MY DAD’S GOLD BOOT

My Dad’s Gold Boot

In Memorial

It sits on the corner of my desk.   It’s ‘gold’ (spray painted), size 11, very worn, it was my dad’s.  Of all the trophies and prizes I’ve won in my life, that old ‘gold’ boot is the one I treasure the most!  Its monetary value is zero….its heart value to me is ‘priceless’!  It is one of the last pair of boots he wore as “an ole dirt farmer”. That was his self description.   He gave one to me and the other one, of the pair, to my brother one Christmas.

      

My dad and I did not have a peaceful existence as I grew up.  Maybe ours was not untypical to other sons and dads. Especially being a headstrong and stubborn boy who was an ‘acorn’ that didn’t fall far from his fatherly ‘tree’.

 

 He was born 1914 in rural west Kentucky, James Harold Wade.  He was known as Jamie.  He had a lot of stories about his childhood and growing up on the farm.  He was one of seven siblings with a hard driving farmer father, who was very successful.  Actually theirs was one of the largest farms in the region. And, who, as a young man, was purported has having shot and killed a ‘town bully’ on a horse buying trip to Southern Illinois.  Apparently a real West Kentucky cowboy!

   

My grandfather Wade died of ‘consumption’ when my dad was 16. He took his first drink that same year.   “Just when a boy really needs a dad….he died.” he shared with me one day.   He had already been smoking cigarettes since he was 12.   He was almost killed by a runaway mule when he was 14.  

All he knew was farming…and that’s what he did for the better part of 60 years.  He once told me “I earned a living and ruined my health working in the dirt on that old farm.”

 

He would quit drinking after 40 years, at age 56.  There was no “12 Steps”….no support group…no counseling…he just quit….cold turkey!   A few years later he quit smoking the same way…after about 50 years of nicotine addiction!   No patch….no obsessing…he just stopped!    My admiration of him increased immensely!    I saw another ‘measure’ of the man.   

 

I was 37 years old the first time he told me “I love you son”.   Although we were hundreds of miles apart, talking on the phone, I could see his tears with my heart.   Until his death, 19 years later, there would never be a visit or a phone call that we didn’t end in a mutual “I love you”.  That would add even more to my ‘measure’ of my dad.

 

I’ve had the opportunity to talk with other men over the years and heard a number of them complain of their fathers being too busy, gone, or neglectful in their upbringing.  These are dads who find it hard to replenish and refresh their sons, and daughters, with the guidance, affection, “I love you” and just pure time to be the dad that their offsprings’ desperately needs.

 My dad didn’t have a lot to give his two sons – but he did give us his time teaching us:

…..fishing (you catch it, you dress it)

…. hunting (grew up with guns…never shot anybody)

…. how to play basketball (he instilled in us a love for the game)

…..how to work on farm machinery (cuss under your breath when you banged a knuckle

      or ‘busted’ a finger)

…..how to repair a bicycle (and later, cars)

…..disciplined us (seemed severe at the time)

….. the value of hard work (up before daylight – work until long after it was gone)

….. honesty (don’t lie, don’t cheat)

….. a strong work ethic (still hard for me not to be busy doing something).   He tried his best, with his limited education, to give us what he didn’t have when he was growing up. 

 

He enjoyed saying that he raised a lot of “crops” over his many years of farming but that the best “crop” he ever raised was his two sons.    I believe there were times he thought he was going to have a ‘crop failure’ with us! 

 

A few Christmases before his death he wrote this note and placed one in each of his old ‘gold’ boots for us boys:

“I wore this old shoe many a day

Out picking corn and cutting hay

And down at the barn to milk the cows

Then out to the pen to slop the sows

And back to the field by daylight

To plow and work up til night

I wore it to make my last crop

And it turned out to be a flop.

I never had a baby shoe

I bronzed this one just for you.” 

 

So, he wasn’t much of a poet.   But it’s a priceless rhyme which is a treasure in my heart.   I had the privilege of baptizing he and mother, into Christ, in 1975.  Nineteen years later  mother would go to her Lord at age 82.  Just two weeks short of their 60^th anniversary.   A year-and-half later dad would follow her, at age 82.   He simply died of a broken heart.   

 

This is in memorial to a dear man who overcame a lot of struggles on his way home and left us with treasured memories.  

 

His accomplishments?  Outstanding! 

……SIXTY YEARS married to same devoted wife

…….SIXTY YEARS at the same hard, dirty, low paying job

……RESPECT and ADMIRATION of neighbors and friends

……TWO SONS who managed to do okay and who didn’t grow up using their upbringing as excuses to bring harm or hurt but did their best to be contributors to their respective parts of the world.

 

Not many men can boast of those stats!

 

Oh yes….and he did put a $50 bill in each boot! Generosity was a part of his nature also. Of course, our wives got the money and we boys got “the boot”. 

(The ‘crown of thorns’ on the boot?  Reminds me daily of the sacrifice….both my dads made for me.)