AN EARLY FATHER'S DAY TRIBUTE

I am getting this posting off at the last moment, the 31^st day of March, because I have had a nagging feeling that I needed to put down what someone, who reads these things, needs to hear. I also put them down because I need to say them.  And I do it because I’ve been thinking about my father who died eight years ago. Dad was a mechanic—a man who fixed things.

My dad and I were never particularly close; he was pragmatic and I had, he said, my ‘head in the clouds’.  I was in awe of his tenacious ability to figure out mechanical things.  I resented his disrespect of education, or better, of 'educated' people and 'book knowledge', but I respected him and I knew that he always had my welfare in mind, and most importantly I knew that he loved my mother.  That may be the most important thing a father can do for his children-- love their mother.

That which follows are positive things that others have learned from their fathers that I connect with and remind me of my dad because he said similar things:

·        If you can’t find time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find time to do it over again? (Dad said this often.)

·        Do what you have to do first, and what you want to do second.

·        Get to know and show respect for clerks and secretaries; they are the gatekeepers. 

·        Don’t let other people’s actions govern yours.

·        If you ever get taken to jail, don’t waste your one phone call calling home.

·        Don’t brag; it’s not the whistle that pulls the train. 

·        Never replace just one spark plug.

·        Drive with care.  Life has no spare. 

·        If you work with your hands you will never go hungry. 

·        Practice hard.  You’ll play the way you practiced.

·        A clear conscience is a soft pillow.

·        If you got something you didn’t work for, then someone else worked for something they didn’t get. 

·        You’d be amazed what you can do when you have to.  

Thanks, Dad(s)

GRADATIONS in JUDGMENT

The concept of gradations in judgment is so ubiquitous in our life experience that we have maybe never given it much thought—or maybe it is all we think about.  A few examples:  as a student in school we may have been obsessed (or not) with our grades, A, B, C, D, or F; or in the choosing players for a team or being accepted for a university whether or not we made the ‘cut’;  if we were on diving or gymnastics or dance team our score on a scale of 1-10 the judges gave us on our performance; as an engineer or designer or technician whether our product was within ‘tolerances’ or specifications; or if we were still under our mother’s supervision whether our bedroom was ‘clean.’ 

The fact is, we are constantly being judged for good or for ill based on standards. Usually people other than ourselves set the standards and make the judgments (chances are, your mother’s standard of a clean room is of a higher standard than yours). We need to know the standards—the rules, the expectations.  We need to know what rewards us, what is ‘good enough,’ and what disqualifies us.

Standards of judgment are not just hurdles or obstacles we must overcome; they are guidelines of what we need to do to be acceptable, safe, or successful. View them as such; balking against them or disregarding them often just retards our progress.

What often confuses us, though, is that things that are presented to us are not always black or white. They may be near-black, or near-white or any degree of gradation that blurs our vision or compromises our performance or character. They could be, God-forbid, Fifty Shades of Grey (which I did not read or see), or the Sirens in Homer’s The Odyssey that the sojourners were warned not to hear.  They may be sounds that are soft or loud, or somewhere on the decibel scale that we cannot detect or that may damage our eardrums. They could be speeds that expedite our arrival at our desired destinations or they could put us out-of-control and kill us or others. They may be quality of goods such as a Rolex watch or Mercedes Benz automobile that could give us fine service, or they may be a Yugo—junk—or somewhere in between. In most of our lives we settle for something in between. 

So how do we judge and what do we settle for? 

I would suggest that we seek out the best as our standard and draw a line in the sand beneath or behind which we will not go.  For example, we will not go to a bar or a terrorist recruiting rally to find a virtuous potential mate.  We will not hang out whiling-away our hours in a smoke-filled pool hall if we hope to prepare ourselves to take the LSAT or MCAT.  We will not feed with the chickens if we hope to fly with the eagles.

We will establish or embrace a scale that has parameters or guidelines for judgment and we will stay between those lines—always leaning toward the upward end of the continuum. We identify our values, cull out those things, people, and products or activities that don’t measure up to minimum standards, and we let our educated conscience be our guide. I put the stress on ‘educated.’ It becomes ‘educated’ by reading out of the best books, seeking out the best people, and not blunting our God-given conscience by disregarding its promptings.

  And this is key: We will make up our minds ahead of time and remember our rules and standards of judgment every day before we step out into the arena of our world.   

A BOY'S LIFE (a little biography)

At the outset I must say that I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone.  It has been a happy life.  Secondly, I acknowledge that I have had models—even  heroes and that their influence has been enormous.  Many of these models and heroes were recognized at a young age and many vicariously came to my attention through reading. Thirdly, I considered myself then and even now to be a very average person in terms of my natural endowments, but I have accomplished some things that continue to amaze me. They may not be as amazing or funny as the life of author Bill Bryson who lived in the same era as me (Bryson wrote about his life in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) but there are some parallels with his boyhood in my boyhood and probably in nearly every boys’ life if they grew up in the United States ‘50’s . My life, to the contrary of some old Pennsylvania(where I was born) adages, belies the notion that ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ I have been made into something, thanks to answers to my prayers and being around the right people and staying away from the wrong people. For what it’s worth, I should mention that I was an early 'Baby Boomer,' at the end of ‘the Greatest Generation,' living the life of a middle-class white Christian youth in a suburban neighborhood. 

So I begin with my boyhood.  Pertaining to the title, yes, I used to read Boy’s Life. It, along with Outdoor Life, and Sport magazine, and the Scout Handbook were staples of my reading from about age 10-13.  I also liked the early editions of Mad magazine and other comic books featuring Superman and the like.  Of course I also read many adventure and outdoor books and daily read the sports page and funny page of our local newspaper.  And I read and wore out my King James Bible, given to all the young people of the church I attended by the pastor of a protestant church in my hometown.  In this I was following the example of an early hero, Abraham Lincoln.  As a young boy I loved to play outdoors since my trailer home didn’t have much of an indoors. My more organized life seemed to begin around age 10 with Cub Scouts and fireworks (sounds strange, I know) and attending a concert by the U.S. Air Force band which stimulated my desire to participate in a band in the horn section. 

 But I get ahead of myself. 

I had an ancestry of German and Italian parentage, a ‘back East’ infancy, and an ‘out West’ childhood and a home for the first eight years of my life in a 28’ house trailer without a bathroom, a refrigerator, a television or an air conditioner. We did have a little a.m. radio. My personal possessions were a baseball and glove and bat, marbles, yo-yo’s, some model planes and cars, and stuff I could find or trade for. I also had two younger brothers and a dog.

My sentient life began from about age 11 when I entered junior high school and centered around baseball and baseball practice, and baseball cards; golf and golf practice and junior golf tournaments; and my friends who were all, like me,  budding athletes. We all loved to practice our sports. 

My love of the outdoors continued and I always looked forward to hunting and fishing trips with my dad.  I took many solitary hikes in hills with my dog, my sling shot or my dad’s .22 rifle and with my friends from Boy Scouts.  I killed a few birds which I later rued.  Discovery of girls and dancing with them at school dances, which was nice, arrived in junior high as did popular literature of Hemmingway and Steinbeck which supplanted boys’ outdoor adventure novels.  In school I liked physical education (somehow I was always chosen one of the first on teams except in basketball), science classes, English, history and band.  I always liked and did well in spelling, and even math until I hit high school.  My grades were above average but not great; my focus, as you can tell was elsewhere. I had chores at home like all boys—feeding and caring for my dog, raking the millions of oak leaves that fell from our trees, mowing the lawn, and drying the dishes. My life was full. 

  

In high school my activities and social life centered on attending dances, spectating at basketball games, working at a local golf course, saving money for a sports car (I did finally get a used Triumph in my senior year), enjoying cars in general, and being ‘cool’ in my Levis 501 shrink-to-fit jeans, Converse ‘Chuck Taylor’ low-top tennis shoes, and hair with the proper amount of pomade.  I remember enjoying playing the trombone—pep band, marching band, and orchestra; riding my Schwinn one-speed bicycle, Boy Scouts, caddying, making model airplanes and cars, and, yes, blowing up things with firecrackers. 

 

My friends were all boys except for my girlfriend, Karen, who lived in a nearby town and who for many weeks I saw only at church—where our respective mothers took us  every week.  She was my only steady girlfriend from age 13 through all my high school years, even though she moved with her family (her dad was an Army officer) to Germany for three years. We corresponded by letter.

    

While my girlfriend was out-of-country I started reading more serious literature: philosophy, politics, and deeper religious writings.  I became even stronger in my Christian discipleship but not so strong in the congregation of my youth.  I sensed that there were better answers than I was getting from the Presbyterian approach to the Bible and sought diligently for answers in the doctrines of other churches. I knew, though, that I was getting closer and that Christ’s true church had to be out there.  But still, with these more serious intellectual and spiritual endeavors, I did not abandon my interest in professional football and baseball (we had a little 19” black and white T.V by now) and playing junior tournament golf and participating fully in my school’s music program. My girlfriend finally returned in my senior year.

 

 It was then I started to put boyhood behind me.  I began to seriously think of a career and began to buckle down in my studies.  A military career, or one in forestry, or even professional golf were briefly on my ‘screen.’ I also thought briefly about orthopedics but knew my mathematics preparation was not good enough to pursue medicine. But as a 17- year-old student in junior college, as it was called in those days,  I had good teachers and interesting classes in anatomy and physiology and kinesiology and started to think about a possible career in coaching sports or teaching physical education or biology. With my girlfriend’s encouragement I committed.

Following my graduation from j.c. and the moving out of my parents’ home I was more than ready to transition from a good boy’s life (take that either way) to that of a married ‘man.’  I was also ready, with my bride, to seriously look for answers to my quest for a more substantial religious life.  My ‘boy’s life was over as a happily married life began at the young age of 19 ½.