This entry is provoked (that's a good word) by two of the most disturbing Father's Day news stories I heard this week.  Marshall, Landon, Bolton, and Blake were left by their father in the care of their mother over Father's Day.  He was off to Argentina on business of his own.  Nathaniel was beaten by his father on Father's Day-beaten so badly that the decision whether to take him off life support rests in a Judge's hands today.  A court gave his father custody of Nathaniel for the summer.  He was repeatedly abused and beaten the four weeks before the ultimate injury which left him brain dead.  Mike (me) and Steve (my little brother) are doing just fine at 68 and 64 respectively, though their father passed away ten days after his sixty-fifth birthday, more than 30 years ago.

How lucky we were, the two of us.   How different Richard was from Mark or Leslie.  Richard was not powerful and didn't seek power.  He had a high school diploma and learned a bit about repairing radios by taking a correspondence course.  He wasn't one who needed a fuss made over him.  I suppose he got his share of pretty awful ties on Father's Day, though that was not as big a deal in the forties and fifties as it is now.  I'm sure there were times the whole family simply overlooked it.  There was no recognition in Church similar to Mother's Day, when Mothers stood up embarrassedly while the Preacher gushed over their virtues, and no one got a boutonniere for Father's Day (living dad, red, dead dad, white) as they did on Mother's Day.

My dad never "governed" anything.  He wasn't on the church board.  He was an usher-passing out bulletins and greeting people.  At other times, he sang in the choir.  All of us were singers.  I suspect he could have become church chairman if he wanted to...everyone liked him.  But perhaps one of the reasons everyone liked him was that he could care less about the chairmanship.

My dad was a placid man, at peace with himself-or so he seemed on the outside.  Mom was not the easiest person in the world to live with.  He loved her, and us, and cared for us, and sheltered us, and lived to sixty-five.  She passed 6 days before her 100th birthday.  No doubt there were times when I deserved a bit of correction.  I got one spanking-just one.  I stole a package of Blackjack Gum from the corner grocery store one block from our house.  Do they even make Blackjack Gum any more.  Mr. C.B. Johnson-everyone called him CeeBee, was a member of the family Church.  He had eyes in the back of his head, and walked the short block to my home to inform the father of his son's malefactions.  Mom it was who insisted on the spanking-she was terribly embarrassed.  So I was marched down to the basement, laid over my father's knee, and given three swats-pants down, underpants up.  I remember my dad saying that the spanking hurt him more than it hurt me.  In this case, I believe that was true. 

Dad was the most ordinary of men, which makes him a superman, of course.  He dressed up in a bathrobe and put a lampshade on his head to tell us bedtime stories as King Hezekiah.  The stories were his own-about two goldfish, Sammy and Susie.  Later, he embarrassed me yearly at the annual basketball game and the high school faculty.  Fifteen year olds are really good at blushing, and when dad's uniform shorts fell down revealing a pair of boxers with huge red hearts on them, the people in the bleachers howled with laughter.  I just howled.  But if he had refused to play the fool one year, I would have been as disappointed as everyone else would have been

Dad taught my brother how to be a super dad himself, and he taught me how to be a pretty darn good uncle.  Gay males of my generation weren't in a position to adopt-but I've had about 6,000 "children" in my university teaching career...and I see a lot of my father in the way I've treated them.  (I've yet to spank any, but then I don't have any who have stolen Blackjack Gum from C. B. Johnson).

So while we rail or gloat at Mr. Family Values of South Carolina, depending on our temperaments, and while we stand aghast at what Nathaniel's father did, and how an agency charged with protecting children from domestic violence failed him utterly, maybe we can count our blessings for our absolutely ordinary absolutely wonderful fathers-the majority of us who were so blessed.  Belated Happy Father's Day.