As an addendum to last week’s story Erin, my oldest daughter, reminded me that we actually bought a decorated cake that read “Congratulations Tax Collector Leigh” and then threw her a surprise party.

We learn a lot from our parents whether we realize it or not.  My dad was part of the generation that lived through the depression.  He was born in 1931, in the middle of it, so he grew up fully immersed in the frugality of his time.  Nowadays we call them hoarders and make TV shows about them, but back then you never threw out anything because you might need that some day and you couldn’t afford to buy another.  My dad was a second generation adding and calculator machine repairman/business owner.  Oddly, the family business survived because of the frequent floods in the Ohio valley which would swallow up the steel mills including the offices which housed the expensive office equipment.  My grandfather had developed a process that allowed the equipment to be cleaned and reused rather than be replaced, at an incredibly high cost, and once the company had established a great reputation, life was good.  But making do with what was on hand was deeply ingrained in my dad’s psyche, and doing things differently wasn’t really an option.

For example, one summer my dad had my brother and I tear down a rotting garage from the side of the house next door.  It had a flat roof which leaked like a sieve and it was on the verge of collapsing under the weight of the waterlogged rafters and decking.  The logical next step would have been to have a big bonfire and breakout the hot dogs, but in my dad’s world we stacked the remnants in a neat pile.  I was sure he was trying to start a termite farm.  The very next summer I found myself building a goat pen made out of the same heap of firewood,  carefully cutting out the useable/straightest pieces with a handsaw and designing the thing around the materials on hand.  Building things with the wrong materials and the wrong tools taught me several lessons:

1) Buy the right material and the right tools and you’ll save yourself a whole lot of aggravation.

And the greater lesson:

2) Creativity, perseverance, and hard work can get anything done.

There’s a lot more satisfaction in building something with your own hands, knowing every square inch of it, creating it from nothing, than in snapping together a kit or just buying it.  I am a great believer in getting the right tool for the job and you will always see me pick through the 2x4s for the straightest one because I learned early on how much easier life is when you start out square and level and plumb.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing to see how hard life can be when everything isn’t perfect but, given the choice, I’ll always choose the straight and narrow.

When my dad was down to his last two weeks, he called me over to his house, told me to get a notebook, and asked me to sit close and take notes.  I thought he was going to share the secrets of life with me but, instead, he began a long dissertation on how to fire up the boiler at Uncle George’s house.  I was sure it wasn’t that hard but he insisted I write it all down.  As usual, he was right.  There were steps involving clipping wooden clothes pins to wires and opening valves in the proper sequence and, my favorite step, checking the sight gage every 2 or 3 days.  When I asked what would happen if I didn’t check it he pulled me close and whispered, “It could blow up”.

I got it fired up.  I checked the gage religiously every 2 or 3 days for two weeks thus saving Uncle George from an early grave and, as soon as I got home from the cemetery, I called my furnace guy Ron and made arrangements to have a new boiler installed.

Thanks for the lesson Dad.