It Takes All Kinds of Fathers

I salute the many fathers who are so special to their families. I grew up in a generation when fathers worked hard all day, came home at night, ate dinner (or supper at our house) went to bed, and started the same pattern the next day. Parenting children, especially girls, was the mother's job for many families of that era. Now with both parents working most of the time, it seems more men are taking care of children. At least I hope so.

My mother, Lois Council and my father, C.L. Council. He never liked having
his picture taken. 

I wish I had wonderful memories of my father and me, but I don't. 

He was a good man. Tall with dark hair, he was slender most of his life. A good husband and provider. He adored my mother but wanted her all to himself. He seemed jealous of her own family at times. Daddy was an introvert and a man who had few close friends. He learned at a young age not to trust many people, he said.  Mother was gregarious and loved to be with others. She was a great helpmate for him.

I see many young fathers today who are loving and enjoy playing with their children or participating in sports with their kids. My father did that with my older brothers. He managed a baseball team when I was very small and his sons played on the team. They worked together and played together. But he was not that good with his female children. And he was younger when my brothers were kids.

He was stressed out and not well when my little sister and I came along. He had borrowed money to purchase his dream -- his own farm.  He knew he must make those payments. Farming is like playing the lottery, I think. You take chances when you plant the seed and hope the weather cooperates. You hope nothing terrible happens to your livestock. You hope prices are good at harvest time. You pray that circumstances or luck is in your favor and that you make a profit each year. But there are no guarantees. You are taking a gamble all the time if you are a farmer.

Daddy did all he could to make a good home for his seven children, and he was pleased that we all graduated from high school. He didn't have that opportunity. His father died when he was ten years old. He went to work in the local mill while still a child.

He had a temper that could explode quickly, and he didn't hesitate to whip his sons if he was upset with them. He and I had some verbal matches when I was older, but he never struck me. He had such a bad temper that we, in our family, say I did a Papa on him or I C.L.ed him if we blow up at someone. 

I admire my father because he had a difficult upbringing and worked really hard all of his life. He did not drink and had only one vice. He, like all his peers, smoked cigarettes.

I have letters he wrote to my mother who was his girlfriend at the time. He says he couldn't save any money. He sent half his paycheck to his widowed mother. At that time, in the early 1920s, he was in Thomaston Georgia and lived in a boarding house. He had no vehicle and could not come home on the bus or train because of the cost. His paycheck from the mill was very small. He wanted to marry his girl but didn't have money to support her. They broke up for a while, but he did come home finally, and when they met again, they both knew they wanted to spend their lives together. 

My father was born in 1900.  He was a good role model and his work ethic permeated all of us. He was on his tractor the day before he died at the age of 87. He could not abide laziness, he said.

His reputation in our community was outstanding. He is buried on that farm that he worked so hard to keep. His goal was to own land and to be his own boss. He raised a family that stuck together through all crises and loved each other. Daddy taught us that a bundle of sticks was harder to break than each individually. Our house was filled with love even though it was not verbally expressed. 

After my mother's illness, he and I grew closer. He depended on me for her care and his care at times. I was on call 24/7. He knew he could call me in the middle of the night and I would be right there.

He once told me he could not die because Mother needed him. Two years after she passed away, he went to be with her. They lie beside each other on that rise in the cemetery where family members now rest beside them. 

My Father's Horse, a poem by Glenda Beall

Father's day is over now and tomorrow is another day. I hope all of my dear readers and friends have a wonderful week. I will be very busy but also look forward to seeing some of my loved ones this week.

FATHER'S DAY remembered

Today is Father's Day. Mine has been gone since 1988, but his legacy lives on in his grandchildren and his great grandchildren.

Coy Council in 1920s. Photo clipped from a group picture of his baseball team. He loved playing baseball and, years later, watching it on television.

My father and mother holding baby son, Ray Council, their second child, in 1926.

I am re-blogging a post from years ago. Click on this link to read more.

https://profilesandpedigrees.blogspot.com/2009/06/fathers-day.html

 

 

 

 

Father's Day Memories - mine and Maria's

Today is Father's Day My father has been gone since 1987. He is buried in the Council Family Cemetery on the farm he bought in 1942.
I don't need a special day to remember him. I think of him almost every single day. I suppose I am still trying to understand our relationship, or lack there of, when I was growing up.

I do know that he was a decent, hardworking man who felt his purpose in life was to care for his family. I did not understand him, although I have spent a lifetime trying to, and I don't think he understood me when I lived in the same house with him. However, as we both grew older, the chasm between us seemed to shrink a little.

I subscribe to Maria Shriver's Sunday Papers. Today she writes about her father and what he taught her.
https://mailchi.mp/mariashriver/fathers-day-memories-sunday-paper?e=ffd1f41c45

She has many good memories of her father and some great advice for fathers of today. I wish all men who are fathers to little girls, would read her words.


Girls need these things from their fathers:
love, approval and encouragement.

I am saddened when some men criticize their daughters and granddaughters and never say a positive word about them. It seems the girls never can live up to what these men think they should. In past generations having a boy called for celebration, while having a daughter was a disappointment. My father, like his father, had hoped for his first born to be a boy.

My sister, the first born to Coy and Lois Council felt that disappointment from our father all of her life. Later, after my parents had died, I found a letter from my father to my mother saying, "Tell that little girl she has a long legged daddy down in Florida who wants to see her." Although I showed that to my sister, she still felt his disappointment because she had heard him tell others.

Coy Lee Council as a young man

My grandfather, Tom Council,(1858-1911), held a chivaree when his first son was born. He ran around the house celebrating by beating on pots and pans and making a terrible racket just as some folks did after a wedding. Sadly, that baby boy died the next day. I never heard of Tom holding a celebration for the birth of any of his five girls.

With so many children growing up today without a father in the home or even in their lives, I am convinced that is the reason young men and girls develop low self esteem and turn to the wrong people often to lead them. A bad father may be worse than no father at all, and I know some who say they wanted their father to leave the house. A bad father can teach wrong values to his children, if he cheats on his wife and doesn't hold women in high esteem. It would be hard for a son to love a man and not follow in his footsteps.

I want to mention a man who is one of the best fathers I know. He is the husband of my niece, Lee, and father to Will, a fine young man who was brought up with a solid foundation of faith and love. Hat's off to Dave Bruggeman, a hard working, intelligent man who puts his family first.

Happy Father's Day to all the men who have children in their lives.

 Be the man your dog thinks you are.😃
😃 And your children will love you!

Daddy, a complex man, honest and fair

Coy Lee Council in early 1920s

Father’s Day was always a day of consternation for my sister, Gay, and me. We had no idea what to give Daddy, and many times what we chose, he didn’t want. He did not take gifts generously. He didn’t know how to receive.

I remember that Gay and Stu gave him a seat with wheels for use in the garden. He said take it back because he would never use it. He was not trying to hurt their feelings. He was simply being honest. Most of us know that if we receive a gift we don’t want, we can take it back ourselves not hand it back to the person who took the time to find something they thought would be perfect.

Tact was not Daddy’s long suite. Neither is it one of my brother’s best traits. Some people don’t come into this world with filters, I believe. But you would think they would learn, wouldn’t you?

One Father’s Day I decided not to purchase a gift for Daddy. I wrote a poem for him. I handed him the poem and then tried to  give him a hug. But he stood like a tree, tall and strong, his arms down by his sides. Mother said he liked the poem, but he never said a word about it to me. 

He was afraid to show his emotions. Maybe it was generational or maybe the way he was brought up without a father. He learned to be tough and hide his feelings when he was ten years old and had to go to work for mean uncaring men who were quick to punish the kids they supervised.

My father was a complex man. His sense of responsibility and his  honesty made him a highly respected man by those who knew him. He believed in fairness, and sometimes that did not set well with society or those who lived on farms nearby.

One example of that was when a neighbor let his hogs roam over on our farm after my father had plowed and planted his crop. When the neighbor did not come and get his hogs, my father shut  them in our barn. The neighbor came over after a few days to get his hogs.

My father said, “Not until you pay me for feeding them the past week.”

The neighbor went to see the sheriff who came out and told my father he had to give up the hogs. Although Daddy felt he was doing the fair thing, the law said he could not hold the hogs. The neighbor did not pay for feeding them, either. But the neighbor learned a lesson. He never again let his hogs ruin my Daddy’s planting.  

I have written a story, The Day My Father was a Hero. My father was the only man on the jury who believed the defendants were guilty. They left a woman alone way out in the country with no clothes or anything to cover her. It was the coldest night of the year. She died curled up on the ground.

At the time, in the fifties, no women were allowed to serve on a jury in Dougherty County. The other men on the jury said the woman who died was no good, and they did not want to ruin the lives of these young men by finding them guilty.

But my father stood his ground even though he was berated by the others. He could not change anyone’s mind, so the judge declared a mistrial. Daddy’s sense of fairness and justice would not let him excuse these men who did not have any compassion for another human being. They left her there to die.

Daddy's first car

If Daddy was still with us, I would find a Hallmark card for him, one that was not mushy or embarrassing. I would sign it, Love, Glenda.

Poems about My Father on Father's Day

A young couple live in Florida during the Great Depression when jobs are scarce and a young man must do what he has to do to keep his family housed and fed. 

The Ice House Job

After working 9 hours in the hot Florida sun,

he came home to eat a meal with her and his kids.

She told him how she wished he could stay with her

and rest, let her rub his back. I get scared here without you.

But he said he had to pay the rent, put food on the table.

As the kids were tucked into bed, he climbed

into his old truck, headed to work.

It should have been a relief after the sun burned

his skin to dark brown leather, but he wore his ragged

jacket and a cap with flaps over his ears

as if he had walked into dead of winter in Wisconsin.

Alone in the quiet he wondered how long could he go on

working two jobs, getting little sleep.

His back, tired from plowing mules all day,

his hands cold and chapped, he chopped

the fifty pound blocks. With both hands he clamped

the tongs that griped the slippery squares, swung his shoulders

tossing his burden up on the platform, over and over

until the clock said midnight, quitting time.

He climbed into bed too tired to bathe.

Her hand reached through the night,

touched his face. He slept but she lay awake

thinking of going home to Georgia, seeing her folks,

hearing him laugh again, and tell his stories to the kids.

After forty years of farming, a man can't just sit down and quit. He rises early every day and works a large plot of ground that feeds his children and grandchildren all summer, if only they would come and harvest his crop.

     

Daddy with his granddaughter, Carrie, on his birthday. Note the baseball player and the baseball on the cake. He loved baseball and was a very good player when he was a young man.

 Gardener

Once he cultivated vast acres of cotton,

peanuts, harvested bounteous crops 

Grey haired, now he sits in his frayed lawn chair,

sweat staining his chambray shirt, pock-marked

with burn holes from his Pall Malls.

His stooped frame rests from a morning

spent spraying tomatoes, trying to murder

small bugs who battle him for his harvest.

His eyes survey a pristine garden.

Tall corn and green beans climb twine

strung on poles in rows equally distanced.

Piles of summer squash strewn on clean straw

hide under leaves large as sun hats.

He caresses the cropped ears of his canine friend.

The cigarette ash grows long. He hardly notices

the shortened smoke, the fire against his callouses.

            ---Glenda Council Beall

Fathers, Daddies, Papas - we all have one

Coy Council with his first car

 I never knew what to get my daddy for Father’s Day. He said he didn't want anything, but I felt I had to do something. We always gave presents to Mother who enjoyed our making over her. I am sure that Daddy had many shirts, belts, shoes and stuff he never used or wore. With seven kids he couldn't expect to have a father's day come without the obligatory box and card.

I agonized over what to get him because I wanted it to be special, to give him something that would please him, to show that I had made an effort. Once I wrote a poem for him. I gave it to him in a card, but he never mentioned reading it or whether or not he liked it. 

One year I made the mistake of going up to him and giving him a big hug. He stood like a giant tree, his arms straight down by his sides. I was hurt, but I should have known better. He was uncomfortable with any show of emotion. I used to think he had a heart of stone, but in his last years, I came to know him better and realized he was a marshmallow inside.

Because he was brought up to believe that real men don’t cry, he was deathly afraid he might shed a tear and someone would actually see it. He lost his own father when he was only ten years old.  But even before his father, Tom, died, he was not around for much of my daddy’s life. Tom brought his family to Pelham, Georgia from the farm in north Florida where Daddy was born in 1900. All the children went to work in the new textile mill there. But Tom hated working in a factory, and he went back to the farm. He came back to Pelham a couple of times each year with a wagon loaded with cured meat, corn and beans and anything from the farm that would help to feed his large family. My father remembered his daddy, and told us stories about him. But Tom Council died when in his early fifties, leaving a wife, several daughters and a little son behind. 

Men of my father’s generation were expected to be the breadwinners and expected their wives to nurture the family. With four sons and a grown daughter, my father didn't find much use for my little sister and me, it seemed, until we were grown and could help out. My lifelong goal of making my father proud came to fruition after my mother’s stroke, after she lost her short term memory. At the time, both my sisters were married and lived hundreds of miles away. 

Finally, when he understood that Mother had to have extra care that he could not provide alone, he appreciated his girls. Both of my sisters came and each stayed a month until we could make arrangements for a part-time housekeeper. When they left, I supervised her and managed Mother's care. Daddy called me when he needed me, day or night, and he was happy I was there. 

My father, an honest, kind-hearted, hard-working man was devoted to his family. He said to me in his last months of life, “I always prayed that I would live to see all of my children grown and married.”  

The average life span of a man in the early twentieth century was 48 years. From an early age, he had been afraid he might die and leave my mother and his children all alone. Growing up without a father, he knew the impact his death would have on his kids. After he bought the farm and suffered an injury to his back,  he was prone to kidney infections. I remember as a little girl that I was afraid he was going to die. As Mother worried and piled quilts and blankets on him, I heard him moan as he endured hard chills and fever.  

My parents' 50th wedding anniversary in the seventies with all seven kids

My older brothers had a different father than the one I knew. He played baseball with his boys and read comics to the kids. But I never knew that man. My father was often worried and serious, often upset and complaining, a pessimist who was sure he was going to lose his farm due to bad weather or a poor crop. When lightning struck a tree and killed the livestock under it, he was devastated. But he managed to hang on and, with four hardworking sons, they bought the adjoining farmland and formed a business that eventually made them all financially successful.

I am proud of the man who fathered me. He was not easy to love, but he gave me a home, with all the security and comfort he could afford. I carried his name with pride. And after years of writing about him and learning about his life, I now understand him and why he was unreasonable at times, extremely strict and demanding. His concern was usually for our welfare, our safety, our good names, our futures.

If we made a dumb mistake such as the time my youngest brother and his friend, as a prank, stole some bee hives, Daddy went on the warpath. He said he did not raise thieves, and he made my brother take the hives back to the owner and apologize. Daddy did not go with him. My brother had to face the music all alone. That was a lesson to all of us. Unlike many girls I know, I never, never took anything that did not belong to me. No shoplifting in my past, I assure you. My father did not raise a thief.

My parents set a great example for the seven of us. Their work ethic became instilled in all of us. Daddy had no use for self-righteous, pretentious people who held themselves above others. He spoke with disgust about men who did not put the welfare of their families first. Life was hard for my father as he grew into a young man. He had been betrayed in his youth by people he trusted, so he developed a tough shell that shut out everyone but his family. At times it seemed to me that he didn't even trust everyone of his kin. 

He loved Mother and his kids above all else, although he was not one to say it. He also loved his bulldogs -- the Georgia football team, and his canine pets. 

Daddy, before I knew him, in his baseball
uniform

He had been quite a baseball player in his youth, and sports were his major interests throughout his life. Growing crops was his passion. He was on his tractor in his huge garden just a few days before his death from pneumonia at the age of 87. 

I am grateful to have had this good man for my father. 

FATHER'S DAY

My father, Coy Lee Council, must have been a handsome man in his youth with his dark hair and blue eyes. I've heard the stories of his sense of humor and his charm. He was born in 1900 on a farm in north Florida. He persevered during hard times with a strong work ethic learned from his Mother. Like many men of his generation, he provided for the family and left the nurturing to my mother. I've written a couple of poems about him. One is "My Father's Horse" and another is simply called "A Farmer and His dog."
He left an impact on my life and the lives of all his children. Daddy was a simple man in many ways but complex in his thinking.
I never enjoyed Father's Day and I don't think he did either. He didn't like to be fussed over, and I could never find an appropriate gift. I wrote a poem for him trying to express my feelings for this man who was distant, cold but kind. I heard from Mother that he read it, and he liked it, but he never mentioned it to me.