Last month, for Mother’s Day, I listed some of the things my mother never taught me – the don’t’s that were to help me through my life. She also had some good suggestions. There is no question that those lessons on cooking, sewing and mopping were well worth learning, but being a boy one might expect there were things that Mother left to Father to teach me. There were some cross-over lessons that both parents had ideas on which may have differed slightly but they were good lessons nonetheless.
For instance, Dad’s idea of a good sandwich, if you had to make it yourself, was a fried egg between two pieces of home-made bread coated with butter with a little ketchup for garnish. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could make a grilled cheese sandwich, but that took more time and you had to wash the frying pan afterwards because cheese sticks to a cast iron pan more than an egg. Of course a cheese sandwich toasted over a campfire was a delicacy for a lunch break when out hunting. Cheese sandwiches did not get soggy, did not break into pieces in your bouncing pack and the cheese simply aged a little unlike bologna which could turn a little green on a hot day.
Dad, born in Magnetewan in 1907, was fairly quick with his numbers even though he had only Junior matriculation plus a semester at Business College later. I think he attained his ‘figurin’ skills from the days on the steamboat Kawigamog when they calculated freight costs but in any case, both he and Grandfather knew their times tables and could do short division without a pencil (yeah – back in dark ages of pencil and paper). Dad insisted that I learn my times tables up to 15, not 12 as was required back in public school Grade 5. It was his father who taught me cribbage and how to count the points quickly. The old Toronto Star used to have a numbers puzzle once a week called ‘Fun With Figures’ and Dad would work on those until he found the answer even though some of puzzles likely required some algebra or even trigonometry. He would have loved Sudoku.
However it was outside the house where Dad taught me some of the things I still remember. Like how to kill, clean and dress a partridge or a chicken so it was ready for the pot. Likewise with fish and eventually, even deer. Cutting up a deer into the various steaks and roasts is something I would just as soon forget now that I think of deer more as cute critters to be observed on the golf course or avoided when on the motorcycle.
One of the ties that form a bond between generations is knots. Not the Gordian knot puzzle, but practical knots. It seems that living on a farm and working the bush, one was always tying things together. Hitching logs, joining two pieces of rope or using the Berkley knot to attach a Rapala to your fishing line – there was a knot for everything. There was even a little verse for tying a bowline – something about the squirrel going down the hole and up around the tree and back down the hole. I forget the verse but can still tie a bowline.
Dad really enjoyed brook trout fishing and we spent many afternoons and evenings washing garden worms in the creeks around Nipissing. Dad had many stories about fishing for pike and pickerel and some of his tricks with a lure still work today. Dad was not averse to fishing in the rain but he would not waste his time heading out when the wind was from the east. You know the verse . . . wind from the south blows the bait into the fish’s mouth . . .
My father was a woodsman and liked nothing better than to wander through the forest, looking at trees to assess their value as logs and then sawn lumber. When he had his own sawmill he could tell very quickly how many pieces of lumber were in a log, something that I gradually caught onto as he taught me how to be a sawyer in our little saw mill. My days of being a sawyer are long past but I still enjoy getting out in the woods, identifying trees and thinking, yes, that red pine has some good boards in it.
In the woods, Dad seemed to know where he was at all times. I, on the other hand, have gotten myself ‘lost’ a couple of times. Oh, I eventually found my way out when I remembered the lessons of noting the landscapes, particular trees, rocks and unusual features of the terrain. This was all before the days of GPS and geo-caching – heck, Sputnik was still in the design mode. Dad seemed to have a built-in compass as well as some sense of how far he had walked in any direction. Too bad he missed out on the FitBit.
When my wife says ‘you’re just like your Dad’ she means I like to have a discussion – about anything. Dad would debate anything if he thought there was a point to be reconsidered. Okay, let’s call a spade a spade: he loved a good argument. Politics and religion were fair game, but he never said much about sex unless it was a mixed-company joke worth repeating. Dad read every line in a newspaper, listened and watched the evening news without fail, and kept up with the local ‘news’ at the General Store. He was fairly well informed about most things, although he never did understand exactly how a computer worked. Who really does?
In sports he taught us to never give up, never quit, no matter the score or how hopeless a game appeared. He loved watching hockey and fastball but never fancied golf. He was formidable at card games but hardly ever played poker or bet on a game. As his eyesight failed the deck of cards got larger print but he could still find the pegs on the cribbage board and could count the points in your hand quick as a cat.
But of all the things Dad taught me, it was his calm demeanor that I try to emulate. He had some favoured expressions for when things did not cooperate but he never cursed. He tried to get along with everyone and had no bad words for anyone, preferring to see, or pretend to see, the qualities of a person. In later years, he spent some time in the hospitals but never complained about the care or the food – which gained him friends on the nursing staff. As he neared death, he said he was ready to go and considered that he had had a good life. And to listen to his many stories, one would have to agree with him.
A good life; a good death. What else is there? Happy Father’s Day.
