I recently read a column entitled “Dad and the Thingamadodger” in Servant magazine written by author, public speaker and humorist Phil Callaway. Essentially, it described his late dad as one who would never earn entrance into the Fatherhood Hall of Fame. His dad just didn’t do all the things today’s experts believe fathers should do.
Well, neither did my father. I’ve frequently written about other members of my family, but rarely about Dad, except to discuss his mental illness and the traumatic experiences resulting from it. But he wasn’t always ill. I recall positive incidents from my first five or six years and others that occurred during visits he made home in the following years.
I’ll steal Phil Calloway’s approach and tell you first about the things that would block him, by modern standards, from qualifying for Father of the Year. He didn’t buy me new skates. The old ones flopped over at the ankles.
He didn’t buy me a pony, as he did for his first family. He didn’t even get me a used bicycle. He had good reason for his failures in those areas; he just did not have the money.
I don’t recall Dad ever hugging me or telling me he loved me. Old time fathers didn’t do things like that. Although he would not have heard of the concept of spending quality time with his kids, he did exactly that. Those events stand out like lighthouses on an otherwise bleak shoreline.
Soon after returning from England, I’d be three or four years old, Dad drove a horse-drawn school van to make a few dollars as he tried to bring the farm back into production. I clearly remember one time when he took me along. Sitting next to him, and looking back at the big kids going to school, I felt like a prince. At about that time, Dad crafted me a bed, using old crib ends and various materials found in the shed or scrounged from neighbours. I proudly slept on it for years, until my increasing weight broke through the chicken-wire bedspring.
A little later in life, I followed Dad on what amounted to a hunting trip. As I walked behind him through a field, he suddenly stepped sideways, bent down, and picked up a live rabbit by the ears. For a man then pushing 70, he sure could move. On another occasion he showed me how to disable a porcupine with a stick and transport it safely home for dinner (Mother refused to cook it). Although a crack shot in the army, I never saw Dad carry a rifle. We had other great times together: tobogganing, visiting auction sales, attending political gatherings.
Dad had raced bicycles as a young man, and during his short visits home during my early teens, he taught me how to change the angle of my feet as they rotated with the pedals to essentially change gears even though riding a fixed-gear bike.
He also taught me to align a bent wheel by changing the tension of the spokes. By then I’d saved up $15 to buy an old bike with only one speed and bent wheels.
Most of us will have great memories of our fathers if we concentrate on the positive moments and sweep away the negative times.