I was surprised to read, this morning, that according the U.S. Census Bureau, fathers are the caregivers for about one-quarter of the nation’s preschoolers. I easily identify with that situation, not because my father was ever jobless like so many today, but because he accepted the role of nurturer and caregiver. My mother moved in and out of depression much of their marriage, so my father took on the parenting role. For that, my brother and I are deeply grateful.
As I read Nick Kristof's column on his dad twice this morning, tears flowing down my face, I was moved that Kristof knew that with both a loving father and mother, he won the "lottery of life."
Reading Kristof, I saw my own father, a marvelous, caring, fun-loving human. Growing up in the tobacco country of Western Kentucky, he was full of the stories and the vitality of that culture and rural life in the ‘teens and ‘twenties. His father died of the flu epidemic he was three, but his uncle and aunt lived nearby and helped him farm, raising his first tobacco crop at age 9. I remember asking my dad about that crop, how much work there was to it and how profitable it was. He said that a family could live three years on one summer's earnings in tobacco. Growing tobacco is a lot of work, so I was curious as to how he was able to get so much done. His uncle was always available, partly because he housed a tenant farmer, as much to work the tobacco crop as to make it possible to farm with his nephew. I’m certain that influenced my father’s willingness to befriend and help most anyone.
My dad lost part of his hand as a senior in high school. Fearful of possible limitations, that same uncle and aunt sent him off to an accounting school in Louisville to provide a job future. Like many people from that part of the country, my father and mother migrated to the Detroit area in the 1920s where Dad worked as an accountant at a Ford dealership until the recession closed the dealership down. He drove a milk truck during much of the depression, finally getting a job at the original Ford assembly plant in Highland Park just before WW II. I never thought of him as handicapped. He could do anything with his hand, including tie a bow tie for Sunday church. I remember that one of his friends came to help him build a concrete driveway. The friend was surprised that my dad could do most anything in spite of his "handicap."
My mom worked in the factory during WWII and though she had more than three years of college, never left the factory. In the years during the war and the ten years following, plants often worked three shifts. During school time, my brother and I were latch-key kids, for about a half-hour after school before my mother got home from work. Dad got home about midnight during school months, and that meant he was around for breakfast with us. He was first up and breakfast was often special. Of course, just being around him was "special."
Though my dad was not especially religious, he was a churchman, largely because of the community of friends in our huge church. An earthy sort of person, I remember that when I told him that I was going to seminary after college, he said that was just fine. "But," he went on, "just don't take the church too seriously." A wise recommendation, true for all institutions, religious or otherwise. That attitude was deeply ingrained along with his sense of sanctified nonchalance about life by early adulthood. My dad was always there for his boys, filled with laughter at our antics.
My brother and I loved being around my dad, playing and working with him. Detroit people were nuts about cars. It seemed like every family in the '40s and '50s had at least two cars, with an older one in the garage that sons and fathers worked with for years, bringing it up to mint condition. With both parents driving to work, we had a new car to ‘tool around in every year. The parking lot, across the street from our church filled quickly after services with guys looking over the new cars and lifting up the hoods to check out the latest engineering feats. If you’re in Detroit in August, you know about the “Dream Cruise,” the parade up and down Woodward Avenue of mint conditioned cars from as early as the 1920s. It’s a continuation of that love of the American auto.
What my brother and I most remember about our father were the summers when school was out. He worked "afternoons" in the summer so that he could be with us. If it was raining, he'd drop me off at the local library for a couple hours. I loved that place and the librarian always had time to point me to good books. When it wasn't raining, oh boy! It was off to the lake with my dad and my uncle. We fished all the suburban lakes, bringing home perch and bass for a late lunch before he hurried off to his 3:30pm job at Ford. If the fish weren't biting, off would come the clothes, and we were all skinny-dipping in the lake. It never crossed my mind until now that he had not the slightest difficulty swimming, in spite of that stub of a hand. When the fishing was poor, the trek was always the same. We picked up a bag of hamburgers and fries from White Castle hamburgers and fries, located on Woodward near Eight Mile Road, a place still open, nearly 65 years later. I wouldn't dream of that food now, but that was a lark then. Summers were filled with more than that. Tiger baseball games with my dad and his brother. Sitting in the bleachers, listening to the teasing and the "baloney," between him and his brother. Twice, he even took us to the horse races at the fairgrounds. That was an experience.
I don't remember Dad explaining much about life to us, other than through stories. College for us was assumed, but he had no insights to share about the experience. I remember nothing from him about dating and girls, except one statement about sex: "keep your zipper zipped," and that was the end of it. We learned from his loving presence, his stories and his laughter. I got paddled only once as a kid. I don't remember the reason, but I can still see the tears in his eyes as he walked away from me.
Shortly after I left for college, my dad and mother moved to Southfield, just West of the monastery on Greenfield Road, between Nine and Ten Mile. With more than an acre backing up to forested land, my parents had a large vegetable garden with dog pens at the back of the lot. He had Beagles for rabbit hunting and Black 'n Tan Coon hounds for raccoon hunting in the fall and winter.
He hunted in season and out, never paying the slightest attention to the hunting laws. Each year he set aside at least $50 bucks for fines for hunting raccoon out of season. The corn farmers were happy to have him hunt their lands, so he was never reported or fined unless a game warden stumbled on him. Those dogs ran at nite, baying when they'd treed a raccoon. He could tell which of the five or six dogs with him had "treed." I knew he was very good at training dogs, and that hunters were always trying to buy one of his dogs. I never realized just how good he was until I was in college, and was short a large sum for my final year (I'd earned most of my way through college.) When I called home, he said he'd sell a dog and that would take care of it. To my shock, he sold one of his dogs for $1200--in 1958.
In spite of being from the South, Dad was largely color-blind, unusually so for that time. Some of his best "hunting buddies" were Blacks. Although Southfield at that time was very middle/upper middle white, he lacked the typical Detroit Black prejudices. Two occasions stick in my mind. On one Saturday morning, he came home from hunting with one of his African-American friends, Slim. My dad invited him in for lunch, hamburgers, etc. Slim said he couldn't do that. When my dad asked why, Slim said that Negroes didn't eat with Whites in their homes. My dad was quick with his response. "You don't eat with me, you don't hunt with me!" Slim had lunch with us that day, and several other times as well. I remember that though my mother could be difficult, that wasn't an occasion when her resistance surfaced. On another occasion my dad, unthinkingly, invited Slim to go with him to Kentucky on a hunting trip. Slim responded that his car automatically stopped in the middle of the bridge over the Ohio River. It just couldn't go any further South. (The Ohio was the separation between North and South. In those days, Blacks left the South never to return. My Dad hooted with laughter at Slim’s response. They went to the Upper Peninsula instead.
Perhaps the most revealing experience with my father took place at his funeral in the 1970s. Making plans for the funeral, my brother and I contacted a well-known church member and funeral home owner. We suggested one of the nearby homes, a smaller residence for the funeral. Casey, the funeral director responded that that wouldn't do. It wasn't large enough. We were wide-eyed when one of the largest funeral homes in Detroit was filled with people. There wasn't a solemn moment. Hours of noisy laughter and storytelling, just what my Dad would have wanted and enjoyed. We learned more about Dad at that funeral than through all the years of life with him.
Dad was not one for philosophizing, but we were mesmerized by the hundreds of stories. What the stories gave me was a broad and warm sense of the parameters of life. There were no tragedies, and practically no fairy tales of rescue. They were all stories about the smarts, the wits and the strength of humans that could make possible a very rich life. They taught the importance of friendship, the need for rules, but the willingness to break rules when they weren’t sensible. Breaking rules wasn’t discussed, it was just done. His stories were full of Kentucky smarts, pushing the envelope when necessary, and accessing an immense network of friends. I often thought during the last Bush’s presidency, that my Dad’s friendships were never the excluding kind of good ol’ boy stuff that was so prevalent during those eight years.
Though humble is not an adjective that crosses my mind about Dad, he was never presumptuous. Caring and loving, quick to give his boys a kiss, even in their adulthood, he was always supportive. Freedom was always a bit more important to him than responsibility. Still, when it came to responsibility, he was always there for his sons.