Story Thread

My story begins with my Father, his arm resting on the window sill of his Hudson, cruising west on 66.

It was his habit to have his arm there, the other hand on the wheel and a cigar in his mouth. My brothers were seated in back and I in the front passenger seat beside dad.

I was half-awake in the summer heat, when I heard my dad mutter something about the condemnation of a slow dump truck. I looked up just in time to see something small, black and with a white stripe come flying out from between the dual rear tires on the right side of the truck and carom off dad's arm.

The eye-watering oduer of skunk accompanied us for our brief off road path into the ditch.

Our return home was the first time I had heard his extended vocabulary (my brothers repeated some of the words to my mom) and last time my dad drove with his arm on the window sill.

I'm self-employed as a chemist and do contract work and product development. One hot summer day I needed to go to a plant and homogenize a 5 gallon sample of a wax emulsion. I asked my teen-age daughter if she'd like to help me. I'd even pay her! She had never been in a chemical plant before. The plant was hot, humid, noisy, smelly, dirty and sticky. We had on safety glasses and gloves, got the wax mix heated and melted, and passed it through the homogenizer to the receiver, and got our 5 gallon sample made. My daughter didn't say much, didn't complain and did all that I asked her. I was pleased with the day's effort. As we were driving home, I asked her, "Hannah, did you learn anything today?" she said, "Yes sir." I said, "Wonderful! What did you learn?" She said, "I learned I don't want to do THAT for a living!" True to her word, she's graduating with a double major in psychology and biology.

Hi WC,

I've been thinking of something to share, and finally you have sparked a memory ...

When I worked in Indiana as the Manager of Engineering for a manufacturer, we occasionally had a 'bring your son to work' day ... one faithful day, both my sons being older and not available, I decided to change it to 'bring my daughter to work' day. She was only 14, but I thought maybe it would be interesting for her.

When she arrived, she did busy herself, mostly asking questions about this and that, introducing herself to some of my staff, asking what they were doing and how she could help. She did various little things like filing and fetching this and that for people when she could. "Impressive," I thought, seeing that she was working on her own to actually do something and to 'fit in'.

Lunch time came, and as usual I ate at my desk, and she joined me. Then the surprise ...

1:00 came ... then 1:15 ... folks started to come back from lunch. Without hesitation, she walked out of my office and boldly announced, "Lunchtime is from 12:00 to 1:00" ... looked at her watch ... "I would hope you can all arrange to be here on time in the future" ... then just stood there ... waiting. I sat in my office, half terrified of what would happen next.

Whether her boldness or just because she was the 'boss's daughter', one person offered a simple, "I'm sorry, I won't do it again", then a couple of others added their obligatory comments.

The rest of the day went without incident (thank God), and later we had a long discussion about the difference between being a 'boss' and a 'leader', and I believe the term 'horses arse' came up, and how that rarely gets you very far.

Where is she today? Well, she's still a leader, albeit suffering from the upsets in the economy. Did she learn? Well, as with us all, she is still learning.

THANKS WC for reminding me of that 'interesting' moment in my career

Kind regards ...

All the father/son or daughter stories reminder me of this one.

My dad owned and ran a small strip mining business years back. He took my brother and I to the mine often from the time we were small thru young adult. Looking back this was real training. I was riding on the D9 with him when he was stripping coal. I guess I was about 10 and had ran (played?) with little dozers some. I asked him if I could try. He was stripping with the ripper teeth. I noticed he ran the teeth at a depth that the dozer was pulling hard and the tracks were just slightly spinning. A little more depth and the big dozer would stop and the tracks would spin. I tried to copy this action but it resulted in my over-correcting with the rippers so the dozer spun and stopped then moved forward with little load. Alternating like this all the way across the stripping area. When I looked back it looked like a war zone. On dads next pass all was smooth again. What looked like moving the ripper up and down actually involved throttle, steering clutches, ripper depth and my dad was clearing away the last pass of coal at the same time with a two axis blade. My dad later got Alzheimer's and passed away but I will never forget his feel for machinery.

When I was 14 or so, my Dad broke his back. He landed on ice from a walk, sitting up, and completely collapsed L3, L4, and L5, all at the same time. We couldn't get down the mountain to a Dr. and there was no Helo service where we lived, no hospital nearer than 13 miles away down the mountain. He was a Baptist preacher, and my Mom did talk to the Dr., who said Dad couldn't get on his feet for the two weeks, at least, that it would take before the Dr. could get through the snow to us.

Dad was stubborn, AND dedicated, so he got up anyway, the next morning (Sunday) and walked over to the church to teach his class, preach, greet people at the door. He walked back home and passed out on his way through the door. Sheer grit had kept him up despite the pain. Mom and I put him to bed. He got up that evening and went back to teach the evening class, preach the sermon, and lead choir practice afterward. Came in the door, passed out, Mom and I put him to bed. That went on through the whole two weeks before the Dr. got there. Miraculously, he didn't cripple himself.

That spring, he went out into the woods and split firewood with a maul and a wedge. He put up 2 1/2 chords of wood that way, while I was back in school.

Dad passed away at 83. He lost a total of almost 10 inches in height as his back continued to collapse, but he was still standing up, teaching college courses, when he became ill for the last time.

I asked him once how his back had weathered cutting and putting up all that firewood, and he answered that it wasn't so important how it had weathered it as that it HAD, because if he hadn't gone out and split that would then, he wouldn't be walking into his 80's.

He taught me some lessons about working through unpleasantness and discomfort that have kept me mobile through a blown out knee, and blown out ankle, stomach surgery, and a lot of general pain. Mostly he taught me that when you have to, you CAN KEEP GOING, way beyond what you would have believed possible.

About 3 or four years ago when my son was five or six: he had already "helped" me to build several things. One day I was doing a small job and he wanted to help so I handed him a screwdriver and told him he could put in a few screws. He turned it over and over, and examined it from every angle 'til I asked him what was wrong.

"I can't see how to turn it on."

I realised that he had only ever used a battery powered screwdriver in the past, and, when I explained that he had to turn it with his hand he asked,

"What stupid people made this then?"

Hi Randall,

This may be just an "urban legend", but I love the story, and it relates to yours:

A young lady brings a watch back to the jeweler where she had just bought it a few days before.

"Something's wrong," she complained. "I just bought this, and already it stopped working. I think the battery is dead."

The jeweler took the watch, examined it for a moment, then smiled and said, "You forgot to wind it."

He showed the young lady how to pull out the stem, and how to gently wind it, then let her hear it 'ticking'.

"That is so cool," she said, putting the watch back on her wrist. "A watch without batteries. Someone should have thought of this before."

Kind regards ...

Apart from the last line, which is the bit that turns that into a great story, I knew a girl who did exactly the same thing with a watch she got for Christmas one year. So I think there is probably a bit of a problem in defining exactly what an urban legend is.

Here's another genuinely true story which could probably be embellished to make a great story. A friend of mine persuaded his elderly father, to get a mobile phone (I think the family might have bought it for him as a birthday present or something). Anyway we were all sat in the pub the following lunchtime when one of the grandchildren phoned:

"Hello........Hello Ben.......How did you know I was in the pub?"

My older sister told me a story of a woman (may have been her). She was in a restroom and had entered a stall. Another woman came in the stall next to her and said "Hello". She answered back "Hello". The other woman said "How are you today?" She answered "I'm fine, how are you." The other woman said "Hold on, the idiot in the next stall is trying to have a conversation with me." (she was on her cell phone)