My dad was the third of three children. It was said that his brother, Jesse, and his sister, Bess, drug him by the heels from one venue to another and that he'd get splinters in his scalp. When my own sister, brother, and I were small he'd tell us of riding a mile to school on his horse. As we grew older it seems he lost the horse (and his shoes) and had to walk barefoot, through the snow, three miles to school. So it gose.

For mostly good reasons we three kids lionized and canonized our father. We can all recite a litany of stories about him. Our favorites are about his gaffes, relatively rare as they may be. Perhaps my favorite is the one he told on himself. While in the Navy on his only non-aircraft carrier duty that took him away from our home, he was stationed for a few months in Iceland. When there were blizzards they could not leave their dormitory to go to the mess hall. So they had to cook in their rooms. It seems Dad didn't know you had to take the cardboard cartons off TV dinners and he started a fire in the oven. And to prove that not even he learned his lesson to never make the same mistake twice he also later set the cellophane package of his brown and serve rolls on fire as well.

My earliest recollection of my father was playing hide and go seek with him. I was hiding behind the head of this bed in his bedroom. I could hear my mom tell him, "Now Ken, don't get him too excited, you know how he wets in his pants." As a matter of fact, it was already too late for the warning.

My dad was good for all of the things a kid expected from a father. Periodically he'd bring me new comic books. On every other Saturday he'd take me to a barber in Dixon. Every other Saturday the same barber warned me that if I moved he'd cut off my ears like the kid before me. Every time I'd ask him then where are the ears he'd cut off, and every time he'd say an old puppy dog had come in and eaten 'em. Actually, I hated those haircuts, but then afterward Dad would take me to the movies and then for ice cream. My favorite movie hero was The Durango Kid, but Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers were okay too. I always loved those times with him.

Every once in awhile if he was showing a movie to his high school students he'd take me with him to school where his students would make a big fuss over me. If Dad went on a trip he'd always bring me a gift. My favorite gift was a checkered hat from his visit to Ralston Purina. (At that time he taught agriculture.) When Kenna arrived she was the wrong age and sex for him to buy us identical presents, so naturally every time he came home Kenna and I compared his gifts. To our mutual relief, they always showed the same amount of care in choice and dollars in cost.

When I was eleven he didn't complain about my day before Christmas decision that what I really wanted was a football uniform for Christmas (like the ones the Washington Redskins wore.) Dad had the most valuable of knowledge--he knew how to throw both the knuckleball and curve. He once took me to Spring Training in Florida where we talked to Ken Boyer, and almost talked to Stan Musial, and where I got Tom Cheney's autograph, the man who struck out 21 batters in an extra inning game.

With little fanfare or attention-drawing he also set a good moral example. The first time I ever saw him mad was after a performance at the high school where performers had used black face. He was very upset by the caricatures and prejudice. As he was with the Church of Christ preacher who preached against Catholics.

He has always had a knack for finding the good in unlikely places. The school troublemaker became my baby-sitter. I wor-shipped Jack Cal'well. Jack went on in school and earned his Ph.D. Dad made it a point to prove that cranky neighbors would be good neighbors if you would just be nice to them. My brother and I will never forget old sour puss Davies returning the ball we'd thrown into her yard, something we were told had never happened before.

Despite being a very popular teacher my dad was not a particularly ex-pressive nor affectionate person. He'd rather trade a barb than a hug. Once, flying down a country road about 35 miles an hour, Mom and Dad in the front, Jack Cal'well and I in the back, I said "Go jump out a window," and naturally enough he said, "You go jump out a window." And I flung open the suicide doors of our old '39 Mercury. Then closed it back. My dad's face had lost all its color and there was perspiration on his neck. No word was said, but I knew that I'd messed up and that he cared for me very much.

While idolizing my father, he wasn't perfect. I've always said, with some truth, he didn't talk to any of the kids until we could play catch. Most of his other failings relating to his having been raised in the Depression and his occasional misreading of what one should spend money on. His general rule of thumb was try not to buy anything unless it was absolutely needed, but then buy the best. We drove Chryslers when our friends drove Fords. I wore Florsheim shoes when my friends wore Kinneys. It was things he didn't want to spend money on that occasionally caused minor problems.

I was well into junior high school before I could get him to stop making me get military haircuts at the Navy base. For tennis shoes he wanted me to wear the shoes with the brown canvas tops and yellow gum soles instead of Keds or Converse. My first abso-lute refusal to follow his will. When I first started dating he knew, from my mother, I was embarrassed by the holes in our car upholstery. He covered the seats with beach towels. Fortunately, my mom saw to it I got to drive our other car, our newer Chrysler.

Even more trouble than his peculiar pecuniary habits was his narrow set of lessons in "manliness." He insisted on polished shoes, a handkerchief, and a pocket knife. Still today when I see him I show him that my shoes are polished, I have a handkerchief, but that I am conspicuously without a pocket knife and can I borrow his!

Some of his other lessons were more painful. As the first child I was the only one who had to stand outside, even in the snow, to wait for the school bus. He hated to hear my whining about bringing in logs for the fire--"They're heavy; I get splinters in my hands," I would moan. When my friend down the street refused to dress up in a Buster Brown costume for ten dollars for a store promotion, I learned the value of a dollar earned. Worst of all was having to hold his tools while he worked on a chore. Even my young brother learned this. He expected you to know what was in his mind to do even though he didn't know yet. His hand made bench has lasted four decades now. Not because it is beautiful or functional but as a testimony to his ability to make something do if he has to.

He has an uncanny ability for remembering names and dates. At church he introduces everyone by name even if they only visited once before years ago. He'll be sitting idly and announce that "55 years ago today I graduated from sixth grade." As I was writing this I only called my mom once to verify a name and I heard him say, (and I'm not making any of this up), "30 years ago today I stopped smoking." He has another "sense" too, like when he painted three spots on our con-crete fence for me to throw at to practice pitching. Some min-utes later I yelled at him, "Dad, I hit a spot!" And he called, "Was it the one you were throwing at?" No, but how did he know?

I don't know that I learned any of his intentional lessons about manliness, but I learned. Although my mom exercised most of the discipline, he gave me my last spanking. I went out for the day with Bill Trent, exploring, but without permission, nor telling anyone where I was going. (After all, we were exploring, so we didn't know where we were going or when we'd be back.) I grew up some that day; not that he hurt me.

He also moved me from, perhaps, the romanticism of Rousseau to the romantic-realism of Dickens. When I was seven our cat gave birth to kittens behind our log pile. I told my dad wouldn't it be neat if the kittens had televisions and refrigerators behind the log pile. He indicated it was a pretty stupid thing to say. It really was. Sometime later I saw him tell one of his secre-taries that a letter she had typed simply wouldn't do and that it would have to be done over. My mild mannered father taught me, by example, about responsibility, realism, leadership.

That he had these qualities in abundance both put his life at risk and probably saved it. It was at a high school dance where he taught. My parents always chaperoned the dance at the school gym and I got to go. Sometime near the end of the dance they'd always play "Pop Goes the Weasel." Just for me. Then one dance night something was different. There was some sort of commotion. I overheard a teenage girl say "Shhh, that's the Mr. Gose's boy." I looked around and neither Mom nor Dad were anywhere to be seen. And I heard the word "knife." And I heard the name "Don Gopp."

The upside is that my dad gives absolutely everyone a fair chance. Hundreds, if not thousands, of students have taken that opportunity, changed self-fulfilling prophecies, become successful. But eventually you have to be responsible and do what you say you will do. Chances never run out with my father, but some-times time may run out, a semester may end. Other teachers might pass a potentially dangerous student like Don Gopp, but not my dad. And Don Gopp had certainly failed and was certainly unhappy about it. He had a knife and was waiting outside the gym, and he sent word he wanted my dad to meet him outside. Five years old, I actually heard kids arguing on whether he should or shouldn't go. I know my dad well enough to know there was never any doubt in his mind.

He never talks about it, but he'd been the Navy's top gun. By finishing first in his class at aviation school he'd become the flight instructor. The others in his class went to the European Theatre where they were all killed. Dad, a former top gun, went outside to meet Don Gopp. I went to the far corner of the dance floor and danced in a circle singing, "Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel, the weasel thought it was all in fun, pop! goes the weasel." Outside my dad faced peril.

I always wondered how dad got the student to put away the knife and go home. I suspect it was something like the way when I was his age I got the guy who held me up to put away his gun, give me my bill-fold back and only take my money. Whatever he did, he never talked about it or pressed charges. For Dad it was over that night. Later, at the time of the Korean conflict, Don's father wrote the Navy that Dad was no good. An investigator came to town. The charge was refuted by an entire town. It is also true that still sometime later yet, Don's mother brought me some View-masters to see while I was bed ridden with the measles and chicken pox. My dad, a civilized man with a civilizing influence.

For all he has done for me, my favorite picture of him in my mind's eye is the night no one knew where he was and we finally spied him sitting out on a log under our big oak tree roasting hot dogs and talking with his best friend, Mr. Barron, another teacher and Navy man, the same one who had hit off me the homerun that sailed through a neighbor's nursery window.

Chapter 7

Table of Contents

Home