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| My (ruggedly handsome) Dad |
So, of course, I look like my Mom.
Don't get me wrong. I love my Mom. She's a wonderful woman. But, I have never heard her referred to as "ruggedly handsome." Likewise, I have never heard of myself referred to as "ruggedly handsome," either. (When I hear a "not completely hideous" I tally that up in the "compliment" file.)
My Dad passed away six years ago, on the Saturday morning before Father's Day. I miss him. He died about a month after my wife and I first met, and about a month before we went out on our first date. So, he never got to meet her. It's too bad, because he would have loved her. And he would have loved to see how happy she makes me.
As a kid, I really looked up to my Dad. (Literally and figuratively.) He was the biggest guy in the whole town. (Okay, there was one guy who was taller, but Dad could have easily whupped him in a fight.) I remember being shocked (shocked!) the first time I met someone who was significantly bigger than my Dad. (It was former Idaho Congressman George Hansen, who stood at 6'7" and well over 300 pounds.) I didn't think it was possible.
Dad grew up on the farm, and he stayed on the farm his whole life. He knew how to fix things, and if he didn't, he sure knew how to try to fix things. (We're very different in that way. I give up at trying to fix things very easily. He did not.)
Unfortunately, Dad's ability-to-fix-things gene was handed down to his first child, my sister, and completely missed my brother and I. But, I am reasonably good at going to fetch tools so that someone else (in most cases, The Wife) can fix things while I watch.
I'm not sure how Dad managed to walk around, because he always had an entire tool kit in his pockets. (Actually, I'm even more impressed that he was able to sit down with all that stuff in his pockets.) He always had in his pockets the following items (and I am not exaggerating): a pair of pliers; a pocket knife; several box wrenches (up to and including a 9/16th wrench); a screwdriver; a crescent wrench; a tape measure; a set of allen wrenches; and a set of calipers. And that was the minimum he had in his pockets at any time. He would have more and different things depending on the job at hand. We were always amazed at the amount of stuff he had in his pockets. And sometimes, he was too. Sometimes it would take him a while to dig through his pockets to find the specific tool he was looking for.
Most farmers wear hats. They know they need to keep their heads out of the sun. Some (usually the older ones) would wear straw hats. Most farmers around where I lived would wear baseball (or "trucker's") caps. My Dad, however, chose to wear a hardhat. For about as long as I can remember, my Dad wore a shiny red metal hardhat when he worked on the farm. After a few years most of the red had faded or chipped off.
Over time, the hardhat had been through a lot. There was one time when a cow was charging at Dad. In order to get the cow to stop and change direction, Dad took off his hardhat and whacked the cow on the top of its skull with it. This was successful in stopping the cow. It was also successful in putting a big dent in the top of the hardhat. Dad wore the hardhat with the dent in it for years, then one day we noticed that the dent was gone. We asked him why the dent wasn't there anymore. Apparently, when it rained the water would gather and pool in the dent, and when he would take off the hat or move his head just right, the pooled rain water from the dent would splash down on him. Dad got tired of that problem, so he fixed it. He pushed the dent out with a hydraulic press. (I, of course, would have had no idea how to fix a dent in a hardhat. Dad did.)
Of course, my Dad wasn't perfect. At about the time their three kids were ready to leave home for marriage, college and such, my Mom and Dad's own marriage fell apart. After 26 years together, they got divorced. It was not a happy time, and I was not very pleased with some of the choices my Dad made during this time.
He remarried, and helped raise his new wife's four children as their stepfather. Since I was already out of the house when Dad remarried, I was never very close with his four stepchildren. I never thought much about the impact he had on their lives until Dad's funeral. The youngest of those four children related a simple story. When Dad would enter the house after a long day at work, he would step through the door, take off his hardhat, and drop it on the floor. (My Dad was not a "hat rack" kind of man.) The boy would be downstairs in his room, and when he heard the THUMP of the hardhat, he knew Dad was home.
When my stepbrother related this tale at Dad's funeral, suddenly hundreds of evenings of hearing that hardhat THUMP came racing back to my mind. It always was a pleasant sound. And, at that moment I also realized how important my Dad had been to these four stepchildren, too. He didn't just raise his three biological children, he also greatly influenced the lives of his new family, also.
Dad was always at the ready to help anyone who needed it. There are few people in Arimo who didn't benefit from his generosity, whether it be moving snow with his bulldozer, fixing roads with his road grader, or digging holes with his backhoe. (It helped that he had such great "toys" to help people with.)
From my Dad, I learned great lessons of work ethic and responsibility. I wish I carried those two qualities in the quantities that he did, but, as with most things, I don't quite measure up to him.
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| My daughter, with Dad's hardhat |
Since he happened to die on the day before Father's Day, every year Father's Day is especially poignant. I think of his life. I think of his death. I think of how much I wish he was still here. I think of how I wish my kids could experience the influence of "Grandpa Ron."
And then I realize that the best way for them to experience his influence is if I live the kind of life that would make my Dad proud. Thanks for everything, Dad.
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