I am my father’s son

In a previous post at Interestornot I described in some detail about ways my father mistreated me when I was living with him as a young boy. I also wrote that I wish he would have made more time to play ball with me.

My father said he is my best friend. A true friend will tell you words you don’t always want to hear. This is certainly true of my father. A true friend will not agree with you on everything. This is also true of my father. A true friend has your best interest in mind. While my father cared and looked out for me the ways he new how when I was a young child, sometimes in ways I vehemently despised I am grateful that he was in my life then and to this day.

I’ve heard numerous stories of children disowning their parents when they became old enough to take care of themselves because of their parents bad behavior. While this is the healthiest option for people in those situations I’m grateful that never happened in my family.

My father managed to keep a solid roof in a safe neighborhood over our heads and enough food in the kitchen while I was growing up all the way until I moved into my own home at 18. My father’s home was warm enough and dry inside on the coldest snowy nights outside. My father taught me how to shovel the snow and chip the ice off the sidewalks around the house early in the morning so men women and children could walk over them and to avoid paying a fine to the city where unobstructed sidewalks are the responsibility of the residents. In the hottest summers the cooling system kept the house from overheating throughout the years.

My father taught me many skills from mowing the lawn to installing and maintaining the sprinkler system. He taught me how to paint interior walls and exterior siding. He taught me how to maintain the fence and apply wood primer over it to keep it solid and strong. He taught me basic carpentry and automotive maintenance skills. He taught me basic plumbing skills. He taught me how to turn the soil and to plant seeds, to water them and to harvest the fresh produce as it ripened in his garden.

We had electricity wired into every room and plumbing that worked consistently throughout the kitchen and bathrooms throughout the years. The water pressure at home was strong with both hot and cold water and was clean and clear and ready to drink and to wash in consistently throughout the years built into the solid foundation and land where his house was built many years before may family moved in. We had a clothes washing machine and clothes drying machine in the house that consistently worked throughout the years. We had a telephone, line, and service that worked consistently in the house.

The house has windows on every wall of the exterior that open up and look out into the lively residential neighborhood that is safe day and night one block away from the public Elementary school I attended. My father always had a reliable car.

The community my father brought me up in is economically strong and stable and peaceful in the Democratic Republic of United States. Clean clear air filled the environment I grew up in. Environmental pollutants were not a problem in our community. The environment I grew up in is far away from hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanos year after year to this day.

My father has worked for himself since before I was born. He is his own boss and owner of several businesses. Through his work he has taught me about leadership and independence. These are all blessings I thank him for.

Growing up with economic strength and geographic stability is a reality for many of us US Citizens of America. I can thank goodness and thank God and thank the hard ongoing work of many generations of Americans who made this a reality for so many.

Thanking goodness has many implications. It’s good to have a clothes washing machine and a clothes drying machine at home. And it’s good when there is a store in your community with clothes washing machines and clothes drying machines for their customers use.

Every community is unique and has people with more financial wealth and people with less financial wealth and less material possessions. That’s life, that’s normal. We all can’t have the most and all of us can’t have the least. Increasing financial wealth is often the result of gaining a college degree and or a highly valued skill learned attending a trade school and through a lot of hard work.

I was enrolled in college with a full schedule of courses and attended classes on the college campus for one year. I did not graduate. I did not earn a college degree. I did not attend a trade school where highly valued skills are taught and people put to work.

I have many skills highly valued to me and are practical I use in life every day.

I know that many Americans have to leave home and leave their apartment and travel with their bag filled with their soiled clothes on their feet and in their car and sometimes have to pay the fare to travel on the schedule of a city bus to a store only during business hours to wash and dry their clothes.

And sometimes wait for the machines to be available and pay their hard earned money for each use of the clothes washing machines and clothes drying machines. Then travel with their bag of their clean and dry clothes back to their home to have clean clothes ready to wear.

Many possessions I was brought up with and learned to take for granted took on new meanings and new practical matters when I moved out of my father’s home into a one bedroom studio apartment I rented where I lived on my own for the first time 29 years ago.

That’s life and the experience of growing up and living on your own in your home away from the family you were born into. This is a human experience most Americans becoming adults realize at some time in their lives.