Happy Father's Day!

Father's Day reflections, observations, memories and lessons.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Amazing Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Mike. I want to start off, as I almost always do, by saying thank you for joining us for around the next half hour. The most precious gift that we can give one another is our time and our attention. And I'm very grateful that you've chosen to give this podcast your time and attention. Our podcast this week is one that I've been excited to do for a while, and that is going to be about Father's Day. It's coming up this weekend. I'm going to have a little history lesson here, a very brief history, because I've told that the best history lessons are the brief history lessons. So we're going to have a brief history lesson right after we stop in to the building for class at our College of Musical Knowledge. We're going to set the tone and set the table for Father's Day with the following three songs. The first is Tough Little Boys by Gary Allen, the hit from 2003 off the CFI Care album. A great little song about going from being a little boy into a man and then to a dad. The next song is by Daddy's by Holly Dunn. It's called Daddy's Hands, 1986. Holly Dunn was the daughter of a minister, and she wasn't sure what to give her father for Father's Day that year. And so she wrote him a song. And um, it's a very, very beautiful song. If you haven't heard it, I encourage you uh to have a listen. And then finally, uh, one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard is That's My Job by Conway Twitty, uh, 1987. It's off of his borderline album. And it is a very, very moving tribute from a man to his father looking back over the years, how much of an impact his father had on him when he was a little boy and then a young man, and then as he came into his own and became a man and a father himself. So, once again, that's my job off of the borderline album Conway Twitty 1987. So if you haven't heard those songs, please have a listen. I think it really sets things up nicely for a discussion about Father's Day. Whenever we talk about something like this, we always have to view it in a historical context. And we went to a very reputable source of goodhousekeeping.com, right? They have a very succinct history of Father's Day. It was started and promoted by a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd. And it was first recognized on June 19th, 1910. And she wanted to establish an official equivalent to Mother's Day for male parents. And the driving force behind this was she was the daughter of a Civil War veteran who had six children, and his wife died giving birth to the sixth child. So he had to raise them all by himself, you know, post-Civil War or War Between the States, America, and had to get them all to adulthood on his own. And so he was a single dad at a time when it wasn't very popular and it wasn't very common. And she was so moved by his efforts and his diligence and his tenacity that she wanted to have a day where fathers would be recognized just as mothers were recognized. So she did. And it was unofficially recognized in the United States of America until 1972, when President Richard Nixon signed it into law and made it a recognized holiday. So Father's Day for me has been a critical part of my amazing journey because I was blessed to have an amazing father. And I want to take a second to point out and accept right up front that not everybody had the experience that I did. Not every father turns into an amazing dad. And some folks really got shafted and they got the short end of the stick. And I would also like to acknowledge, just as Sonora Smart Dodd's father lost his wife and had a family to raise on his own, so he had to be mom and dad. There are a lot of women out there who, for a variety of reasons, have lost their husband, their partner, the father of their children, and have had to be both dad and mom. So if you are one of those women, I would like to say up front thank you. And if you are a child of one of those women, please make sure that you acknowledge them on Father's Day as well, because it is very, very difficult to have to pull double duty. What did my father teach me? Boy, an awful lot. We could we could do a 12-part series. And I want to make sure that, again, I'm clear up front. My father was an amazing man. He had his faults and his failings, as we all do. But the good outweighed the bad. And I think he did an amazing job of being a provider and a protector and raising his family and showing us all what right looked like from the time I was old enough to remember. I'm two to three years old. That's how far back my memory goes. He always did the right thing. He always showed us what right looked like. I cannot over-emphasize or stress that enough. We always had good behavior modeled for us with respect to being good citizens, good children, good grandchildren, how we should behave. He taught me respect for people in general, and what I'll call positional authority respect. My father raised me at a time when we were in a state of change, at least in the United States. There was the old guard who had a an unspoken code, for example, you will respect women. Her word was law. And if you broke the law, you didn't go in front of a judge, you answered to dad. And as a young child, that almost sounded like, oh my God, he was an ogre. You were afraid he was going to yell at you or spank you or whatever. But as I got older, I realized that I just didn't want to disappoint him. I didn't want to let him down. I never wanted to look in his eyes and have him drop his gaze and be ashamed of me. So you did what he asked you to do, and you followed the example that he set for you, not only out of love, but out of respect. And it wasn't just for my mother when you went to see my grandparents. You gave them each a hug and a kiss on the cheek. That's what you did. No matter how big you were, you were never too big to show love and respect. You did the same thing for aunts and uncles. When he introduced you to adults, you know, it was always good morning, Mr. Madelone. Good afternoon, Mrs. Evans. As a child, I never ever called the adults that he introduced me to by their first name. Those that are still alive today, I still refer to them as Mr. Mrs. or Ms. And I have been told for the last 45 years, hey, you're big now. You can call me John. Well, no, I can't. Because I I don't want the wrath of the one that would come back from the grave for a five-minute cameo appearance to straighten me out. The point is, we were raised with respect. And he taught me that by respecting other people and showing that respect to others, you show great respect for yourselves and the family lineage that you came from. One of the best examples of this that I can come up with was at a very close friend of mine whose name is Fred. Fred and I are both Eagle Scouts. And in order to become an Eagle Scout, the crucible part of attaining that rank is doing a service project. You have to lead other people. At the time that we became Eagle Scouts, it was 40 hours in service projects. I'm not sure what it is now, but at the time it was 40 hours. And Fred's service project was to take about 30 developmentally disabled young adults and adults camping. Friday night, Saturday night, coming back Sunday. We thought this was going to be a piece of cake. It, you know, we had this. We were in the woods at our Boy Scout camp. We'd been there hundreds of times. But taking a group of adult special needs people into the woods as pretty much kids ourselves was incredibly challenging. And within three hours of this, you know, we had we had the helpers and the teachers from the school there with us, and they were great with the people, but they didn't know anything about camping. And anybody who's ever been out in the woods, uh, especially in the northeastern United States at night, you hear all kinds of noises, you know, screaming owls and barking koi dogs and howling wolves. And a lot of these folks had never been exposed to that, and they started to freak out. The calming influence of that weekend for my pal Freddy's Eagle Scout project was the presence and actions of my father. Just him walking through the door. He was a larger-than-life man, you know, physically very imposing, very powerful. But he never had to thump his chest and tell everybody what a tough guy he was. They just knew. And to see this man who kept 200 to 250 hardened by life, kicked in the teeth, factory workers in line, to be able to switch and become so kind and gentle and show such love to these people with special needs that he didn't know and never met before was astonishing and just amazing to watch. And there are fewer times in life that I've ever been more proud of him. And when the weekend was over, I'm not going to lie, we were all exhausted. We were all very glad to see the people who loved them come and get them and take them home. They were wonderful, wonderful people and children of God, but it was a lot to keep them safe in the woods. And Freddie certainly earned his Eagle Scout project, but I would say a good half of that patch would go to my father. But he showed me so much. And I remember we discussed it years later. And I had never known my father to, you know, to have ever done any work with special populations before. And I had asked him about it, and he said I didn't know anything about it. But I just decided I was going to treat them as people because that's what they are. And it was very, very powerful to be part of it then. It's very, very powerful to remember it now and not get a grapefruit in your throat or a shaky voice. Not for anything bad, but it was just an amazing example. And I know if you were to talk to Freddie today, he would tell you. You would talk to any of the adults who supervise, they would tell you what a calming influence he was and how wonderful it was to have him standing by. We were able to take chances that weekend because we knew we had Big Mike to back us up. There was another time that stands out in my life. There was a very large factory in our town that growing up, either your parent worked there, or your uncle did, or your grandfather did, or your cousin who just got out of college was over in finance. Point is it employed an awful lot of people. And then for a variety of reasons, um, the company started to get taxed higher and higher. They responded by knocking buildings down so the tax base would be lower. And then they started firing people and laying them off. And one of my father's friends got laid off. It was late 70s, early 80s. Good paying jobs that paid a living wage were very difficult to come by. And a lot of people lost their homes. And his friend was in grave danger of losing his home. So my father, who was um had worked his way up to management at that time, went and uh had said, Hey, I need you to put on some of your old play clothes. You're gonna help me. Oh, I get to help. What am I helping you with, Daddy? He said, I'm gonna teach you how to weld this weekend. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it was a ruse. Um, I didn't learn how to well weld that weekend, but I was one heck of a gopher. I carried all kinds of pieces of steel. I swept a mean broom, cleaned up the job site as my father went and did piecemeal welding work from Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, and most of the day Sunday. Sunday night we went over to his friend's house, and my father handed his friend $1,000 and said, Hope this helps. And it did help. It kept his friend's home out of foreclosure. And by the grace of God, two weeks later, his friend found a job and was able to get back on his feet. But that was the behavior that was modeled for me. That is what he showed me mattered. That was you take care of people. And he always told me, kindness doesn't cost anything. Those of you that have listened to this podcast for a bit have heard me say that. Kindness doesn't cost anything. Not a nickel. And he always said, help people when you can. Don't be afraid to do a favor, because you never know when you're going to be in a spot and somebody's going to have to do a favor for you. Well, believe it or not, we're about halfway through the podcast, ladies and gentlemen. We're at the spot where we do some shout-outs and product endorsements. So the first shout-out this week is going to go to Barbasol Shave Cream. If you're not sure what to get your father, if if Father's Day snuck up on you, as it often does, it's one of those forgotten holidays, because most good dads, most good fathers are very unassuming. They're never going to ask you for anything. We try to be low maintenance, right? You can't go wrong, you cannot go wrong putting two or three cans of Barbasol shave cream in a gift bag with a little card and a handwritten note that tells dad how much you love them. Get a nice clean shave, feel great. My preference is the uh the menthol because it opens the pores up, gives you that tingly feeling. Barbasol shave cream help dad look sharp. Now, maybe dad has a nice beard. They are all the rage. And um, if he does, then you have to get him a wall shaver to help keep that beard looking trim. We don't uh we don't want any shaggy mountain men when we've got people coming over, right? So so help keep dad help dad keep that beard nice and trim, looking good with a wall shaver. If he likes the rugged mountain man look, that's okay to each their own. Um, I would say that wall also makes a trimmer for nose hair and earhair, because a weird thing happens somewhere between like 40 and 50 something. You get a little less thick on top of the head and a little thicker in the nose hair and ear hair. But as a dad, when you have all these responsibilities to look after your family, sometimes you don't see that. Um, the rest of the world does. So sometimes just it's it's a relatively inexpensive gift that kind of gives dad the hint to take care of the things that he might be forgetting about. Either way, wall shavers and trimmers, an outstanding gift. Dad will be most grateful. And the last thing, and I I I mean this in all seriousness. I'm not trying to be funny or off-color weird. Chinesti underwear. The most comfortable underwear a fellow can wear. Uh, they are designed with a hammock in just the right spot. Helps keep everything exactly where it needs to be. The most comfortable pair, I promise you, dad will say thank you. Chinesti underwear, you can't go wrong. They're a little pricey, but dad is worth it. So don't skimp out. Okay. Now, let's talk about the most important aspect of the day. How do we honor our fathers or our father figures if we didn't we didn't have a dad in our lives? Well, speaking from personal experience, both what my father showed me and what I've lived in my own life as a in the role of as a father is time. When I was younger, and I wasn't able to drive myself, and I had commitments with Boy Scouts or religious education or martial arts or basketball or whatever I played, whatever I did. My father was out the door by usually 4:30 in the morning to go work in a factory. And when he came home, no matter how tired he was, he ate his dinner, he washed up, he put me in the car, he took me where I needed to go, he sat there, watched me, read a book, never complained, never once made me feel put out. He gave me his time. And when I was grown and I had my own children, and and dad would talk to me about father things, because I always asked for advice, right? In past podcasts, I talk about gaining knowledge to get wisdom. My father was very wise with things, and he said some of his favorite memories of when I was a kid was when we would go fishing together. And neither of us were terrific fishermen. More often than not, we didn't catch anything. But it wasn't about putting the hook in the mouth of a fish, it was about spending time together where he would ask me, What's going on? You doing okay in school? You having any trouble? You know, ladies making you crazy. He gave me his time. So as a father, on the other end of it now, the greatest gift that you as a as a child, no matter what your age, that can give your father is your time. Don't buy him any aftershave. As a father, when your kids give you aftershave, you start to get a complex. You start to think you stink, and nobody's got, you know, wants to hurt your feelings and tell you. Don't get him any aftershave. Don't get him any ties. The tie you get him this year is going to be out of style next year. He's going to have a whole drawer full of ties. He's not going to be able to find them. Don't stop at the Speedway gas station and get him, you know, some little piece of junk made someplace overseas as a because, oh gosh, I forgot to get him something. Don't worry about any of that. Give him your time. If you live far away from them. Look in your heart and ask yourself when the roles were reversed, if it was a long drive, did my dad make it for me? If the answer is yes, return the favor. If your father did what my father did for me and sat there through every recital, every sporting event, every scouting event, every religious education event, and he gave you his time then, give him your time now. And I'm going to break the dad code. Some of the other dads out there are going to be angry at me for this, but it's important enough to me that I have to speak it and get it off my chest. Your dad, if he is a true man, is never going to tell you my heart is breaking because I don't see you very often. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening to this and your dad is still with you, if he doesn't see you very often, his heart is breaking. So visit him as often as you can. There are times where we can't. The worlds we live in, sometimes we live halfway around the world. There were times when I was stationed overseas, I couldn't be home for my father's birthday or my or father's day. The best I could do is give him a call. The best I could do is when video teleconferencing came out, call him on his computer just so we could get eyes on each other. But if you have the ability to be there and be close and be near him, do it. Don't wait. Don't put it off. As we've said in a couple of other podcasts up to this point, tomorrow is not guaranteed. Don't say, well, I'll go see him next year if you have the opportunity to do it this year. And yes, at the time this year when this podcast is broadcast, World Cup is on. We all love to watch World Cup football. Watch it on replay later on at night. Spend time with your father. Now, once again, I would be remiss if I did not give special recognition to the moms who pull double duties as moms and dads. So I want to make sure that I give the props and recognition to you folks right now. I cannot imagine how hard that had to be. And you deserve to be commended for playing both roles and making sure that you were the compass that the children needed when they were growing up. So once again, thank you. I want to take a few minutes now and address the folks out there who may not have had the best father, dad, male figure influence. If that's you and you're listening to this, there's nothing more than I can say other than I'm sorry. We do the best we can to focus on the positive here and focus on what we can change. And what we can change is even if our father was less than, if he wasn't around, if he was a horrible provider, if he was a drunk, if he was an addict of some type, if he laid hands on mom, we can't change any of that. At some point, way, shape, or fashion, he either was held accountable for it or he will be. All we can do is be the fathers that we wish we had. Be the parents that we would have liked to have had in our lives. If you take a look at the world at large and the craziness that goes on, a lot of what we see out there comes from the fact that there were young people that didn't have the guidance and the upbringing and were shown what right looks like. And so we have to do our part within our own families and our own clans, sometimes in our own neighborhoods and our own communities, to be that standard bearer. Because you may be the dad or you may be the mom that all the neighbor kids and your kids' friends, when they come over when they get older, are like, I wish my folks had it together like your folks have it together. And that's about the greatest compliment that anybody can pay you. So wrapping things up, we're getting close to the end of the podcast. Take the lessons that your father's, your dad's, your father figures have shown you. And if they're profound and they make your heart burst, please send me an email to AmazingJourneypodcast at PM.me. That's AmazingJourneypodcast at PM.me. I'd love to hear from you. We can certainly do a follow-up episode when I get good positive feedback. I like to put it out there and share some good news. Heavens knows there's there's enough news that's not so great out there. So when we can share good things and good memories and good experiences with one another, I think that makes the week start off great. Once again, I want to just take a few minutes to say happy Father's Day for all of you fathers and father figures out there, all of you dads that are in the trenches every day, breaking your back, stressing yourself out, trying to figure out how to protect and guide the family and show everybody what right looks like. Thank you. Having walked the journey myself, there are times you're not going to think it matters. There are going to be times that you are going to do everything the way that you believe is right and correct, and things are going to implode. When that happens and you feel like you lose, please don't lose the lesson. You can't quit. You can't quit on your spouse, you can't quit on your partners, you can't quit on your children. Use the bad stuff that happens as a teachable moment. Teach your children, however old they are. No matter how bad life knocks you down, you have to have the will to get back up. That's what a parent does. That's what a father does. That's what a dad does. I want to end the show with one more positive story that, you know, when anybody said if there's if there's one story, if you have a three-minute elevator pitch to tell who your dad was and what he stood for, I'm I'm gonna tell you about mine. You know, my my dad's nickname was Iron Mike. And yes, Coach Ditka, if you're listening, they called my dad Iron Mike before they called you Iron Mike, sir. No disrespect, but I just want it very clear there's no trademark infringement here. Dad just didn't trademark it because he was a very quiet man, a man a few words. Towards the end of my career, I was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island, and circumstances were such in my life that I was a single dad. There were times in my profession I would get a phone call and I would have to go on temporary duty on very short notice, and I wasn't exactly sure when I would be home. Well, at that time, my father was retired, and our protocol was when I got that phone call, I was to call him, and our hometown was three and a half hours away from where I was in Newport, Rhode Island, and he would come down and stay with my kids for however long that I needed to be there. The kids loved it, they had a very, very unique and special relationship with my father. As great as he was as a dad, I think he was even better as a grandpa. And I could understand why that'll be a topic for another podcast, maybe somewhere down the road, the whole thing about being grandparents. But anyway, I had gone where I needed to go, and with some luck and the grace of God, things went smashingly well. And I ended up coming home a lot sooner than we had originally thought I was going to come home. So I get back, I fly into Logan Airport in Boston, and then I had to take a puddle jumper from Boston into T.F. Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island. And from TF Green Airport, where my car was, it was about a 45-minute ride home. So I'm driving home and I get to the house, and the kids aren't there, and neither is my dad. Well, my kids were very deprived. I didn't get them all mobile phones till they were at least in, you know, they were teenagers. So if I scarred, if I scarred you guys, I'm sorry. I just didn't like you weren't being called for heart surgery, so I didn't see the need. But anyway, um, I located the kids at their friend's house, and I was driving down this beautiful street in Newport, Rhode Island called Thames Street. I'm like, my father isn't answering his phone. I hope he's all right. I know he wouldn't have gone back to you know New York without knowing that I was home safe. And he, you know, we he would stay with me that night and usually go home the next day. Well, as I'm driving down Thames Street, there was a pizza place on the left side of the road, and I look, and there's his car parked in front of the pizza place, and I had to do a triple take because it looked like he was behind the counter making pizza. I pull over, I park, I go inside, and sure enough, he is, and he introduces me to his new best friend, and they got talking, and somebody had called in, and my dad had worked at a pizza shop over the years. So after meeting this guy that he knew for an hour, he's behind the counter making pizzas, and they're talking like they've known each other for 40 years. I would go up to Broadway in Newport into the bakery. Oh, you're you're Mike's son. Yeah, he talked about you. It seemed like no matter where I went in the town that I'm stationed in, somebody knew my father. That's who he was. And I hope all of you have had the benefit to have somebody in your life that meant as much to you as my father did to me. If it wasn't a biological father or an adoptive dad, I hope you had that father figure. And if you didn't, please commit to trying to make things better for the subsequent generations and be that person that you might have needed but didn't have. Well, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, time flies when we're having fun. And our episode here is just about done for the day. So we're going to end like we usually do by me saying thank you again for listening. I'm so grateful for your time. I would ask that you look after yourselves and look after each other. Be kind, be safe, be well. Get outside and enjoy this beautiful weather, folks. Sun summer is here. Put that sunscreen on, at least SPF 15, right? Okay, we won't beat a dead horse there. Happy Father's Day, everybody. This is your friend Mike, and I'm signing off.