I’m
fatherless this Father's Day, but the passage of twenty-three years without Dad
has only intensified my love and gratitude for him and clarified the worldview
he bequeathed me. Lord knows I miss
him.
He tilled western Illinois soil all his allotted days,
back and forth in flat, black gumbo furrows, dawn to dusk, with horses and then
with tractors. I was the oldest of
two sons he taught to walk those furrows and keep them straight.
Around the breakfast table he instructed all four of his offspring in the
straight and narrow way as he read from the Bible.
In my global travels in war and peace those God-fearing, heartland roots
have served me exceedingly well. No
greater love hath any Dad.
To
this day, when I smell cheap cigar smoke, I sense his presence.
In my mind's eye I see him sitting on the metal seat of a steel-wheeled
corn planter, leather reins in leathered hands and jaw clamped on a cigar,
staring at the north end of two southbound draft horses named Jeff and Jerry.
I never had the nerve to ask, but I’m pretty sure the latter horse was
my namesake.
Dad bought Emerson cigars by the box for six cents apiece and
got more mileage out of them than any man I know.
He lit one end with a wooden match, drawn smartly across the back thigh
of his bib overalls, and chewed on the other, working his way toward the middle
from both ends. On some occasions
he worked from back to front only, never lighting the cigar but making it last
all day.
Often
he’d forget to drag on it and the fire would go out.
It was in my experimental years at the university that I came to
appreciate the courage required to suck on a dead cigar.
When rainy days precluded fieldwork, I rode to town with Dad
in a '51 Chevy pick-up. A toxic
cloud of cigar smoke filled the cab. I
don’t recall what I thought was in that village of 800 souls that was worth a
five-mile ride in a rolling smokehouse. And
I’ve never understand why rolled up dead leaves smell so good in the box and
so awful on fire. Cigars are high
fashion now, but I never got addicted and for that I'm also grateful to
Dad.
On
Sundays he left the cigar resting on a beam above the back porch and drove the
family to church. While Mom’s
angelic soprano voice rang out from the choir loft Dad shepherded four small
squirming sinners in a hard oak pew. As
Psalm 100:1 directs, he made an obedient but dissonant “joyful noise unto the
Lord” with his uninhibited monotone.
My
fondest memory of life with Dad was an October dawn on the mighty Mississippi
River, enroute to our duck blind on Paddy Island in a wooden boat as old as the
ark laboriously driven by a 25-horsepower outboard.
The cold penetrated all the layers of clothes, inducing an involuntary
reciprocal motion in my lower jaw and turning my cheeks to parchment.
Overhead, V's of Mallards raced us down the river.
A gray forest of denuded elms, oaks and willows huddled at the riverbanks
and on the scattered islands. The
eastern sky was an abstract painting of broad orange and yellow and white
horizontal brush strokes by the Divine Artist on a powder blue canvas.
In
the stern, Dad clutched the steering arm of the outboard with the ever-present
dead cigar angled out of a grinning, ruddy face.
His eyes sparkled below devilish eyebrows as the frigid rushing air drove
tears back toward the flapping ear tabs of his hunter's cap.
Baby
brother, with his red nose dripping and a brown stocking cap pulled down to his
pupils, sat shivering in the bow, facing aft.
He was drawn into the fetal position by an arctic bow spray of muddy
water. If he was enjoying himself
it was not apparent.
The
roar of the outboard made conversation impossible, but none was necessary—Dad
was big on silence. It just
couldn't get any better than that. Perhaps
you have to be a duck hunter to understand.
One
measure of a man's contribution to his community in America’s agrarian Midwest
is the number of mourners at his wake. Some
hometown folks think Dad holds the record.
One
day, when my race is run, I’ll be joyfully walking furrows again—golden
furrows—right behind my Dad…and if cigars are allowed in heaven, they’ll
be the sweetest incense.
JD
Wetterling is an author and resident manager of Ridge
Haven Conference Center and Retreat near Brevard, North
Carolina.