Time with Dad

When I was fourteen years old, approximately, I found out my Dad had a disease called Lou Gehrig's.  It's also called ALS, or arterial lateral sclerosis.  I don't write this to dwell on the disease or incite pity, or even to encourage research, although I support it. It's just a fact that had a profound effect on my family's lifestyle.

For those who don't know, Lou Gehrig's Disease attacks the nerves.  Those afflicted with the condition are currently certain to die earlier than they would have otherwise.  The nerves and muscles waste away starting, most obviously in my Dad's case, with the muscles controlling speech.

Dad began to talk less distinctly, then unintelligibly.  He progressed from shorter sentences to a pad and pencil. Dad's handwriting wasn't great to begin with and was eventually as hard to understand as his speech had been.  I could see it was frustrating for him.

I was a pretty clueless teen, as I believe most teens are and Dad had so much he needed to say before he was gone that he could hardly stand it some days.  He knew more than I did that I would have to wake up and take responsibility for a much larger portion of my life very shortly.  One day, when I had been particularly obtuse, he asked me why I acted like I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground.  He had a way of saying some things that stick with me.

One thing that I'm sure Dad was a little worried about was teaching me to drive.  He was never a super patient guy. My nervousness with the process of driving and learning to operate a stick shift 69' Chevy truck didn't help.  To be fair, he didn't yell at me unless I made the same mistake lots of times.

One day he let me drive into town.  He didn't have a lot of choice honestly.  His arms weren't that strong by then and the truck didn't have power steering.  He couldn't talk much at all either.  He could still get his point across.  He had a very expressive face and a way with body language.  I got us into town and back but I killed the truck in one intersection three times before I got us across two lanes of traffic for a left turn.  It wasn't good. When we got home from Columbus, Mom asked how the drive had been. Dad couldn't say anything so he grabbed his hair, pulled it up and went Aaaaahhh!

He was an awesome guy.  I wish I had known him better.  Everything was a learning experience.  Most activities had opportunities to make a point or build a skill.  Dad had a great philosophy of learning by doing.  He would help but we weren't allowed to back out of a situation because of simple fear.  If the truck needed to be moved off the hill, I should get in and move it.  Anyone who has driven a stick realizes that as soon as the clutch is depressed, the truck starts rolling backward until it's given gas and the clutch is released.  Nerve wracking isn't a strong enough phrase.  It was a big hill and a heavy truck.  I have a good imagination and I clearly saw that truck and my lifeless young body in its mangled remains at the bottom. That's not what happened though and I'm glad he made me do it now.

I wish I had known him better.  I said it before and I think it to myself often.  It's amazing how little we pay attention to the people around us.  I had this really cool guy at home every day and didn't realize so much about him.  Dad was an exceptional person.  When we had his wake, so many people came that they had to line up around the building.  The funeral director said he had never had so many people come to pay their respects.  Wow!  He was young and our family is large but still, to have that many people wish to show their last respects is humbling to me.  I was sad and angry and blind at the time but I knew a really good man and had the opportunity to learn a little from him.  I was blessed.  I know that now.

Dad was the one who took us camping.  He taught us to poop in the woods, how to set up a tent, what to cook over the fire, and how to love the outdoors and what was in it.  Dad taught me to play baseball. I was an unwilling student, lazy would be accurate.  I was smart enough that I didn't like trying activities I didn't grasp instantly.  He made it fun though.

Dad devised a game we called nine ball.  He realized that my sisters and I all loved to bat but didn't want to catch.  We weren't stupid.  Throw a rock at our heads and we would rather swat at it than try to catch it.  In nine ball, all the players are in the outfield except for the person at bat.  That person gets to bat until someone accrues nine points, at which time the bat and glove change hands and everyone goes back to zero.

You never saw kids work so hard to catch a ball.  It was a cross between the MLB and the NFL.  We ran over each other, tackled, hip bumped, and hopefully got the ball.  Heaven forbid someone steal a fly ball.  With three points on the line, we called our play and defended our turf.  It was a blast, and I got pretty good at fielding too.

When I ran out of cub scout levels in the local troop, and didn't have a leader for the Webelo level, Dad became troop leader to me and my best friend Steve Bennett.  Our troop of two didn't last a super long time but we made mini catapults in Dad's shop. Then we built really cool ice fishing sledges with a place for a heating gas lamp, all our gear, and a place to sit as we waited to catch half frozen blue gill.  Dad taught me a little about cars, hunting, woodworking, farming, responsibility and teaching.  Even though I still don't know what kind of animal a Webelo is, he made sure I was ready to learn and to help others learn.

Dad forever had a project for us that would teach us responsibility.  We had regular chores.  We fed the dogs, washed dishes, brought wood in for the stove.  If a chore wasn't done, Dad would wake us up in the middle of the night to do it.  I hated that, but it was always a while before I forgot again.

Dad bought rabbits and rabbit hutches.  For a year or two we learned how to raise rabbits, how to breed them, how to clean them and not to name them.  Unfortunately, we were given a German Shepard with a taste for rabbit and the operation went under.

Shortly after the rabbits were gone, we became strawberry farmers.  Our house was on fifteen acres of land and part of it was tillable. One year a huge box of strawberry plants came in the mail and we had the job of putting them out.  Then there was the picking.  To this day, I rarely eat a strawberry.  I like the taste OK,  but I just don't want much to do with them.  I must have picked a thousand quarts of strawberries before we stopped messing with them.  It was good pay for a kid with no other job but it was tough hot work too.  You won't catch me laughing at a migrant farmer.  I've had a taste of the life and it's not easy.

I learned so much from Dad about the joy of living and helping and doing.  He died when I was sixteen years old.  I had to be a stronger, more confident, more responsible human being because of it.  I learned to see the rest of my family and pay attention to the people they are.  I stopped being that obtuse, self absorbed little snot that I had spent so many years being.  I spent years angry that he was gone and then more years thankful to God for the blessings I was allowed.

It would have been nice to reach that age where we could talk as equals, two guys who had a house and kids in common, two men with jobs and wives and projects to do together.  I wish he had met my kids and they had met him.  They would have had so much fun together.  I miss my Dad.  Thank you God for letting me have him, even for a little while.

Me as a kid - Part 2

Original post in Facebook by Greg Stier on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 11:34am

All my favorite memories are family memories until I moved to college. I have a great family. We all accept what is in front of us if we don't know better so I didn't realize how well adjusted we were till I talked to a kid who hated his parents, lived with his grandma and avoided his thieving drug addicted brother who beat him up on a regular basis. That kid exists. I thought, "Holy Crap! I got it good." It took me years to realize it but I don't plan to forget that family is one of the greatest strengths I have at my side.

Oh what a family too. Eleven uncles and aunts, fifty first cousins (give or take), and only God and Grandma know how many second cousins now that everyone is having kids. Anyway, with a family like that there was little need to turn to strangers for entertainment. It seemed like every other weekend we were rotating to one grandma's house or the other. There was nearly always someone around to play with or raise hell with, depending on who you ask.

Official family functions at the Grandma Stier's house were sure to have volleyball as part of the fun. The Stier family used to take volleyball pretty seriously. They are a competitive bunch, and mostly in pretty good shape. The games could get pretty tough. I wanted to be part of that group out there when I was little. They were having so much fun, I wanted to jump right in. Luckily there was always room for a little one on the court and it was usually a while before they realized that most of the shots were going around them. I got my share of serves and eventually grew into the game. It was as fun as I thought it would be and I'm still looking for a league to join on a regular basis.

Grandma and Grandpa Moeller's house had different allures. First of all, Grandma kept chickens. When grand kids were around, those chickens probably didn't sit on an egg more than five minutes before a grubby hand was shoved under their butt to steal it. The only defense the chickens had was the meanest rooster in Indiana. That nasty so and so used to strut around the yard waiting for an excuse to kill a child. It chased adults too. Grandma didn't like it one bit and used to give us permission to kick it if we were attacked.

If the corn was in, we would climb the huge pile of on- the-cob corn in the corn bin and slide down like it was a ride at some country theme park. There were machines of mysterious nature all over the farm to be examined and speculated upon. It was even more exciting when Grandpa would show us what they really did and how they worked.

Inside the enormous wood barn, with its hand hewn beams and columns there was the mother of all rope swings. The rope was an inch and a half thick and reached thirty or forty feet up to a beam over the main aisle of the barn. It was a rush to really get going in that thing. We would all wait impatiently for our turn to blast off.

Also in the barn was the haymow. Grandpa stored bales of hay for feeding his cows above the stalls. The bales, for the uninitiated, were about 2'x2'x4' of tightly packed hay held together with two pieces of twine. We used them as gigantic Lego blocks. We built forts and tunnels all over that barn. We chased each other and had wars with the old mud wasp nests hanging from the ceiling. They exploded with a very satisfying dust cloud but hurt if they actually hit you. Luckily we had terrible aim or fast reflexes. Martha, Grandma's spinster sister, used to scold us for making a mess of Grandpa's barn and coming in the house covered in hay but Grandpa never seemed to mind much. Martha lived with Grandpa and Grandma. She was tall and a little scary when I was little because she wasn't too patient with the little ones but as I got older, she mellowed a lot and I found out she was a wonderful lady.

Another perennial activity at our house was cutting wood. We burned wood for heat and had to travel to the farm on a pretty regular basis to get a truck load for the next winter. Dad used to bring a bag lunch and we would stick glass bottles of Coke in the creek to cool, safely held by an old mesh potato sack. Woodcutting wasn't my favorite job as a kid. When I was little the wood was huge and the only job available for someone of limited muscle was dragging brush. I must have piled half a forest before I got big enough to be trusted with the more dangerous jobs of cutting little limbs with an axe and, eventually, a chainsaw. On the way home we would stop at the Letts gas station and buy some candy as a reward for all the hard work. Dad believed in rewards for a good attitude during slave labor.

What a rush that chainsaw was, and is, moving through hard wood like a knife through butter. The moment before a dead tree fell, when the direction of travel was, so to speak, up in the air, left you wired to run any direction at a moment's notice.Then at the end of the day, there was the satisfaction of visible progress. A fence row was clear. Cut wood was piled in the back of a truck for a useful purpose. There are few activities I find so immediately satisfying. There is the almost total focus of splitting piece after piece of wood off a large round. Swing! Crack! Turn. Repeat. It is honest, uncomplicated labor with few political overtones, no one to offend and a good work out to boot.

One of Dad's enthusiastic hobbies was hunting squirrel in the woods and when I got a little older, he started taking me occasionally. I didn't enjoy it at first, mostly because we had to climb out of bed at 5:00am to get to the farm before the squirrels started moving. Think about it. I had to beat a squirrel out of bed. What does that say about me? Who has more sense? Anyway, I eventually got into the spirit of being in the woods so early that the world was just waking up.

I never cared much if I got a squirrel. I don't like the smell of boiling squirrel anyway. Baked and barbecued is a bit better. So, as I got older I developed the philosophy of going for a walk with a gun. When I found a nice place to rest, I would take a little nap. Any squirrel that woke me up probably deserved to die. One time while practicing that philosophy, I opened my eyes to see a red fox staring at the idiot sleeping against the tree. I didn't move. I was totally captivated, having never seen one so close in the woods. It was an experience I really enjoyed.

We also camped at the farm a couple times a summer, usually in conjunction with cutting wood. We weren't the hard core rough-it bunch of campers. There was always a cooler of goodies even though most of the food was cooked over a camp fire. Mom would usually stick in a pan of baked beans, which Dad loved, to go with our hot dogs and some Little Debbie snacks for dessert. We slept in tents, on air mattresses intended to float in a swimming pool. These took approximately three days to blow up and caused dizziness and nausea as all the useful air in our lungs was forced into them, but were much more comfortable than the ground.

Mom was usually conspicuously absent at these events. She preferred a bed to a sleeping bag. I'm sure it was a much needed break for her. Raising five kids as a stay at home mother, she probably had a little party while we were gone. Dad enjoyed teaching us a little something every trip. One time it was tree names and leaves, another, animal tracks, cooking over a fire, setting up a tripod, and most importantly, what NOT to wipe with when hovering behind a tree. We would wade in the creek and wander in the woods exploring this little kingdom away from home.

Hope you enjoyed. More later..