My dad taught me to work hard. He awoke early and put in long hours. Sometimes he did hard physical work, other times it was mentally taxing. He worked six days a week, and he seldom took a vacation, though we did take a few fishing trips. My parents lived on a farm in the 1930s, a few years before I was born, where my dad and mom slaved with manual work, having no motorized farm implements and only some farm animals to help with the field work. I heard a few of the stories of their struggles on the farm; enough to realize how hard life was. The words were never spoken, but the example was there before me each day except Sunday; you go to work, you work hard, and do what is required of you. Once in a great while he would complain about a boss, but not often.
My parents had a hard life, therefore, I expected to have a hard life. I had no delusions that I would ever have more than a little bit in life. I expected to be low middle class, work hard, and marry a hard working man. For many years that was good enough. But in my later teen years I began to dream a little bigger, and I realized that it might be possible to have a better life, if I could just find a way to get out of the town where I grew up. If I stayed, it would always be the same, and I was beginning to want more. I believe in some way my dad taught me to dream, taught me to want to break out, because I know that was a constant dream; to break out. It never happened for him.
My dad taught me to cuss. He was very good at it, and he seldom held back in front of me, though mom would try to stop him. If he was angry about his boss, I could expect to hear some very clever concoctions of colorful words to describe his feelings. My mom was a Christian woman, and she didn't want to hear it any more than she wanted me to hear it. But I listened with delight, took mental notes, and carried everything that I learned to school to impress all my classmates. I don't remember who was impressed and who wasn't, but I was pretty impressed with myself. I heard a comedian once say he could cuss the wallpaper off the wall. And I would say that I could cuss it right back up the wall again. I was a very good student.
Dad taught me how to drive. He was an excellent driver who never had an accident nor a ticket in his fifty-nine years of life. So far I can say the same thing, and I am older. He taught me to love to drive in the rain, how to safely do great donuts in an icy or snowy parking lot. His only advice for driving was, "Always drive for the other guy." I have never forgotten that, and I believe that is what makes a good driver.
The most fun I ever had with my dad was when he taught me how to fish and hunt. In Nebraska, both are excellent ways to compensate for the lack of meat during the year. Our freezer was always full of fish, squirrel, rabbit, pheasant, quail, and deer. An occasional side of beef or pork might show up if the price was good enough, or sometimes dad would do something special for a farmer somewhere, and the meat would be payment. We fished from the river bank, seldom in someone else's boat. Sitting on the edge of the water would be a quiet time to watch the wind in the trees, or watch the bubbles the fish made when they came to the top. This would be the time to tell stories of his boyhood. It would also be the time to tell me made up stories that would make me move closer to him for protection. Some of his stories made the hair on the back of my neck stand for days. And, when I was sufficiently frightened, he would laugh and laugh so loud it would echo across the water. I loved that man so much.
He bought a .22 rifle just for me to use when we went hunting. He taught me how to load it and carry it when we walked in the fields. He told me how to shoot the gun, but he let me teach myself when it came to finding my target and shooting. I was a fairly good shot until one fall morning when I was about 16. Dad saw a squirrel in a leafless young tree not 30 yards from the road. I stepped out of the car, lifted my rifle and aimed. That squirrel looked right back at me and continued to chew. I don't think he blinked. He just stared at me, daring me, accusing me. I could not shoot that squirrel, and I never went hunting with dad again. Our relationship was very cool at the time, and he died a couple of years later. Childhood and innocence have such advantage in our relationships. Or is is just naivete?
My dad taught me to laugh; and laugh loudly. My mother loved to laugh, as well, and listening to the two of them together laughing out loud was some of the sweetest music I have ever heard. Their life was tough, and laughing heartily was a great release. He was a great tease, and to this day I love to tease. I tease the people I love, just as he did. He had no time for people who didn't want to laugh or have fun, even at their own expense. He laughed at himself, and he laughed at others.
Dad taught me that the people I love the most in this world will disappoint me, betray me, abandon me in some respect, and it will be the hardest and most destructive thing that I will ever endure. I haven't lost a tremendous ability to trust, but sometimes the fact of such disappointment will cause me to lash out at whoever has the misfortune to be present. My dad taught me how to be angry at the one you love and adore, how to resent and hate from the sheer pain of betrayal. I learned that even someone who is overflowing with love and devotion to his wife and family can make selfish choices that estrange him from those who love him most. I learned that the most perfect man in the world was not perfect. I'm not sure that wound has ever healed.
Fun and delightfully funny. Sullen and angry at the world. Crass and unforgiving. Charming and handsome, a singer with a sweet bass voice. These are some of the things in life that my daddy taught me. I've gotten over some of them, others still haunt. My temper gets better with age, and with temperance from my Savior, and I am a forgiving person, though still crass when behind the scenes. The Holy Spirit checks me on that, too. I am my father's daughter, to my dismay, and I loved him with such a devotion that saw no flaws, no reason to doubt, until my innocence was gone. And, then, so was my dad.
