Things I Didn't Know

My dad worked outdoors or underground all his life. After he and my mother were married they had a small farm and things went well until the Great Depression. After that he worked on the railroad and as a underground copper miner. I remember Dad told me stories of their farm and farm life, and rarely about mining and what it was like. But those times were before I was born.

I remember him as a contractor who built houses and sold them. He, with help from my older brothers and at times a hired helper, did everything from clearing the land to the final painting. The only exception was the electrical wiring, he always hired someone to do that. After that he owned and ran heavy equipment such as bulldozers, scrapers, and the trucks, etc. that went with heavy equipment contracting.

It was about this time when he owned and operated the heavy equipment that I came to spend many summer evenings with him. After working in the Arizona sun all day, he liked to come home, clean up, and then, after supper, spend the cool of the evening sitting on the front porch and drinking ice water. It was then that we talked the most.

Dad was a self taught and self educated man who loved to read long into the night. He loved science, nature, adventure books. I recall sitting there with him and starting to talk about science. Before too long, it would often be just the two of us and I enjoyed having him to myself and for his answers to a myriad of questions I would ask. Not always a patient man, at these times he would answer my questions and tell me things until what was late at night for a boy.

He told me such things as the distance to the sun (93 million miles), how to fish for catfish (its messy), and what the moon was like. When the moon was full, we would often look at it with what he called the binocks (binoculars). Aside: He had a lot of sayings and names for things that I later learned were unique to our family. But that's another story.

He also told me that he could tell when a change in the weather was coming because it made his rheumatism flare up (reference.) Well I had read about arthritis and knew just about everything so I thought this rheumatism and weather business was his imagination. Dad was not the kind of person whom I dared call silly or imagining things, but I often thought about saying them. Anyway, I remember the long talks on summer nights and talk of science, nature, and adventure. I also recall that when I got a little older there were other things to do at night besides sit and listen to your dad tell you about anything and everything. Especially when I was getting nearly old enough to get a learner's permit to drive and had older brothers and friends with cars.

A decade or more after my father passed away, I was hunting in the mountains with a good friend. As we came back to camp just before dark in his pickup, there was my pickup on a flat tire. It was cold, windy, spitting rain, and miserable. The campsite was in a flat full of ponderosa pine with rocky soil.

My buddy told me to go ahead and change the tire while he had a drink and fixed dinner. The front of the truck was so low that I needed to dig a trench under the axle to place the jack. As I was stomping on the shovel head as hard as I could with my boots, and making slow progress, I hit the back of the shovel too far up on my foot and broke the bone housing the joint of my big toe. I finished changing the tire and sat down to eat with my toe and foot throbbing. I said "Tom, I have to get back to town and see a doctor." He laughed and said, "They will just X-ray your foot, wrap it up in tape, say there is nothing to do but take time to let it heal, and charge you 300 bucks." Well, he was wrong. They X-rayed my foot, wrapped it up, told me to take care of it and it would heal, and charged me about $500.

Eventually my foot got better and I could walk and work and do things again. My wife and I raised two boys, and I loved sitting outside at night talking with them, answering their questions, and telling them that the sun was 93 million miles from earth. History repeats and they discovered girls and cars and no longer had time to sit with dad and talk of science, the stars, and adventures. I miss talking with those boys of ours and the times we had enjoying the moon and stars at night.

During my life I had a few fractures. That big toe, a couple of fingers, and my little toe (twice). A funny thing happens to the broken and mended bones as you get a little older. They seem to calcify and become places for arthritis. Even funnier, when the weather is changing, I often wake up with aches and pains, the worst of which is that darn big toe.

Now I know about rheumatism and how one's bones can ache and tell you when the weather is changing. I often think of my dad, his rheumatism, his vast store of experience and sell-taught knowledge. I often think of him and the many things he could tell me even today. But, that was then and I didn't know.