"You can have fun with a son, but you've got to be a father to a girl."
Oscar Hammerstein blew that line of lyric when he penned the hit musical Carousel. For me raising daughters was easy and fun. Or, maybe I didn't do it. Maybe I was just the guy who showed up at the end of the day to goof around with the girls and the real work fell to their mother. I sure as hell told them to "go ask mom" often enough when it came to the tough stuff.
The truth is I'm probably like most fathers of the fair sex: LUCKY. It's a cinch that I came to the job with zero experience and less than a minuscule understanding of females. I grew up with no sisters and, until I got married, possessed a head full of crackbrained information supplied by my equally uninformed guttersnipe buddies. My own father was of little help when it came to women. He too grew up sans sisters. The extent of his "facts of life" talk was condensed to an admonition given to me one Saturday night as I backed my old Buick out of the driveway on my way to pick up a date. It was still light and he was pulling weeds from the flower bed in front of our house in Spencer, Iowa. Dad motioned for me to roll down the window as he rose and ambled to the car. I had been going out for awhile with a particular girl and I guess he felt it was time he gave me a "heads up" about "the ladies". "There is more than ONE kind of trouble, boy," he said to me sternly. I looked and nodded my head as I continued to back my car away from this sound advice. I had NO idea what he was talking about. I'd already been up to my ass in trouble with booze, smokes, and the occasional outhouse tipping rural vandalism so popular in the Midwest, but was clueless to the meaning of his words. All I knew was I was now late for a major make out session with a hot more experienced woman. (She was a senior soon to dump my junior ass when she headed for college.)
Dad has been gone nearly twenty years now and I don't think a day goes by where I don't feel remorse for all the stupid things my brother and I did to let him down. A veteran of World War II who worked hard all his life to provide for us was rewarded with an almost daily recitation of our misdeeds and insubordination. I sometimes wonder why he ever came home. The temptation to just keep on driving toward the horizon must have been constant. All he wanted to do was to maybe have a drink and read the paper but we--especially me--made that almost impossible. I can still see him shaking his head at the colossally stupid jams we were always getting into. I'm sure he thought at least one of us was headed for prison which is probably why he didn't seem to mind that I wound up in the broadcast business and my brother the newspaper game, businesses loaded with reprobates and re-treads but at least legitimate. He should have just killed us. I thank him everyday for exercising some discretion.
My daughters were a breeze. Outside of a few high school years where heavy sighs were expelled at my every utterance and doors were slammed in disgust, they were mostly respectful to me and their mother. A speeding ticket or two and a couple of minor fender benders were about all we had to contend with when it came to their relations with the law. I have since discovered that there was slightly more smoking and drinking going on than I realized at the time but I wasn't exactly the perfect role model in those days.
Both kids have done well. Each is successful professionally and in their personal lives. I like their husbands very much and am crazy about my new best buddy, grandson Dan. I wish my dad were here to see how well it has all turned out.
Someone once said, "A father is someone who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be." Fine by me. Somewhere I hope my dad agrees.
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