What might have been

 

I’ve been thinking about my Dad lately. I wasn’t sure why but then I realized that January was the month of his birth and of his death. I don’t remember birthdays particularly well, but I remember his. January 20^th, 1913. 

And for some reason, the date of his death has stuck with me too—Janary 27^th, 1997 84 years and a week apart. He shouldn’t have lived that long. No way. He had his first heart attack at age 45, when men didn’t last long when they started that young. He had several more but they didn’t kill him.

The science of cardiology in 1958 was nothing like it is today. Back then, they would put you on blood thinners and tell you to go home and sit. No physical exertion. No exercise. No excitement.

We dried clothes on an outdoor line (ask an old person) but cardiac patients weren’t allowed to even reach overhead. He and I built this step thing to where I could hang clothes on the clothesline. He made regular visits to the hospital lab for blood work, monitoring the effect of the Coumadin that he took for decades and which ultimately killed him.

Today, it is completely different. Stents placed in the arteries of the heart have transformed cardiac care. We now know that exercise is essential for cardiac rehabilitation, and that reaching over your head is completely OK. New medicines, new techniques, new technology, all mean a longer and healthier life for those having suffered a heart attack. But that wasn’t the case back then.

At 13, I built a tree house in the back yard while he sat in a lawn chair down below and coached me through it all. He would listen to my football games on the radio, because those games really excited him.

My dad wasn’t a big man, standing but 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing maybe 145 at his biggest, but he could outwork men twice his size. His reputation at the factory where he worked before he had to retire early was that of someone that could always be counted on to get the job done. And then he would turn around and help you do your job too.

I know that because when I worked at that same job during college summers, the expectations for “Carl’s kid” were immense. Uneducated and having never worked at anything that wasn’t hard labor, he still set a high bar for everything I ever aspired to do.

He raised a garden, bees, grapes, and cherries.  Since he couldn’t lift much because of his heart, I did the labor. My first Boy Scout merit badge was beekeeping because at 11, I was an experienced beekeeper.

There was a lot about my dad that I didn’t know much about and I will always regret that. During the Great Depression, he lived alone in a basement room in Knoxville and worked at a dairy. That’s all I know. It was only when I was going through some old photos after my Mom died that I discovered that they attended the opening of the GSMNP at Newfound Gap.

I didn’t know that at all. I also have a photo of my Dad standing at the precipice of Bald River Falls. I was never brave enough to do anything like that.

He never got to play sports of any kind. He dropped out of school after the 6^th grade and went to work in a factory after his dad died. In recent weeks, I’ve written about missed opportunities and he sure had them.

No school, the Great Depression, World War II, a new father at 40. What a life! He always loved motorcycles and one of my favorite photos is of him standing beside one, it had to be in the 30’s, leather helmet on his head, surrounded by a snowy street. He once told me he had pounded nails in the hard rubber tires to give him traction in the snow.

What would have been his sport if he had the opportunity? Today, I bet he would be a wrestler. He was tough as nails and, pound for pound, the strongest person I’ve ever known. Or a distance runner. He could outwork anybody. Maybe he would have defied all odds and been a tough-nosed football linebacker.

Oh wouldn’t that have been something to see!  Happy birthday Dad.