Dad was Good

Memories of moving dirt

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. Umberto Eco

My father is on my mind. He died in 1969 at age 49. Now my youngest child is 49! Dad had coronary disease, and his doctor said that his life-long smoking was the main issue. The second heart attack he had that year took his life. Mom found him when she came home from her third shift factory job, he had been dressing for work,

Their marriage was difficult, but in the final year they found some joy. Dad was scared to death at the time of his first heart attacks about ten months before he died. He changed his ways. He stopped smoking. He became a Christian due to visitation by two Church of the Brethren ministers at the hospital. He took to an evangelical, charismatic preacher with his own TV channel out of South Bend, Indiana. The evening programming would sign off with Air Force jet formations and the Star-Spangled Banner.

Dad was very good at many things. His skills included carpentry, operating big equipment, including backhoe, front end loader, and farm machinery, as well as a stint as a butcher. He could repair and maintain cars, trucks, and big road construction equipment. He worked as an asphalt road construction foreman. His ability to bid, plan and execute large excavation and foundation jobs for car dealerships and factories always amazed me. With an 8th grade education he could figure trenching grades utilizing a transit. That may be not a big deal, but I was impressed.

He taught me in the “odd moments”. Like the time I was working for him on a small out building. I would drive a nail and mess around getting the next nail out of my nail apron. In a not so patient manner he showed me how to have the next nail waiting to go. No down time between nails! You know — you’re nailing and reaching into the apron at the same time. Not quite multitasking, more like flow. I have never forgotten that lesson, even though my nature is to finish the driven nail, notice my fine work and, o yes, then go for another nail.

The photo of the cable crane and dragline bucket takes me back to the day that Dad took me to a gravel pit at 7am and gave me some instruction on how to operate the crane. He left me there for the day to practice. Those cranes required hand and foot coordination to work the cables, drag the bucket, swing the boom, and drop the load from the bucket. Neat work. Great that he trusted me with this piece of equipment. Within the first half hour after Dad drove away I snapped a cable! Yes, I miss-stepped or miss-handed the damn thing. I sat there for hours waiting for a ride home. I do not remember Dad’s reaction. I have totally blocked it.

That experience happened while I was in high school. I worked for Dad during summer vacation. He wanted me to come out of the classroom and dig a trench with a backhoe as quickly and straight as he could. Stressful. Or level a freshly landscaped lawn with the front end loader leaving no weird dips and heaps — just perfect. Well, we had some friction. Like the day we were on a job and I got really pissed at him and his impatience. I got off the backhoe and started walking home — 25 miles. In a little while he came along in his pickup and took me to lunch. A cheeseburger and chocolate malt got me back on the job.

One of my jobs was to run the backhoe for railroad crossing repair that Dad had contracted with the New York Central railroad. He jerry-rigged a narrow bucket from a full sized bucket so that I could remove stone from between railroad ties. Later in life I saw buckets made just for that job. Again, Dad was good at doing what needed to be done. The New York Central job was interesting in that I would spend half the day waiting for a train to come and pass. The signal for a coming train was a long time before it arrived. Safety first. Paid by the hour — so no worries. A casual summer job.

One of Dad’s friends and work buddies was a man who had his own backhoe. They would sometimes do jobs together. This guy had cerebral palsy. Walking was difficult. Tremors were severe. And running his backhoe? Like the cable crane, hands and feet were used for operation. His hands to draw and extend the bucket and his feet to move the boom right or left for unloading. Under normal conditions there were always safety issues if persons were nearby. The skill and safety of this man seemed fine. Amazing. He would drive away in his dump truck at the end if the day. He was known to do roofing jobs.

In the end I did not take over Dad’s business but I picked up “scraps of wisdom” along the way. I wish I had picked up more. My fault, not his.