Work-Brickle But Kind

           
October 5 marked the seventh year since Dad's death. This week, a cousin mentioned what a kind man Dad was. Yet he was so work-brickle, meaning he didn't have a lazy particle in his being. How did he come to be like that? 
            Even though my father, Edmund Gates, Jr., found Mr. Rippee a “fascinating” teacher, when he was around 10 years old, he began loafing instead of studying in school. Mr. Rippee, Dad's teacher at the Woodland School in the Bend, visited with Grandpa. My grandfather, Edmund, Sr. told Mr. Rippee, “Just let me keep him out of school a week to help me clear walnut trees.”

Dad was
about  this
age when
he helped 
clear the
walnut 
trees.

            My father explained the process this way. He and my grandfather dug down around each of the tree stumps about a foot and a half, with both using a shovel. This allowed a place wide enough to maneuver a crosscut saw effectively. Then Dad and his father each got on one end of the crosscut saw and began pushing and pulling. Some of the walnut trees had trunks with 10-inch diameters. Needless to say, Dad slept well each night, but because of work of that nature, he exhibited unparalleled strength for his small size well into his 90s.

            The tough, work-brickle young man transported his sister Martha on horseback to her eighth-grade graduation in a flooded deluge of rain when a buggy would have gotten stuck. Later Dad said how sorry he felt for Martha trying to navigate in her pretty new dress such muddy areas on her special day. Sensitivity for others emerged so often in Dad.
            In the late 1930s, Grandpa was convinced by Bill McFadden, a Fairfax mechanic and the father of Helen McFadden Buxton, to buy the family’s first motorized vehicle, a used 1937 green International pickup truck. The upgrade made sense because it took Grandpa half of a day to get to Fairfax in his wagon or buggy and then the rest of the day to make the 14-mile-trek back to the farm in the northwest of the Bend.
            Dad had to step up to the challenge when Chuck Shell, the brother-in-law of Bill McFadden, drove them to the hill north of the Fairfax Cemetery. Chuck's driver's training for Dad consisted of a brief instruction to my father who had never driven a motor vehicle in his life! Nevertheless, Chuck, only two years older than Dad, coached him by saying, "Edmund, drive in the middle of the road. If you see someone coming, get over so they can pass." With that ultra-condensed version of drivers' ed, Grandpa and Dad headed west on the dirt road. Fortunately, Dad recalled few cars were on the "trail" that day.

Martha, Dad's sister, in front of the only family
vehicle - the '37 International Pickup.

              Dad's prerequisites to his inaugural driving excursion consisted of having ridden in the car driven by his maternal grandpa, Bob Black. Dad had watched closely from the back seat as his grandpa drove. Those experiences with his grandpa gave him a working knowledge of the clutch, the brake, the foot pedal, and the gear shift, but he had never been behind the wheel. Since Grandpa was profoundly hearing impaired, my father assumed the role of the family driver until he went to World War II.
               Dad had so many demands on him since he worked with his father seven days a week from childhood until his 16th birthday. After his brother’s death during the summer of 1935, his parents became Christians, and his father no longer worked on Sunday. From that point until my father volunteered for the Army Air Corps, he worked Monday-Saturday on the family farm.    
               Ironically, Dad is the only person I have heard described military basic training as a “vacation.” He said, “I had time to come in and just relax on my bunk.”
               Let’s revisit the initial question, How did Dad become “work-brickle and kind”? As simplistic as it may sound, most parents, in those days were preoccupied with trying to do their best for their children so their families could "get by" - not "get ahead" but just "eak by." Yet these people who survived the Great Depression with long days of backbreaking work retained a strong moral compass. It usually translated as treating others the way they wanted to be treated. They daily tried to live out the Golden Rule.
               A mutual respect for what one's neighbor had acquired, and the preciousness of human life undergirded most of our forbearers. A couple of foundational truths guided their lives. They believed God saw everything that a person did and that each human being would one day be held accountable for those actions. These two tenets drove community members to look out for the wellbeing of each other as taught in the Scriptures.

                       Let no man, then, set his own advantage as his objective, but rather the good of his neighbor.
                                                                                                                I Corinthians 10:24

             The dire economic situation demanded a strong work ethic from parents down to the youngest child that could do the smallest task. They internalized the truth of Paul’s command to the Thessalonian believers in the third chapter, verse 10.

For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.

             Finally, my mother believed my father inherited the calm, sensitive temperament of his mother, Mamie Irene Tripp Gates. Both my father and my maternal grandma could “shed tears” easily. So many times, I heard Dad say when he needed to discuss a sticky subject, he approached it “in a kind way.” Most importantly, he lived by these simple Bible verses:

Love suffers long and is kind; loves does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. 

I Corinthians 13:4 

              And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

                                                                                                                     Ephesians 4:32