Dad’s Dirty Hands
If the true measure of a man is the lives he’s touched, my Dad’s grimy pawprints must be all over the damn place.
Sifting through my Dad’s papers after he passed, I gently unfolded a Western Union telegram, brittle and foxed, dated June 24, 1959.
The message had raced along thousands of miles of twisted copper wires from the plains of Oklahoma to the peaks of Anchorage, Alaska.
The telegram succinctly announced the earlier-than-expected arrival of a seven-pound boy in Oklahoma City, concluding with an all-caps “CONGRATULATIONS.”
I don’t know how lucky the recipient felt the day Western Union officially confirmed he was a first-time father. He was a recent college grad working a summer job as a land surveyor for Richfield Oil in Alaska. And at that very moment, he was probably ankle-deep in the boot-sucking muck of an oilfield swarming with mosquitoes.
But there is one thing I’m sure of, Dad got the message. The proof was right there in the left-hand corner of the telegram: a big, grimy thumbprint.
Life Can Get Messy
Ever since I can remember, Dad always had a mess on his hands. And not just metaphorically.
His meaty mitts were often layered with some mysterious combination of grit and grime that would make a coal miner have second thoughts about shaking his hand.
He would always do his best to clean them; he’d dip one paw in an industrial-size tin of Go-Jo Miracle Waterless Hand Cleaner, vigorously rub his hands together, then wipe the gooey mess off with a painter’s rag. It was indeed a miracle if he got them even halfway clean.
It wasn’t Dad’s 9-to-5 job that turned his palms the color of a chimney flue. By the time I was a toddler, we had moved to Ohio, and Pop was working as an electrical engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. He left for work each morning wearing a crisp pastel shirt (mostly short sleeves) and a clean striped tie (always clip-on) and returned home in nearly the same pristine condition.
So what explained my Dad’s perpetually dirty digits? He just couldn’t resist building something new or fixing something old around our house and, more often than not, making a mess in the process.
Home Or Construction Zone?
Our home was perfectly fine to start with, or so the rest of us thought. It was a newer build, two stories with plenty of room, an unfinished basement, a two-car garage, and two big sugar maples in the backyard. But in Dad’s eyes, there was always room for improvement, and he, of course, was the perfect one-man construction crew for every job.
Growing up, I just had to accept the fact that walking through certain areas of our house might require a hard hat.
While other fathers were probably thinking about taking on projects like varnishing a bookcase, my Dad was busy dreaming up monumental renovations worthy of the Taj Mahal. For example, he added four massive, two-story columns to the front of our house — they actually looked great, but maybe a wee bit excessive?
Dad approached home projects with about the same intensity as a jackhammer to concrete. But instead of being a tough as nails version of Bob the Builder like you might think, he was more akin to Winnie-the-Pooh. He was always quick with a smile and a hug, and wore his big heart on his favorite Carhartt flannel sleeve — right next to all those paint splatters and grease stains.
Whenever I had a bad day, a bruised ego, or a broken heart, Dad was my load-bearing wall who never stopped supporting me.
Sometimes though, I must admit, I wasn’t sure if Dad was more focused on raising a kid or training a woodworking assistant.
A New Home Addition
Five years after I was born, my brother joined the crew. A new baby would have been the perfect excuse for Dad to sub out some of the household upgrades to a pro who could achieve the same results with considerably less muss and fuss.
Well, perish that thought.
Dad took pride in being the neighborhood’s OG DIYer. He’d handle the job himself, thank you. No way was he going to give someone else the pleasure of filling our home with paint fumes and gypsum dust.
The Dads Get Stuff Done
To be fair, my Dad wasn’t the only Dad in the neighborhood who looked forward to working around the house on weekends.
A sunny Saturday would lure the weekend warriors out of their sleepy brick and aluminum-siding homes like bees to clover.
By 9 A.M., the neighborhood was often abuzz with lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, power washers, lawn edgers, and possibly a chainsaw or two.
Then by early afternoon, most of the Honey-Do lists had been checked off, and the tired dads could settle back into their La-Z-Boys, maybe sip an ice-cold Schlitz or PBR, and seriously consider a nap.
Of course, not my Dad. He always had loftier plans for the day than mulching the flower beds; his were more along the lines of a NASA moon launch. And whatever he had dreamed up and drawn out on his blue graph paper this time, it would require almost every Sears Craftsman tool he had, and probably a few city building permits he never bothered to get.
Go big or go home was my Dad’s motto.
When his own impressive arsenal of power tools wasn’t up to the next herculean task, he’d enlist the big guns. It wasn’t unusual to have a rented drill press, engine hoist, tile saw, acetylene torch, backhoe, or cement mixer suddenly appear at our house. When he installed two large solar water heating panels on the roof, I really expected to see a 50-foot crane in our driveway.
Dad The Toymaker
Despite living in a construction zone for most of my formative years, there were some real advantages to having an industrious Dad who could fabricate or fix just about anything.
He built us kids a two-story treehouse in our backyard, complete with a cedar shake roof. He scraped together a plywood and steel-tube go-kart powered by an old lawnmower engine. He cut and bolted together a wood basketball goal, actually twice — my brother brought it down within weeks, backing into it with the Corvair. And I clearly remember Dad replacing the transmission in my second-hand Plymouth Duster — a really complicated labor of love that resulted in stained hands for days.
As payback for all the things he either built or repaired for us kids, Dad only asked for one thing in return: keep him company while he worked.
Fireside Chats Around the Space Heater
Dad loved to talk — to everyone. He was definitely a never-met-a-stranger kind of guy. And he especially loved having an audience while he worked.
That’s how my brother and I would often find ourselves huddled around the space heater in our cold garage listening to Dad talk while he tinkered away.
When he got on a roll, he would cut loose with a practically nonstop stream of fatherly advice, lame dad jokes, tales of his youth, and anything else that came to mind. About the only time he paused was to take a breath or blurt out a few choice words when some minor law of physics refused to bend to his will.
We learned a lot from Dad’s monologues. His own father had abandoned his wife and two older kids while Dad was still in the cradle. Suddenly, in the 1920s, they were alone in a too-big, worm-pocked, wood-slat house in a tiny tumbleweed Oklahoma town that even its residents described as just a wide patch on the side of the road.
When I was older, I wondered if my Dad’s fatherless upbringing, which hovered perilously close to poverty, had something to do with his near-obsession with building so many nice things now.
The towering front porch columns, the newly finished and furnished basement, the sunroom addition, the cedar deck — maybe all the things he built were, to him, real, solid, tangible proof he never needed his worthless father in the first place. He could build his own castle with his own hands, and keep his family happy and safe inside.
Uhm, Can We Borrow Your Dad?
Dad was the ultimate family handyman we had to share with other less fortunate families whose dads were not so handy.
He was always happy to help too. He never thought twice about lending a hand to friends, neighbors, co-workers, church members, and many times, strangers.
According to Dad, every day he got his hands dirty — no matter where or when — was a good day. He had lots and lots of good days.
And by the way, the most useless gift you could ever give my Dad was a pair of work gloves. A catcher’s mitt he’d happily slip on; everything else he bare-handed, wood splinters and level-one biohazards be damned.
While time marched on and his kids grew into young men, Dad never stopped toiling and tinkering.
Of course, the home projects were a little less grand by the time he became a grandpa, and the work might take a week or two longer to finish.
Still, Pops was replacing his ShopVac more often than most people change air filters.
Have Tools, Will Travel
As organized and methodical as Dad was, life didn’t always follow his step-by-step checklist.
Mom died shortly after I went off to college. My brother started a new family in the hills of Arkansas. I got married and moved to the East Coast, then switched to the West Coast. Dad retired from the Air Force, packed up his tools, sold our family home in Ohio with the treehouse, and moved into a doublewide in a south Texas community full of senior citizens and electric golf carts. But not to worry, there was a tool shed out back.
When his enthusiasm waned for the community’s Bocce courts, billiards tables, and nine-hole executive golf course, he took up fixing gas-powered mowers out back for his new friends. Free blade-sharpening with every repair. I don’t think he ever made any money doing that, but it didn’t really matter. The point was to keep those hands busy while enticing the neighbors to stop by and chat.
Even in his advancing years, Mr. Fixit remained a man on a mission to seal every leak and tighten every bolt he came across. He always slipped his Leatherman multi-tool pliers into his back pocket when strolling through the retirement community. As the years passed, his walks grew slower until they eventually included an oxygen tank wheeling along behind him.
When Dad’s mind and body began to wobble a little off-plumb, my brother brought him to live with his family in Bella Vista, Arkansas. My brother’s homestead included a snazzy, detached split-level guest house by their pool — which, you guessed it, Dad had helped design and build years before. Once again surrounded by family, he loved it there.
Continuous wear and tear takes its toll on even the best well-oiled machines over time. Belts start to slip, gears don’t quite mesh, and cast iron housings fracture and break.
When our jack-of-all-trades was forced to hang up his toolbelt for good, we were blessed with almost a week to say our goodbyes to the man whose proudest achievement was the multi-generational family he’d helped build — and for once, his sons had actually participated in that project.
Closing Up Shop
Never at a loss for words, my Dad did not go quietly.
He talked of old times and good times, favorite pets and fishing trips, friends who stayed friends, and other friends, thankfully few, who somehow fell out of favor.
I remember him asking me if I had learned to use that ohms meter thing he’d sent me years ago. I hadn’t, but I promised him I would. He nodded, but I could tell his thoughts had already drifted to something else of much greater concern. The man who had single-handedly tackled so many ambitious projects with zero fear was now afraid to check off this one last step.
When I took his hand in mine, it was not the meaty mitt it once was; it felt much more bony than muscular now, with paper-thin, sun-spotted skin stretched tight over wiry blue veins.
As I gently entwined my fingers in his, I took a closer look and smiled.
I’m pretty sure there was axle grease under his fingernails.
