on).

He taught us to never start a fight, but to never back down when we were in the right. The rule was: if someone picked a fight, we should finish it; if we picked a fight, he would finish it.

He taught us to treat people right regardless of their background. He was an old country boy with his own set of prejudices but he never let them determine how he treated people. He “knew” how certain ethnic groups could be but he also knew, and taught us, that “there are good ones and bad ones”. Funny thing - he knew and made friends of many people from these groups, and so far as I know he never actually met a “bad one”.

He taught us to work hard (I’m in an industry in which 50-60 hour weeks are routine - child’s play)

He taught us to never sacrifice our principles.

Most important of all, he taught us to take responsibility for our lives, to make no excuses for our failings, and to learn from our mistakes as well as his.

And for all that, he only asked in return two things: To be the best people we could possibly be, and to give him grandchildren so he could have “a chance to spoil one”. He died knowing he was successful several times over.

It’s been almost nine years now, and I miss him more than ever. I love you, Dad.

Posted by Ken S at June 19, 2004 05:18 PM | TrackBack (1) |