A Bite To Eat: Father's Day Story(Elaine Faber) A Bite to Eat

He was a meat and potatoes man. My Daddy was a big man, 6’5”, or as he liked to say, 5’17.” He was a carpenter by trade and in later years, a building contractor. He was the kind of man who was a Sunday school teacher on Sunday and could dig his own well or build a house during the week.

He carried a black metal lunch pail to work. No matter how hard he worked or how hungry he might have been at lunch time, he would leave a bit of dessert or a snack for me in the pail, knowing it was my job to wash out his thermos bottle and lunch pail.

Daddy came to California in a covered wagon with his parents and eleven brothers and sisters when he was about twelve years old. People still had covered wagons and horses in the 1920’s long after many folks had cars. Only the well-to-do folks had cars and Daddy’s family was anything but well to do.

He used to tell the frightening story of what happened on a narrow road that clung precariously to a cliff high along a canyon on a twisty mountain road somewhere between Oklahoma and California. On this particular day, their wagon met a model T coming down the mountain road. The road was wide enough for only one vehicle or wagon, but there were places every so often wide enough for two vehicles to pass. The rule of the road was that the car coming down would back up to the wide spot so the vehicle coming up could go around. The model T would not back up but sat defiantly, expecting Grandpa to back his team and wagon down the road to the wider area. Grandma and the children got off the wagon and stood next to the cliff wall. The horses were terrified of the automobile and were bucking and pawing the air, making it nearly impossible for Grandpa to back the horses down the steep grade. Imagine the terror of the children watching their father fighting a bucking team of horses down a precarious cliff road, any moment the risk of it plunging off into the canyon below. Imagine the arrogance of the Model T driver, so superior to the poor Okies in a covered wagon, that he felt the possible death of two adults and eleven children was less important than his own inconvenience to back his car up the road.

They arrived in California with children and wagon intact and settled in Northern California. Eventually, Daddy met and married Mama just in time for the Great Depression to throw the entire country into economic chaos. Daddy told us stories of he and Grandpa chopping wood for $3.00 a day or shooting a jackrabbit for dinner. Mama often gathered wild mustard grass for the dinner table.

When the Depression was finally over, World War II followed. Though Daddy did not serve due to blindness in one eye, he worked in the Vallejo naval shipyards while mama stayed home alone with three children, surviving on ration books and Victory gardens.

Daddy built us two houses during my childhood. While the first was under construction, we lived in a garage with no indoor plumbing and endured an “outhouse” for six months until we were able to move into the house. For the next several years, he worked his regular jobs and never seemed to have time to finish the little details in our own house, such as carpeting or wall plugs or in some cases, plaster and paint. We lived in a half-completed house for many years. When it was finally completed, we sold that house and he built another and started the process again.

Daddy was not the disciplinarian. Mother handled any necessary punishment. I can only remember one time my Daddy spanked me. My sister and brother were working in an apple orchard, picking up apples for 5 cents a box. They took me with them, as I was about eight years old. My parents felt it good training for children to be industrious at a young age, so I was expected to pick up ten boxes of apples per day which would earn 50 cents; pretty good money to a kid in 1952. Being a spoiled child, there were many days that my dolls were more important than working and I fell short of the ten boxes. On this particular day, Daddy told me if I didn’t meet my quota that day, he would spank me. I’m pretty sure his threat fell on fairly disbelieving ears as he had never spanked me before, so I played all day and at end of the day had maybe 3-4 boxes to my credit.

We got home and I continued to play. I found an empty oatmeal box for a drum and some sticks for drumsticks. It made a fairly decent “drum.” Daddy asked if I had completed my required task. When I answered that I hadn’t, he spanked me with one of my drumsticks. Using my own toy to punish me was far greater humiliation than the spanking. With defiance and the absolute idiocy of childhood logic, I declared that the next day I would pick up 100 boxes “to show him!”

I worked like a dog the next day and with the help of my sister late in the afternoon, completed the 100 boxes of apples (an astonishing accomplishment, looking back on it) and earning $5.00 for my efforts.

That night, I announced to Daddy, “I picked up 100 boxes of apples today, so there!”

Maybe I expected him to fall down in shock and remorse, apologize and vow never again to accuse be me of being a slackard. His reply was, “I knew you could do it. Now you can do that every day!”

That day, Daddy and I came to an understanding. He didn’t hold me to the 100 boxes a day, but I never again failed to accomplish the required ten boxes a day and he never again challenged my ability to live up to an expectation. Maybe that was the day I developed my sense of values and learned to give 100% to any given task.

Occasionally, Mama and Grandma and I went to town to shop. Shopping was an all day event back then, when we drove the seven miles to Santa Rosa. It’s funny how our ideas of distance and shopping trips have changed over the years. What used to be a half hour drive to the ‘big city’ over bumpy country roads, at 30 miles an hour in a stick shift Buick, is now accomplished in seven minutes on a blazing freeway with air conditioning in our hybrid Lexus.

But back then it was an all day event. You only went to town for something important, like school clothes, Christmas presents or Easter dresses. We would park in the Sears parking lot and walk the two blocks over to Main Street to Penny’s, Kress’s, and other little clothing shops. After shopping at each store, carrying our packages, we would stop midday at the Kress’s fountain for coffee and sandwiches. Finally, mid-afternoon, we would trudge the several long blocks back to the Sears store parking lot, carrying our purchases, retrieve our car and drive the half hour home.

Daddy would come in from his hard day’s work of hammering, sawing, nailing, carrying lumber, climbing ladders and raising rafters all day and set his lunch pail on the counter. His red checked shirt showed beneath tan coveralls. His boots were covered with sawdust. I would open his lunch box and find the chocolate cupcake with pink fluffy frosting covered with coconut; the snack he had left for me. We would smile our secret smile across the kitchen. I would show him the new dress or shoes we had bought that day. Mama would tell him to ‘get those filthy clothes off and clean up,’ then the inevitable words he dreaded but knew were coming any day we went to town, shopping.

“We stopped at Kress’s today for a ‘bite to eat’, so I’m only going to make a light supper tonight!”

Daddy was a meat and potatoes man but on shopping days, he had to give in to Mama, because stopping for a ‘bite to eat’ at Kress’s on shopping day brought her normal cooking schedule to a screeching halt. Daddy had to be content with soup and a sandwich. I don’t suppose he ever went to bed hungry, but he didn’t always get his meat and potatoes, especially on shopping days.

Daddy bought me a piano when I was about 10 years old and I started music lessons. On the day of my first piano lesson, I sat at the piano to show Daddy what I had learned. I hit a wrong note and said, “Now all I have to do is learn to cover up my mistakes.” He replied, “No, all you have to do is learn not to make mistakes.”

Daddy didn’t know that he was imparting a great wisdom to me on that day so long ago. A successful life is not lived by “covering up” our mistakes. It is successful when we learn not to make them in the first place.

Children form their characters and learn life-changing lessons, not from huge earth shattering events, but from day-to-day events. I understood my father’s love from half of a coconut-covered cupcake left in a lunch pail. I learned respect for his spouse when he didn’t expect a three-course meal on Mama’s shopping days. I learned work ethics from an expectation of ten boxes of apples each day. I learned obedience when I didn’t comply with that expectation. I learned the difference between making mistakes or hiding mistakes in life from a piano lesson. I learned about sacrifices from his experiences during the Depression and World War II. And I learned about discrimination and elitism from the actions of a stranger in a Model T and a covered wagon on a mountain road somewhere between Oklahoma and California.

Daddy wasn’t always a perfect father. He made mistakes, and from his mistakes, I also learned what not to do in many cases. I learned to budget, how to plan ahead for a rainy day, how to treat my children and how to treat my spouse. Growing up with Daddy, I learned the lessons that make me the kind of person I am today. Daddy didn’t teach me about life in a three-course meal, but a bite at a time.

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