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. 

Tops on My Gratitude List - AC

Think about all the things we take for granted today. I often thank God for air conditioning. If I knew the name of the person who invented AC, I'd also thank him.
Some have never lived without cool homes in summer, but I remember well when I was a child in the deep south on the farm. We had no AC and my room sweltered with the heat from the hot sun that beat down all day. I couldn't sleep. I sat on the foot of my bed,  my head on my arms in the open. window.
Not a breath of wind could I feel. No breeze moved the leaves on the big oak tree that sheltered our house. Memories of that time are as real as the humidity that wet my hair and the sweat that crawled down my sides under my pajama shirt. I was not born for the tropics.
That is why this past weekend  hit me like a blast from the past. My central air conditioning quit on Saturday around noon while I cooked fresh vegetables I'd picked up at the local produce stand. The heat from the stove turned my small kitchen into a sauna.

I checked the thermostat. Blank spaces greeted me. Nothing there at all. The silent unit squatted outside my window, stubbornly refusing to react to the Reset button. Push the red button - that was all I knew to do.

Rocky and I retreated to the basement. He panted like he had been on a long run. The floor was too hard for his old bones,  he didn't like the rug. I had to bring his bed down before he would be happy. The small window AC accompanied by a large fan kept me from taking my dog and heading for a motel. I was prepared to sleep downstairs, but a nice little storm that night cooled my bedroom enough for us to sleep in our own beds. 
I don't know how my parents lived in the heat of south Georgia half their lifetime without relief. I don't know how people worked on the farms all summer long with burning sun beating down on their bodies, with gnats and sweat in their eyes and on their faces. I don't know what I would have done if I had been a boy in my family. They endured the heat and worked all day long in the fields.

Daddy and Mother handled the heat of summer for years before getting air conditioning in our home in south Georgia. 

 

My mother didn't have it much better than the men. She cooked three large meals every day in a hot kitchen. On my Gratitude List - right up near the top - just behind my loved ones - is air conditioning.
I begged my heating and cooling company to come on Monday. They did. I think they realized I just couldn't take it any more. I'll put Dorman's on my Gratitude List now - right up behind AC.