Two days ago was a holiday to celebrate the fathers in our lives. It’s a hard day for me, as my father, grandfather and papaw were all heroes to me. With each one passing, my heart broke more, my optimism for the world vanishing. Let me tell you about those men, and why the loss of them continues to break my heart each and every day.
My Father
My own father grew up without his father. His brother, my grandmother and his own grandparents was his family unit as a child. My grandma worked at the Stone City bank in Bedford, walking to work every day. From the ways my father described growing up, they were poor. Regardless, they always had a roof over their heads and always had a meal to eat. If my father wanted something he had to work for it however. He and my uncle had paper routes and as my father grew up, he mowed lawns for money.
This is all you need to know to know the path my father took for the rest of his life. His number one goal in life was to not be poor, and to provide whatever he could to his family. Due to his “having nothing” as a child, he was also a closeted hoarder. When he passed away, I got rid of 500 pounds of “things” he had collected that were in the bed of his pickup truck.
His faithful devotion to his job was something I always admired, and picked up after a hard start in adulthood. His desire to give his child (me) the best things in life, is the same thing I do with my own. Money is often no object, as long as those I love are happy.
Education was important to my father. He graduated high school in 1969, and immediately went to Indiana University, but never got a degree. Instead choosing a career in industry. It wasn’t until that career crumbled for all that he enrolled in Ivy Tech State College and achieved a degree in computer networking. When he passed away, he was a student in film studies at Indiana University while working 3rd shift as a custodian in the same building I would eventually start working in. He was tired, but he was also happy.
He never pushed me, but gently guided me in the subject of education. When I got my GED at the age of 17, he told me to go enroll at Ivy Tech and not worry about the costs. He didn’t tell me, but he secretly paid for all the tuition and books. I’ve given that same opportunity to my oldest daughter. Education hasn’t been an easy subject for she and I.
There’s a phrase that circles social media that sums up my father quite well, “My father didn’t tell me how to live; He lived and let me watch him do it.”
My Grandfather
Born not too far away from where Will Rogers was, he was a free spirit in a way that is hard to understand if you aren’t close to native culture. Growing up in the dust bowl era Oklahoma, it was a new state – and for the most part, still Indian Territory. A radio operator in the Navy during WWII, who installed radar systems on the pacific fleet prior to Pearl Harbor, he met my grandmother in Washington D.C. while on shore leave from that post.
She nor him could decide on where to live. She hated Oklahoma, and he was not a fan of Indiana. He worked at RCA where they made radios at the time, and always stayed in the field of electronics. My grandparents split and he built a new life back at home. While there, he built a career and a new family. He was the radio & TV repairman for the entire area, back when that was a thing.
A soft spoken man, I can still hear the way he spoke with a bit of a southern draw but soft volume.
All of his electronic equipment made a young boy really fascinated with technology. A fascination that lives on to this day. Sadly, many of the lessons he taught me on his oscilloscope and other equipment have long since left my mind.
A humble man, never one to boast or brag. I appreciated that about him. He named all of his trucks “Johnny Brown.” I was fortunate to own the last one for a period of time, Johnny Brown IV. A deeply spiritual man too, although I never got to see that side, he was a faithful member of the Assemblies of Yahweh.
His generation, much like mine saw tremendous amounts of change. Change in technologies and society. The world he grew up in was significantly different than the one he saw his later years in. I was fortunate to actually know him, I don’t think any of his other grandchildren did. I spent a week with him in 1996, just he and I. I would give anything to recapture that time with him.
Due to his influences in my life, I have always taken the Cherokee culture he provided to me seriously. Never doubting but sometimes questioning the mason jars of herbs and roots he kept in his kitchen. I also give him credit for the paths in technology many members of our family have decided to take. My uncle became a mainframe programmer in 1968, I began working in IT support in 2008 and my cousin does the same but with cellular phones and technologies.
My Papaw
This one is the hardest of all to write. He passed away when I was 7 years old. That said those years were very influential on me. He wasn’t my biological grandfather. He wasn’t my adopted one (yes I had one), no he was just the man who was married to my memaw when I was born, and took the job as his own.
Completely different than my own dad or grandfather, he grew up locally in Smithville, a 1957 graduate of Smithville High School. He was a “greaser” when he was young. His family name, well known in the area.
From a young age, we did things that are quite frankly hard for me to do even now because of the memories. We would spend hours “mushroom hunting.” My memaw would give us a bunch of bread sacks and he and I would just go walking in the woods, for hours. I’ve never been a fan of those mushrooms, but I’d give anything to spend that time with him again.
We spent countless weekends fishing. With him buying me my very first fishing pole. We would fish at Lake Monroe and several pay lakes in the area. On one occasion while at a pay lake I thought I had caught a fish. Once I got it reeled in however, it was quickly discovered that it was a bobber (a device used to keep the line from sinking to the bottom). We talked about that until my memaw passed away. One of the few things I have of my papaw’s is his tackle box, which is just a repurposed lunch box.
We would often catch a whole stringer full of bluegill and sunfish. Papaw and I would clean the fish, and then memaw would fry them up in a coordinated assembly line. They were wonderful times.
He taught me lessons of hard work, as their property had lots of trees. To mow, we had to pick up all of the sticks that had fallen, to ensure the mower would not get damaged. We would spend countless hours upon hours doing chores of little note really, but that time he spent with me will forever be priceless.
Their house was always a safe space for me, to the point that one time I even “ran away” and rode my bicycle 6 miles to their house. Completely exhausted, I slept for hours once I got there. That house was always my safe space as a child.
Summary
These three men all provided me with gifts that made me who I am today. They all provided me with a stable, solid foundation of what it means to be a good man. Their losses also haunt me each and every day. I’m surrounded by my fathers things, my grandfather is always on my mind and in my spirit. His grave is the one grave I have to visit. I’m sad that my papaw didn’t get to see the next 10 years, where the family exploded with babies and happiness.
While I know death is a part of life, nothing prepared me for it. I feel ill prepared to give those gifts to my children and this next generation of humans. I feel stuck emotionally and spiritually. To me, Father’s day is a day that brings me immense sadness on a level that my vocabulary simply cannot describe.
I hope this period of my life provides me with the tools to cope, and the tools to break out of this shell of continual penance I seem to be putting myself through. I somehow feel to blame and/or destined to follow the same paths my literal forefathers took. It’s wearing on the soul.