Saturday Mornings Long Ago

             

Funny how I remember it all in color.

   
         If I were to be honest, I believe that the best thing that we can do with our children is to give them our time, but not necessarily give them things.  On Saturday mornings when I was a child, my father was at home.  My mother would be catching up and taking care of my younger brother. My father would have his own catch up projects and errands to do on the all too short Saturday. In those years most everything was closed on a Sunday so there was a big push to finish one's shopping and errands on Saturdays. Things were usually busy and often shops were crowded.  On those days my father would take me with him.  Sometimes we would venture into Montgomery Wards or Sears but often we would go to any number of individual local hardware stores. My father often had a list of things he needed in order to complete his own weekend chore list. In those small hardware stores I remember fuses, nails, wood screws, cleaning implements, welding supplies, mouse traps, silver polish, wire, copper for plumbing, electrical supplies, wire for fencing, chains and ropes people used to tie dogs, and lots of shovels and gardening implements. The stores would smell of linseed oil, dirt, and sometimes what I later learned was the smell of small amounts of fertilizer. Some of them smelled like sweet damp wood, a smell I learned much later, most often meant termite infestation of the building itself. In those years, hardware stores were often disorganized and did not have the neat and clean appearance that so many of them do today.

                 Had you asked me at the time, I liked going places with my father, but I was not a fan of hardware stores.  My dad would teach me things and speak to me as if I were another man. He didn't sugar coat or make assumptions about my vocabulary or my intelligence. He assumed I would understand, and often, I did, or I learned something. Sometimes, he would actually have me look for something for him while he would talk to the proprietor about something else. At the time, I would much rather have been looking in dress shops or toy shops with my mother, who would always stop during shopping for a snack, or a drink during the trip. Dad always had a mission and he wouldn't stop for a coca cola or a hot chocolate as my mother would have. In fact, when I asked to stop for a soda, I learned a lot from my father who related in detail the hazards of sugared carbonated drinks to tooth enamel long before it was fashionable to do so.

                 Most Saturdays my father took me with him, often to the Montgomery Wards, then a hardware store, then the tire shop, and then to another town to yet another hardware store to find the ever elusive part he needed for something. We would get home at around one o'clock where my mother had lunch waiting. Often a Saturday lunch was open grilled cheese from the broiler with bacon on it. In summer, it was often a large shrimp salad with french bread. At home with meals we all drank water. We had hot tea afterward. I don't think I had fast food until college.

               I don't think that anyone thought very much about the man who brought his six year old daughter to the hardware stores every Saturday.  I realize now that I benefited immensely from this time.   I watched him drive his standard shift Jeep from the front seat, as child safety and booster seats were not yet required.  The one time we had a near miss my father's arm stretched out in front of me preventing me from hitting the metal dash board on my side. It is no wonder that my cars have a standard shift today and that I taught all my own children to drive one.  Although I don't function on the level of a contractor, I do know the difference between a wood screw and sheet metal screws.  I know how to measure and I am able to maintain most things on our farm.  When a lock ages, I am able to change doorknobs and locks pretty quickly.  At least some of this is due to the choice one man made in 1965 to take his skinny little daughter with him each Saturday as he completed his household errands.

            As I take my young grandson with me sometimes I often think about the lessons he may be garnering from this special time. Sometimes some of our greatest investments are made inadvertently.