Buckle up, friends, this is a long one.
Good walls make good neighbors, and good fences take a chainsaw and a solid morning's work
I was, maybe, 21, having a couple beers on a Saturday night, when I ran into my friend Bloach and he poleaxed me by telling me, in not so many words, that my Dad was proud of me for building him a fence. The wording of the compliment my father paid me, told to his friends and relayed to me secondhand, was so utterly Dad that I'll remember it until I die. "I guess they do grow up sometime." I laughed at those words that night, but remembering it now brings tears to my eyes. Knowing Dad, knowing the man he was and is, and knowing what I’d both put him through and been through with him, that was about right.
---
2nd grade me, note from my teacher in hand, was terrified. Wait until Dad gets home.
Who tells students to grade their own papers, anyway? When my teacher saw me change an answer and stopped reading through the answers to our math assignment to say "Doug, mark your paper a zero and give it to me", I knew it was bad because I'd never gotten an F on anything before (maybe something in kindergarten, I seem to remember coloring an entire page blue at one time because I was pissed about something my teacher said). When that paper got a note attached to it requiring a parent's signature, I knew it was worse. When I gave the note to my Mom and she handed it back to me, telling me I'd have to give it to Dad after supper? I didn't have the cursing vocabulary at the time to properly express what I felt. After supper the note was delivered, and Dad walked me into an unoccupied room while Mom, I assume, body-blocked my seven siblings to keep them in the kitchen while Dad and I conducted our business.
"You know what the scum of the earth is?" Dad asked me. Seriously, reader, how the fuck is a 7 year old supposed to answer that!?! "The scum of the earth is a liar, and a CHEAT!" he growled through gritted teeth as he pushed me over his knee, yanked my pants down and spanked me, hard, I believe about ten times. Funny thing about a spanking like that, I don't think that you can actually call the sensation pain, apart from the first whack. It stung, sure, but I think the main feeling was of shock coupled with the warmth of the blows. I would imagine that a belt or switch has to hurt a hell of a lot more than an open hand; they concentrate the force and leave marks. I can tell you that this spanking left my bottom flaming hot, but that only lasted an hour or so. The real power of the spanking was in the shame, in being literally bare-assed and guilty in front of Dad, then having to carry that shame back to the kitchen and the rest of my family. I felt that down to my bones, a combination of fear and disbelief in the eyes of my brothers and sisters. I can't recall ever being witness to another spanking in our house, so at the time I may well have been the first. Quite an illustrious achievement, don't you think, to be the only one to merit such attention?
Mom shared Dad's after-action comments with me later that evening. Apparently, I should have started crying immediately after the first smack, because that would generally cause the spanker to ease up on the spankee for all subsequent hits. Silly me, I clenched my teeth all the way through, no tears at all, and I think I may have stared a couple daggers at Dad when it was through. If I'm not mistaken, Mom's tone indicated that Dad may have been a little amused by the way I took my licks.
It should be noted at this time that Dad got in his fair share of trouble as a kid, so his spanking mitigation tactics were likely hard-won knowledge. He was one of 12 children, and Grandma was as old-school as they come, so the rod was not spared, the children not spoiled.
---
5th grade me, report card in hand, wasn't terrified, more like resentful and angry with my teacher. Wonder what Dad will think of this?
I was a smart kid, I knew it, and I was lazy, which may be the absolute worst personality combination to present to a former nun turned elementary teacher. Taking notes in social studies class was a complete and utter waste of my time, I felt, so I barely took them, if at all. If I read it in the book or my teacher said it in class, I remembered it, as was evident in the A's I got on all tests and quizzes. My grade for the quarter, however, was a D-, with a 3 for effort, lowest on the 3 point scale. A's on tests, F's on notes, because I couldn't be arsed to do what I was supposed to.
Dad's look when the situation was explained was hard to read. There was some anger, but it wasn't too strong. Mainly, I think, he looked tired. He and Mom said they were disappointed in that flat tone that hurts as much as a physical blow, and I don't remember much more about the encounter.
You can repeat this scenario with minor variations for the rest of my elementary and high school years. Smart kid, but lazy. My grades never suffered for it as badly as they did in 5th grade, though, call it a battle of wills that neither side won. I would, however, like to formally apologize to my little brothers who had to follow me through elementary school, as I know that my old teachers saw them, at least initially, as the next iteration of Doug. They got the shaft that I prepared for them, and for this I am truly sorry.
--
14 year old me was more confused than frightened, and Dad just broke a tooth.
Farming had ceased being a way to pay all the bills a couple years prior, and Dad was now a full-time welder in addition to being a full-time farmer. This meant that his sons needed to pick up the slack by helping out with farm work, which at this particular time consisted of a field needing to be worked with the disc harrow so that it could later be planted. You can't work ground when it's wet, and my brother and I had agreed that morning that the ground was too wet. Running the disc over it would have, we thought, left the dirt in massive clods. As the ground back home was heavy in clay, those clods would dry rock-hard and require another run or two with the disc after they dried before the field was ready to plant. Since we had agreed that the day's work was pointless, we (probably more me than him) decided that it wouldn't get done, ignoring that the sun was out and that water evaporates.
At about 4 pm, Dad got home from his welding job. He went to check on the field, saw that it was both dry and in the same condition as yesterday, and got quite mad, as I now see was completely reasonable. It didn't help that he came in to find me lying on the living room floor watching TV, and quite mad became seriously pissed in a heartbeat.
Dad came into the room, flipped me from belly to back, and started swatting at my head and shoulder, asking why in the hell we hadn't run the disc. When I told him that we thought the ground was too wet in the morning, he gritted his teeth so hard that he broke off a tooth. There was a soft, bony pop, the sight of that tooth flying past my left shoulder, a slight loosening of his grip on my shirt, and his expression going from flat, hot anger to surprise and confusion as his free hand reached down to pick up his lateral incisor from the carpet.
"Goddammit, look what you made me do", he said as he released me, straightened up, and stomped out of the room.
I would imagine that, if Dad's tooth hadn't chosen that moment to hit the eject button, I could have caught a pretty solid and, in retrospect, well-deserved beating. I believe I saw him right at the ragged edge of what he could control, so thank you, tooth, for choosing that moment for your dramatic exit from Dad's mouth.
We joke about the tooth now. Well, to be fair, my siblings joke about the tooth. When I look back on that day, I feel stupid and ashamed that I pushed Dad that far.
--
16 year old me was confused and worried. Dad doesn't cry, so what in the hell is this?
Dad was still a welder in addition to a farmer, but he was with a different company that didn't pay as much. In order to make some more money on the farming side, we began raising pigs for sale, which meant we had them from about 6 weeks old until they reached slaughter weight. Raising pigs means you have to administer vaccinations at certain times, and this particular Saturday was a vaccination day. Roughly 50 pigs needed to receive injections so that they wouldn't develop rhinitis, pneumonia, or some other disease that would kill them, and a farmer is all things at one point or another, including part-time veterinarian's assistant.
We'd been through the process before, a simple matter of moving the pigs to one side of a divided pen, grabbing one, administering the vaccine to the hollow of a hind leg, and then putting the vaccinated pig on the other side of the pen. Grab, inject, hand over the rail, repeat. We were about 15 pigs in when the first one fell over.
Dad noticed it and immediately stopped what he was doing to take a closer look. For whatever reason, the pig was having a reaction to the vaccine, and over the course of about 3 minutes went from distressed to dead in his hands. About 9 of the 14 remaining vaccinated pigs soon followed. I watched my Dad's face change, from the all-business, neutral expression of a man at work, to confusion, then concern, then horror. His mouth open, he tore his gloves off and threw them to the other end of the building, then began kicking and battering the sides of the galvanized steel gates we used to pen up the pigs. His breath coming out in gasps, face red, he began to speak in a tone I had never heard from him before, and have never heard since.
His words were anguished, tortured, asking someone, anyone, why this had to happen, why his efforts to make things better for his family had to turn to shit. What the hell was he supposed to do if he couldn't give the pigs the medicine they needed, what was he supposed to do?
No more work was done that day. Over the course of the next week Dad did find a solution to the vaccine problem, a secondary injection that had to be on hand so that it could be immediately given to any pig that reacted to the vaccine, but that day was a dark one. The death of the animals was bad, yes, but if you've read my earlier posts you know that livestock are largely viewed by their utility, their value to the farm. This was a loss of money that would have paid bills, would have bought clothes and shoes and presents and nights at the movies. I didn't really get that at the time, but now, as an adult and a father, I doubt I would have handled it as well as Dad did.
I've never told that story, never written about it before today. I think it belongs here, but it doesn't bear retelling much, if at all.
--
17 year old me was pretty amused. Dad's standing behind me, letting me talk to the cops, but he seems madder at them for showing up than at me for being the reason they're here.
The smart but lazy kid, the one whose grades would occasionally suffer because he knew the answers and couldn't be bothered to finish his homework? Well, standardized tests were right up his alley, and he just found out that he'd been named a National Merit Scholar, which meant that college was free. That was all well and good, but the real coup was that I had managed to use this good news to extract the ultimate boon: Mom and Dad agreed that I could have a party. Holy shit, after my oldest brother I didn't think this would ever happen. Instead of a covert, 'parents are out of town' get together, I'd been given their blessing to have a party while they were home, which was positively brazen.
The party at its peak was a thing of absolute beauty. Knowing that it was sanctioned meant I could spread the word in advance, and I'm pretty sure that there were kids from every town in the county at my house that night. Somewhere north of 200 people at its peak, crammed into and overflowing from our detached 3 car garage, their cars filling our driveways, the neighbor's driveway, and the elementary and church parking lots next door. The DJ in the garage had my instructions on what music to play and not play, and he followed them, no matter how many times he was asked to play KISS, AC/DC, or Def Leppard. Hell, I even managed to make out with a girl I'd been on/off flirting with for a couple months, and that in full view of the kitchen windows.
I provided the venue and the music, everyone carried in whatever else they needed. Beer, wine coolers, the occasional two liter bottle of pre-mixed Black Velvet and Coke, and me drinking bottled iced tea, Nestea brand. One of my best friends wasn't able to drink for medical reasons, and I took advantage of that to have a reason/excuse not to drink. I didn't care for beer at the time, but if it was just me not drinking that would have seemed odd. This way I could actually seem cool for not getting drunk, because I was being a good friend by not making my buddy be the only teetotaler. Sneaky sneaky, Doug.
It was a very civil party for the size. My Grandma lived next door, and she had friends over to play cards early that evening. When my party ramped up, someone parked them in. As Grandma's friends came out to see that they couldn't move their car, a group of guys who were just arriving saw the problem, asked if they wanted some help, and, I kid you not, picked up and moved the offending car before heading up to my house. (Grandma liked to tell that story, and I liked to hear it told.)
That night I made several new friends who I would have normally steered clear of because they had a bit of a rough reputation. These guys, though, they broke up 4 almost-fights that night, and when I had to ask some people to leave they were right beside me, giving the request a hell of a lot more weight than I would've been able to manage. A couple of those guys bailed me out of a hairy situation a year or so later, proving that it's good to be on friendly terms with people who are much larger than you are.
It was about 11:45 when a few people started getting a little too aggressive for my taste. I ducked into the house to find Mom and Dad in the living room, looking a bit tired but still amused. I told Dad that I thought things were liable to go south unless we could start moving people out. He grabbed his coat, and out to the garage we went. Dad didn't try to confront anyone, he just walked over to a corner of the garage and turned off the power at the junction box. The lights died, the music died, about 50 girls screamed. Dad turned the power back on, and I shouted that everyone had to leave or he was going to call the police.
Think on that for a second. Parents calling the police to their own house where a few hundred teens were drinking? As batshit crazy as it sounds today, it worked like a charm that night. At the mention of the cops, conditioned reflexes kicked in and the crowd of kids headed to their cars at a pace somewhere between a brisk walk and a run. I gave and received many thank you's, sneaked a last kiss from that girl, and watched the party evaporate, leaving only foot trails in the snow and hundreds of empty cans on the ground as evidence of what had transpired.
About 20 minutes later the police actually did show up. Apparently the mass exodus was enough of a happening that some neighbors called in to report it, and a couple Sheriff's deputies were at the door shortly after midnight. Dad behind me, they explained that I needed to clean up the cans and bottles that were littering the school and church parking lots, and I needed to do it that night. I looked back to Dad, saw no expression on his face, and figured it was a small price to pay. I threw on a coat and gloves and spent the next hour and change on garbage duty, followed by about the same amount of time the next day to clean the garage.
Man, that was a great party. Turns out Dad was more than a little mad about how big an affair it turned out to be, but he let me have my party. It's not every day that a lazy smartass makes good, after all...
--
18 year old me was mad as hell. Fuck Dad and his work ethic. I'll show him, I'll keep working.
Dad's oldest brother was a truck driver, and an arrangement had been made whereby we were brought loads of used and beat up pallets to repair and resell. Pallets are a pretty basic wooden frame, slats on the top and bottom nailed to three rails, and repairing them was simply a matter of tearing off the broken or split slats and nailing intact slats in their place. The only equipment you needed to do this job, apart from work-space and extra pallets to cannibalize for parts, was a keg (which is a 50 lb. box, actually) of 10 penny, spiral shank nails, a crowbar for removing stubborn nails and slats from pallets, and a big damn hammer. My weapon of choice was an Estwing framing hammer; solid steel head and handle, nylon grip, 16 oz. striking head.
On a given Saturday of pallet repair I would swing that hammer around 1200 times per hour worked, and was starting to get half-decent at driving nails with my left hand just to give my right a break. (Word of advice, don't shake an angry farmer's hand, because they all have grip strength that could maim if they wanted it to.) We would normally get in 4-6 hours' work on the pallets, then knock off mid-afternoon so everyone could shower and we could have some weekend time. Not this day, for whatever reason.
We'd been at it for a good while, and my younger brothers and I all came to what I remember as a silent agreement that it was time to quit for the day. We took off our nail aprons, set them and the hammers on shelves in the workshop, set our gloves aside, and were heading for the door when Dad asked where we were going. Apparently, we weren't done, and Dad was mad that we'd just decided to stop.
Mind you, with the pallets, there was really no "done". The stacks of busted ones kept coming in, and we'd never gotten through them all in a day. The equilibrium point seemed to be at getting about halfway through what was out behind the workshop before calling it a day, and we'd reached that point on this Saturday. I felt like our error may have been making the call ourselves instead of waiting for Dad to say it, but whatever the reason, we were told that we were to keep at it.
Son of a bitch, why in the hell were we still working on this shit? I felt the anger build like a knot of acid in my stomach. Arms that were tiring suddenly found new strength, and nails that normally took about six strikes to drive were pounded flush in 3. That asshole thinks he can just keep us out here until supper? Screw him, and pallets that were normally stacked 15 high were now being stacked 20 high as I heaved them up the extra 2 1/2 feet. He thinks I don't have stuff I'd rather do? Shithead, and the crowbar wasn't needed anymore as I tore broken slats off old pallets with my hands, splintering and splitting the wood. That jackass wasn't even saying anything, just going along like nothing happened as another stack of pallets was finished. Fuck him, and on I raged, working faster than I had all day.
Something like 45 minutes had passed like this, with me not talking, taking out my still building anger on wood and nail, when Dad looked up and announced that we should go in and get cleaned up for supper. My sister was bringing her boyfriend over for supper to meet Mom and Dad that night, so we needed to make sure there was time to cycle everyone through the shower. Dad and my two younger brothers went in, and I stayed right where I was, that'll show that bastard.
It was 2 hours later when Dad came back out to the shop, and I was still hard at it. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing me walk in, he was going to have to come out and get me. By this time I'd missed supper and it was close to sunset. What was rage had backed down to a low seethe, but I was still working, still fixing those goddamned pallets that meant so fucking much to Dad.
I don't remember what Dad said to me when he walked into the shop. I do remember that, after he said it, I took the hammer in my hand and threw it as hard as I could at the back of the shop. It probably would've been more dramatic to throw it in Dad's direction, but I was mad, not homicidal. It probably would have also been more dramatic if the hammer had lodged, claw-first, in the wall, but it hit the wall side-on with a loud thud and clattered to the cement floor, leaving me to turn back to Dad after my moment of tantrum. I then did something I'd only done twice before in my life, and yelled at my Dad. "WELL GODDAMMIT, WHEN IS IT EVER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?!?!" Body slack, spent physically from the day's work and now spent emotionally from 3 hours of anger topped off with one question screamed at Dad, I stood there, panting, tears welling in my eyes.
Dad was to me in three steps, and I was swallowed by his arms. As he hugged me, my tears soaking his shirt, I sobbed like the child I wished I wasn't. I heard "I know I'm hard on you boys", and it was like a hand of light that reached into me and stripped away everything that I had built up in the preceding hours. We stayed like that for about a minute, a Dad holding his son, and then we went inside.
My sister's boyfriend, who is now my brother-in-law, told me later that supper was pretty awkward that night, what with having to explain that Doug was out in the workshop throwing a hissy-fit. Sorry about that, Ross, and thanks for sticking around.
--
Still 18 year old me is happy I got it right this time.
High School graduation was formally recognized twice back home. Of course there was the commencement ceremony, but the Sunday before commencement was the Baccalaureate Mass. I had, I believe, 2 classmates who weren't Catholic, so the mass was a pretty big deal. It was a normal mass in all respects except that the Seniors sat up front, their parents seated right behind them. At a certain point in the mass we were to go to our parents and give them flowers, and when I walked back to mine, Mom was crying, like she always did at these occasions. I handed her the flowers, gave her a hug and a kiss, cracked wise about how red her nose got when she cried, and headed back to my seat.
The day before commencements Mom had a request for me. "Doug, make sure you shake your Dad's hand at commencement, you forgot to at the Baccalaureate mass and he really wanted you to. He wouldn't ever tell you that, though."
Shit.
Looking back, I'm reminded of the scene in more than a few old Looney Tunes shorts where a character morphs into a giant boot heel while a sad trombone plays in the background. I felt, and feel, utterly stupid for not shaking his hand. Dammit.
Commencement day came, we walked in, did our thing, and walked out. There wasn't anything revelatory in the father/son moment that day, but I didn't forget to thank him as well as Mom. I'm not proud that I remembered to turn to Dad and shake his hand, more like relieved. I screwed it up the first time, but managed to do it properly the second. Sorry, pop, didn't mean to ignore you.
--
21 year old me isn't feeling anything that I can remember. Dad wanted us to build a fence so we built a fence.
The farm was sold right around the time I graduated from high school. We now lived on a wooded acre about two miles from the old farm. It was early summer, and Dad had asked that my brother and I build a rough log fence on one side of the property. I got up on that Saturday, roused my brother, grabbed the chainsaw from the shop, and we walked back into the woods. It took a couple hours, wasn't a big deal, and the fence was done. Dad said thanks when he got home later that day.
--
34 year old me is laughing and sobbing at the same time. Jesus, I'm a walking cliche.
I was early in the process of separating from my wife. What had started as couples' therapy had become solo therapy sessions, and Jeff, my therapist, and I were talking in the seemingly random, roundabout way that some of you may be familiar with. The conversation at some point led to me talking about how unrelentingly normal I thought my upbringing was. Quiet, close-knit community, good sibling relationships, two married parents, stable home life, even-keeled folks... and I found myself slowing down, fighting with my words a bit.
"Doug, you're looking like there's something important trying to get out."
"You know, Jeff, I don't think I've ever said this, probably never even thought of it in this way," at this point the tears started flowing, and my voice began to crack, "but I think I've only ever heard my father tell me he loved me twice in my life."
At this point I just lost my shit for about a minute. Nice thing about therapists' offices, there are tissues everywhere. After that minute or so, a chuckle started to sneak in between the sobs and hiccups. That chuckle built to something that, I'm guessing, sounded like a psychotic break to Jeff, as his next words were very tentative.
"Doug, what's funny?"
"Ha ha ha, Holy shit, man, ha ha ha, I must be the most cliched guy you've seen in a while, ha ha heh, I just discovered that all this time I've had fucking Daddy issues!" This was followed by a good bit of hard laughter that slowly receded to a lingering case of the giggles.
"Doug, in this business, we call that hitting some pay dirt."
"You think?!?! Haa ha ha ha!!!"
As I got into my car, feeling like I'd just dropped 100 pounds from my shoulders, I pulled out my phone and thumbed off a text message to Dad:
"Hi Dad. Just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I know that you love me."
The reply: "Lv u 2" (Yes, my Dad texts like a 15 year old, I think it's funny as hell.)
A couple days later Mom made a point of letting me know how much that text message meant to Dad. He never would have said it himself, at least in so many words, so Mom made sure the full message got through.
--
40 year old me really gets a kick out of Dad. He has 20 grandchildren now, and on any given Sunday he and Mom are usually hosting anywhere from 2-10 of them. If you watch him on these days, or on any holiday, you'll see that he doesn't say a lot, doesn't generally get in the middle of activities. He mainly sits/stands on the edges and smiles, at least when he's not playing cards with my brothers/brothers-in-law (German Club Solo deserves its own post, it's an indecipherable morass of weird rules, shifting allegiances, and mason jars of change slowly shuffling around a tabletop, but I digress). He laughs, he smiles, he blusters through conversations in his own endearing but sometimes incomprehensible way, and in all this I can see how happy his family has made him.
These days, Dad's a lot more vocal about feelings. He tells me he loves me about every time we talk, and even if he should forget to mention it, my dumb ass finally caught on to how he's been showing his family how much he loves us all for decades, day after 16-hour day.
Thanks, Pop, and sorry about the tooth.
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