In Praise of Fathers

Excerpts from my submission to, 'A Single Issue', June 1989 - In Praise of Fathers

"Fathers!  I love 'em--seasoned ones, about-to-be ones, and hope-to-be ones!  Delightful is the tenderness of fathers with their children and the exuberance of children for their fathers.

President Benson has said, 'Home is the place where the Lord intended a father's greatest influence to be felt.'  My father's example of working, living honestly, loving the land and all it sustains while enduring with patience and determination continues to influence his children's lives.  He honored his priesthood, rendered temple service, and blessed lives, quietly.

Have you hugged a dad today?  Let them know we love 'em.  Help them feel our appreciation for the positive influence they bring to our lives."
                                         ________________________________


My father was 47 when I was born.  Seeing old pictures, I'd like to know more about him as a child and as a younger man and father from my siblings who knew him then.  I knew him for only a short time in his 50's.

I remember his beautiful, tenor singing voice and his two modes of dress--light grey striped overalls for working and a grey suit, white shirt, and striped tie for church.

He spoke when he had something to say but was otherwise, a quiet man.  Oh, he hollered when he got stepped on or kicked by his animals and he may have said plenty the time I was helping him sack grain in the barn loft.  Daddy needed cow feed.  That meant sacking up grain take to Preston to be rolled into oats.  He showed me how to hold the sack, the edge closest to me held taunt with slack around the rest of the opening making a space big enough to fit the shovel.  The sack was almost full.  Then I felt the tickling on my leg of tiny feet.  That mouse ran up one leg of my baggy pants, made the cross-over and ran down the other leg!  I shrieked, I jumped, I stomped my feet ... and ... I dropped the sack.  I didn't stop to hear what my dad had to say but climbed down the loft ladder in record time and ran to the house!

When I was about eight, Daddy had me drive his little, Ford tractor hooked to the derrick.  He had a team of work horses, Pat and Mike, still working the farm but I wasn't allowed to drive the team on my own or ride one as a derrick horse.  I'm the chubby child in pictures of my youth, but I wasn't heavy or strong enough to push the clutch all the way down so each time I had to shift gears to go forward or back up to raise or lower the derrick fork, I had to jump or stomp on that clutch.  The derrick job was a welcome change from tromping hay on a wagon moving through the field.  That was a sweaty, scratchy job.  Dad constantly reminded me to get the corners right to the edge.  I fell off the wagon when I did that.

We cultivated sugar beets, our own and other's.  Designed to be horse-drawn, Dad hitched his cultivator to the Ford with me driving while he rode the cultivator, operating its hand and foot controls, maneuvering the pairs of small plow or hoe-like blades.  I was to straddle a row with tractor tires on either side, then drive a straight line down the rows.  As the crop grew, beet thinning and weeding were done by hand.  Dad could reach rows on either side of the one he was walking with his long-handled hoe and move through the field faster than most who helped him.  My job was to follow him, pulling out the doubles he couldn't get with his hoe blade.  I'd get tired and sit down in a row.  He'd bring me the old canvas water bag--just plain awful tasting.  The summer I was eleven, I thinned a quarter acre of beets by myself.  Dad paid me $8.00!

The worst job was cleaning irrigation ditches.  I had to put one side of the tractor's tires in the ditch about two-thirds down with tires of the other side up on the ditch bank.  Dad would walk behind the tractor, a hand or horse-drawn plow tongue hitched to the Ford, the plow itself tied to his waist, and his hands on the plow handles.  Sometimes the plow would get stuck.  I was terrified of tipping that tractor over and killing us both!  I cried a lot.  I don't remember that he raised his voice but he often carried a treat in his pocket for me--fruit-flavored candy sticks or black licorice.

I think of Daddy changing on the back porch from work clothes to clean overalls before coming into the house and of him standing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing clean his pails and milkers.  I wish I could still hear his voice the way I used to hear it as we laid on the flat bed wagon after dark waiting for help to arrive to harvest green peas.  He sang, in a beautiful tenor range, while we waited.  He loved a bowl of homemade bread broken into chunks, soaked in cold milk with a drizzle of honey on Sunday night after church.  He made homemade, hand-cranked ice cream just about every week-end.  After our mid-day meal on a hot day, he'd lay on the grass in the shade of two big old trees on the west side of the house.  Dad had beautiful penmanship and always used a fountain pen.  He supported Mother in her enthusiasm for pioneer celebrations by braiding his team's mane and tail, sometimes adding ribbons, and driving his team and wagon in town parades.  He relished the first watercress picking and found it hard to wait for garden tomatoes to ripen.  He would cut out the center of a home-grown watermelon--the sweetest part--to eat and feed the rest to the pigs or slice open a cantaloupe from the garden, remove the seeds, salt it, and fill the center with vanilla ice cream.  He was timely, often standing on the church steps waiting to greet Brother Olsen when he came to open up.  I've heard it said of Dad's reputation that a handshake was all that was needed from him to make an agreement or seal deal.

We shared 12 years and some months.  Whether long or short the time, he's a part of who I am.