Lessons in Life:
Twenty Things I Learned from my Dad
by Doug Cogburn
Table of Contents
Lesson #1 - The Greatest Waste of Time
Lesson #2 - Know Where Your Wheels Are
Lesson #3 - Remember Where You Are in Line
Lesson #4 - Remember Where You Came From
Lesson #5 - Do Something Every Month
Lesson #6 - Don't Work Too Hard
Lesson #7 - Things Come Back to You
Lesson #8 - Best Hand in the Patch
Lesson #9 - Shoes, Hair, and Teeth
Lesson #10 - Help Children, the Old, and the Sick
Lesson #11 - A Good Education
Lesson #12 - Entertain Freely
Lesson #13 - Know When You're Wrong
Lesson #14 - Don't Be Quick to Judge Others
Lesson #15 - Take Up for the Underdogs
Lesson #16 - Give Things Away
Lesson #17 - Keep Things Simple and Plain
Lesson #18 - Appreciate People
Lesson #19 - Guard Your Good Name
Lesson #20 - Don't Seek Attention for Yourself
Lesson #1 - The Greatest Waste of Time
"I've spent most of my life worrying about something. I've worried about money and jobs; I've worried about where our next meal was coming from. I worried about you when you were a boy and whether or not I could be a good Dad. If I wasn't worrying I was working two or three jobs trying to make enough money so I didn't have to worry. Looking back on it now, I realize that was the biggest waste of time. Everything turned out all right. We never went hungry or were broke. Nothing I ever spent a lot of time worrying about turned out nowhere near as bad as I thought it would. So the best advice I could give anybody is don't worry. Do your best and live right and trust in the Lord and everything'll be all right. It may not turn out the way you thought it would or wanted it to at the time, but it'll be all right."
That was the first time I ever knew that my Dad worried about anything. He was always so confident and unruffled. Nothing seemed to bother him and he always had the answer to whatever problem came up. I never knew that underneath that exterior was a constant worrier. He never worried about himself because he never gave himself much thought. His worries were always centered around his family and friends because that's where his thoughts were. During his final illness, when we started learning new things about each other, his only worry was about how his family would get along after he was gone. Whenever he'd have bad news from the Doctor to tell me, he'd always finish it with, "Now, I don't want you to worry about me. You go on with your life and your family. All I've got to do is lay here and worry, so I'll do the worrying for both of us. I'll let you know when it's your turn to worry."
I worry more now than I did then. I worry about the same things he did, although he told me not to do so. He probably knew that I would because we're so much alike. And now I don't have anybody to do the worrying for both of us. Another thing he'd tell me after letting me know that it wasn't my turn to worry yet was that "there may be something come up that I can't handle, and there may be some things come up that you can't handle, but I can't think of nothing that ever might come up that we can't handle together." I miss that. I miss having him to give advice and on occasions to ask for mine. It's scary when your children look to you and expect you to take care of life the way Papaw did. I've tried to remember as much of what he told me and showed me as I can. I'm afraid that I've already forgotten much. That's why I'm writing down the lessons in life that I learned from my Dad. Maybe if I can keep on remembering them then it'll still be true that there won't be anything that'll come up that we can't handle together.
Lesson #2 - Know Where Your Wheels Are
When I was just learning to drive, one Sunday Dad came into the room where I was and said, "Come on." I jumped up and followed him. It never occurred to any of us to question where we were going or why. All that mattered was that I'd been told to follow him.
He drove me into one parking lot of a department store, he looked around, and we left. We drove to another parking lot, he looked around, and we left. We drove to the back parking lot of Greeneville Middle School, he looked around, parked the car, and told me to wait there.
He walked over to a trash can and rummaged around it until he found an empty Pepsi can. He brought the can over and threw it in the parking lot. "Go drive over that can with your driver's side wheel." After a few tries I crunched the can. "Now do it again." After I had done it several times in a row, he told me to drive over it with the passenger's side wheel. This was harder, but I finally got pretty good at it.
Next I had to back up and run over the can with the rear tires. When I was finally able to run over the can at will with any wheel to his satisfaction, he picked up the can, threw it back in the trash can, and told me to scoot over. He got in the car and we started back towards home.
I looked over at him, trying to figure out why we'd spent about an hour learning to run over cans. He looked back and said, "You don't never know what might be in the road ahead of you and you can't control what you might happen across. So always know where your wheels are."
That was the end of that lesson. For a long time I thought it was only a driving lesson. Now I know that being a better driver was only a small part of that day. That was what he called a lesson in life. Twenty years later, when job and home and life gets hectic and feels out of control, I'll spot a cup or can in the road and head for it with a specific wheel in mind. It always makes me feel better to hear it crunch under the wheel I was aiming with, and I hear him tell me again, "Always know where your wheels are."
Lesson #3 - Remember Where You Are in Line
"When you're young and single, you can pretty much do as you please and spend your money on yourself or however you want to. But when you get married, your wife comes first and what you want is second. When the first kid comes along, you move down to third; when the second one, to fourth place, and on down the line. Your wife and your children and what they need is what you spend your money and your time on. If there's anything left over after they're taken care of, that's what you have to spend on yourself."
I didn't always listen to Dad as well as I should have when he was talking to me. But sometimes I listened when he didn't know I was. Once he was talking with one of his many best friends, David. They were talking about fires. My Dad loved fires. He loved campfires and he loved fires in the fireplaces. His Dad had been the same way, only worse. Pap Cogburn built fires that caught the mantle on fire so he had to stay there and beat it out with his hat, that made smoke and fire come out of the cracks in the chimney, that shot a blaze ten feet out of the chimney.
Dad told David that when we first moved into the house where I grew up that he burned wood in the fireplace in the living room. I didn't know that. All that I'd ever known in that fireplace was a set of electric logs that he'd watch on cold winter Sundays. Once when I asked about a real fire he told me that the chimney didn't draw well enough to have one.
"I really liked watching those fires, and it helped on the heating bill. I was working nights and I'd always build one before I went to work. One night it was awful cold so I built a bigger fire than usual. When I got in the next morning and went in to stoke up the fire I seen that the paneling above the fireplace was just charred black where the chimney had gotten hot. It hadn't been hot enough to catch on fire, but it had just smoldered all night. If it'd been just a little hotter it would've burned. I stood there looking at that and thought about Betty and the baby asleep in the back. I looked at it a while longer, then cleaned out the fireplace, gave away the rest of my wood, and I ain't never had another real fire in there since.
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Jeff was adopted and came to live with us when we were around eleven years old. Chris, Mike and I all had BB guns. Our older cousin gave Jeff his old BB gun which was probably fifteen years old. It was missing a bolt which made it hard to load and shoot. Jeff asked Dad if he thought he could fix it for him. Dad told him that he thought he knew where a screw was at work that would work. The next day when Dad came home Jeff came running out with his BB gun and asked if he'd found the screw. "No, but I think I found something that'll work even better. It's out in the seat of the car." When Jeff went out there he found a brand-new BB gun just like the rest of us had, waiting to be unwrapped.
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A few years later I got my driver's license. Cindy across the street got her license a month earlier and was soon driving her own car. One day Dad and I sat under the shade tree and watched her drive away. We talked about whether or not I needed my own car. He finally convinced me that I didn't need one since there was usually one there to drive.
Some time later he traded cars, and one Sunday afternoon he suggested that we drive into the car lot and see how the car he traded in looked like now that they'd probably cleaned it up. We found the car in the back lot and it had been cleaned up. Paper route cars are usually dirty, but this one had been washed and waxed and polished. "See what it looks like on the inside," he suggested. I bent over and looked in the window. The inside had been vacuumed and steam cleaned and washed. When I straightened back up he was standing behind me holding out the keys to it. I wasn't sure why he was handing me the keys to the car he'd traded in. The only thing he said was "For all things done well," then as he walked away he added, "Reckon I'll see you when you get home."
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When I was trying to decide where to go to college I had narrowed it down to either Tusculum College here in town or King College in Bristol. Dad took me with him to the barn to help on some errand. After we finished that job we were sitting around on the wagon. Dad was looking straight ahead and not saying anything. That was his signal that we were going to have a talk, but since I didn't know what the topic was, I had to wait on him to start it.
Finally, he cleared his throat. That meant he was ready to start. After a few more minutes, he said, "Your Momma would like for you to go to Tusculum so you could stay at home." More silence. "But there comes a time when what counts isn't what Momma wants, because you have to plan for your own life." More silence. "What do you want to do?"
I waited for what I thought was the appropriate amount of time to elapse to maintain the pace of our conversation and then said that I wanted to go to King.
More silence, then he took a breath and said, "Wellp." That was the signal that the discussion was over and he was ready to make the final word on the matter. 'Fill out your papers and mail them in, and we'll go up there and look the place over."
No more was ever said about my choice of college until after he died fourteen years later. Then when Momma and I were talking about something else she said that Dad had told her that the hardest thing he'd done was watch me drive away to stay at King College. He said that he'd wanted to get in the car and go with me, but he knew he had to let me go alone. "I was the one who thought you should go to King, you know, he wanted you to go to Tusculum so you could stay at home."
Lesson #4 - Remember Where You Came From
"Go as far as you can, but don't never forget where you came from. And when your girls grow up and then come home for Christmas from their big houses and driving in their fancy cars and wearing their good clothes, don't let them forget neither. Make sure they remember that they were once a family of poor sharecroppers who never knew where their next meal was coming from. Make sure they remember their Papaw, out farming and peddling papers and always working so there'd be money so they could go get educated and not have it as rough."
"Remember where you came from." How many people and organizations have gotten in trouble because they forget that important lesson. Dad and his friends didn't forget. When we were younger, our fathers would take us on fishing trips at least twice a year, sometimes more. We'd take a truckload of wood for Dad to make his campfires with; a trailerful of food for David to cook; and assorted lanterns, tents, camper, portable T.V., radio, boat, and other essentials of roughing it for a week-end. In the evenings after supper, when it was getting dark, we would sit or lie around the fires that Dad always built, and Dad and the other men would watch the fire, looking past it at something that I couldn't see then but that I can see now. They would start talking about their boyhood and youthful days, remembering where they came from. Dad would talk about how cold it was in the winter when he had to go barefooted and chase the cows to the barn and how he'd warm his feet in the grass where the cows had been. David would tell about his first trip to town and the first time he ate a hamburger that had been bought in a restaurant. Dean would tell us how the Great Depression didn't end at his house until 1950. They would all tell how they remembered life before electricity, telephones, or indoor plumbing. They remembered their first radios and television sets and a time when cars were luxuries instead of necessities.
The world has changed so much, our community has changed so much, they would tell us, that if someone had told them when they were boys what life would be like when they were men they'd never have believed such things were possible. But they remembered where they came from, and they wanted to give to their children the important things they'd brought with them. They came from a time when a person's word was as binding as any contract; a time when people were honest and would walk for miles to repay a penny that they owed. Pap Cogburn had done just that once when he was two cents short on something he'd bought in town. The storekeeper had told him not to worry about two pennies, but Pap walked back to the house, found the two pennies and then walked back to the store to pay what he owed.
They came from a time when hard work and thriftiness were more highly prized than the possessions they could eventually buy.
They came from a time when there was not much to eat, when usually whatever was for supper was what they had grown or caught.
They came from a time when your family and your church were two of the most important things in a person's life. Dad would tell me later, "You've got to do better at that than I did. Don't just send your kids to church. You go with them. They need to see you there, and they need to see you active. They'll do what you show them a lot better than what you tell them."
They came from a time when parents were obeyed and respected. Of course, they also came from a time when you liked to see what you could get by with. Many a watermelon from various patched, many an egg from Mary Lize's chickens, and many a piece of candy from the rolling store disappeared mysteriously when they were around and their parents weren't.
Somebody asked Dad once what he'd do if his boys acted like he did when he was their age. He said that he would have already killed them by now. So I understood early that while they might tell the next generation everything about where they came from, some of it was solely for entertainment purposes and was not to be repeated in our own lives. Unfortunately, those seem to be the only parts that my children remember when I tell them about where they came from. Perhaps I shall have to be more selective in my material.
Lesson #6 - Don't Work Too Hard
One day Dad and I were talking, and the conversation turned to one of the young men of the neighborhood. Dad told me about how hard he worked at farming and how many acres of different crops he had and how much money he was making at each. He talked about his cattle and all his plans for the future. "He sure is a hard-working, dedicated person. Every time you see him he's working away at something; some day he'll be a wealthy man from all these long days he's putting in."
I agreed, and then Dad added something unexpected. "But I fussed at him the last time he came to see me. I told him that it's not worth it. There ain't no point of working for all that money and success if you're gonna lose out on what no amount of money can't buy. That boy don't never get to spend any time with his son. He never has time to take his wife out to eat or to go anywhere as a family. And he ain't got time for church.
I told him to slow down, because what he's giving up he won't ever be able to get back, and he'll look back on it some day and regret it and wish he hadn't been so hard-working, but it'll be too late, and regrets is all he'll ever be able to buy with all that money, because that's all he'll wind up with. I told him that his wife and child and going to church were more important, or they should be, anyhow.
You've got to take some time out for them, some time to have friends, some time for yourself. It ain't good for him, it ain't good for his family, it ain't healthy, and it ain't right. There's a lot of things in life that's a lot more important than work and money, and he's missing out on most of them. I told him that he's so busy working for his future that he's losing what he's got right now today. I tried to tell him, but he's probably too busy to have time to think about it now, but one day he will, because that's all he'll have time to do."
Lesson #7 - Things Come Back to You
"I've made a lot of money in my life. I could have had a lot more, but I gave a lot of it away. If I'd had known then what I know now, I'd have give a lot more of it away, because I've learned that the more you give, the more you get back. That's what the Bible says somewhere, and that's true. The only time I've ever lost anything is when I've tried to hold on to it. And folks don't forget what you've done for them. People have been awful good to Momma and me since I got sick. The other day Mrs. Gass from Ottway sent me a hundred dollars in a card. I couldn't figure out why, but it finally hit me that about ten years ago when her husband had cancer, we sent them a hundred dollars. I probably had five thousand dollars in my wallet then, sending a hundred dollars wasn't nothing, but it was to them. All these years later, and she still remembers that."
Dad had cancer for twenty-seven months. During that time things like the lady who sent him money was commonplace. Someone was always bringing him something out of their garden, or making him a banana pudding, or sending money, or calling or mailing cards asking what they could do. Tears would come into his eyes when he would tell about what he'd gotten that week, and he'd be astonished by it. "I don't know why everybody has been so good to me; why they've done so much for me." And he really didn't.
Of course, the reason was because he'd done so much for them and their families. His friend Gus used to tell people, "You better not tell Lewis Cogburn that you need something unless you really mean it. I told him that I needed a new kerosene heater for the house once and darned if he didn't show up with one for me for Christmas. Said I'd earned it helping him on the paper route. Beats anything I've ever seen."
I got a glimpse into where Dad learned his generous and giving nature when I started working as a case manager at the mental health center. I was opening a case on one person at his parents' house. His mother was rather negative and cool until she asked me my name. When I told her, her eyes lit up. "Are you any kin to Tom and Lillie Cogburn?" Those were my grandparents. "And Hazel's your aunt?" That's right. She turned to her husband, and exclaimed brightly, "Look there, that's Tom and Lillie's grandson. That's Hazel and Pauline's nephew." She then turned back to me, "Oh, I'm so glad he's got you for a worker; I know he'll get good care because you're a Cogburn. You'll have to come back real often because you're as much my boy as he is."
I was rather surprised, and didn't find out the whole story behind my sudden adoption into this family until later. This woman had been a neighbor of my grandparents and was about the same age as my aunts and had gone to school with them. The two families farmed together and went to church together. About sixty years ago, the woman had married and had a baby. She and her husband and child had come down with a fever, and her husband and child died. She then went back to stay with her parents' and was bedfast for some time. My grandmother and aunt would go and stay with her and help her mother around the house so her parents could go work on their farm. My grandmother eventually helped nurse her back to health, and sixty years and two generations later, that neighborly deed, something that my grandmother had thought so commonplace and unremarkable that she never spoke about it, still meant very much to that woman and she has indeed treated me as one of her own ever since. "Folks don't forget what you've done for them."
Lesson #8 - Best Hand in the Patch
"Always be the best hand in the patch. It don't matter what the job is, you be the best person there. Always try to work harder and think smarter and do better than anybody else. Be worth more than you're getting paid. Folk's notice, and they'll remember the next time they need somebody. And don't never complain. Never could stand a complainer. People don't want to be around somebody complaining about how hot it is or how hard they're working or how tired they are. Somebody like that don't do nothing but make everybody else around him feel bad. Make folks glad to be around you, and make folks glad that they hired you."
Lesson #9 - Shoes, Hair, and Teeth
"The first things that somebody notices about you are your shoes, your hair, and your teeth. Take care of those, and you'll always make a good first impression."
Lesson #10 - Help Children, the Old, and the Sick
"If you wanted to get your Dad's sympathy, you had to be sick, an old person, or a child. If you were sick and old or especially if you were a sick child, you really got his attention." -- Momma
Dad had many jobs in his life, but one of the longest and his favorite and the one he is remembered for is running paper routes. This job, especially the Greeneville Sun route, brought him into contact with many people. If any of those people were children, old, or sick, they merited his special attention.
The children on the Greeneville Sun route didn't all know that he was the paperman. But they did know that he was the candy man. He always carried bags of candy to pass out to any of the children who came running to get their parents' newspaper. Some of the children who waited on him had parents who didn't even get a paper.
He was especially happy when the children seemed to be poor and the sort of children who didn't get many things given to them because this had been the type of childhood he'd led during the Depression.
In some neighborhoods the children who lived there brought their friends home with them to see the candy man, and the children who were more well to do and had candy more often than the poorer ones were impressed that he didn't pass out the cheap candy. He favored the strawberry candy with the juicy insides and strawberry wrapping.
Years later some of them still talked about it. After he got sick and retired, he got a get-well card from one of his kids, all grown up and married. In her notation, she wished him well and thanked him again for all the years of candy and told him that she never saw a piece of strawberry candy without thinking of him.
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Dad also believed in taking care of the older people on his route. He always had time to stop and talk to any older person who happened to be waiting at the paper box. "Might be the only company they had all day," he'd explain. There were several older people on the route who never had to go to their paper box, because he always threw it next to their door or on their porch. If it were too far to throw the paper got carried to the door.
Miss Fannie Hankins didn't have to go to her mailbox either, because every day Dad would pull over, get any mail she'd gotten, and take it and her paper to her door, knock, and hand it to her in person. He was afraid that since she was too old to walk across the road to the mail and paper boxes she might also be too old to bend over and pick up the paper off the ground. If she happened not to be home, everything was left in a neat bundle stuck in her door or sitting in one of her porch chairs.
The other perk that the older customers got was when they reached a milestone birthday such as eighty-five or ninety. Attached to their paper would be a birthday card announcing that in honor of their birthday, their newspaper would be free for the rest of their lives as long as Dad carried the newspaper.
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The elderly weren't the only ones to get free papers. If you or someone in your family were seriously ill instead of a bill for the paper you might get a note telling you that your paper would be free for the next few months and attached to the note would often be a check or cash to help with your expenses.
A popular money-raising method for the ill in the community used to be to put a punch board in the country stores where Dad stopped to leave papers. For so much money, usually a dollar, you could punch out a number on the board. When all the numbers, usually twenty-five to fifty of them, had been punched, the winning number was revealed.
It seemed like every week Dad was bringing home a turkey or a ham or money that he'd won on a punch board that'd been set up for a sick child. I commented one time to someone at one of these stores that Dad sure was lucky at winning the punch board. "Lucky, nothing!" they told me, "he'll come in here and hear about who they're raising the money for and he'll wind up buying every number that's left on the thing. Them lucky wins'll cost him thirty or forty dollars."
Lesson #11 - A Good Education
We were sitting around the barn one day taking a break while putting up hay. Dad asked Chris what a gross was. Chris thought for a moment and told him that it was a dozen dozen or 144. Dad shook his head and said, "By gosh, I reckon that shows you boys the importance of a good education." It hadn't showed us yet because we didn't know what he was talking about.
To clarify the lesson, he explained that he'd been in Hardees this morning after his paper route and got to talking to a man who sold bootleg silver salutes. (an illegal version of the equally illegal cherry bomb) Dad told him how he, David, and Dean went in together each year and bought a few hundred dollars' worth of fireworks to entertain the children with at New Years' and Fourth of July. That bought a lot of fireworks twenty or twenty-five years ago.
The man told him that he sold silver salutes by the gross and asked Dad how many gross he wanted. Dad didn't know what a gross was but he didn't want to appear ignorant, so he nonchalantly told him to bring him a dozen of them.
Now that he knew how many was in a gross, the man's shocked reaction made more sense. Not many people ordered what Dad now calculated to be 1,728 silver salutes at a time. We had plenty of fireworks that year. And the next. And the next. And the next. In fact, it took over ten years to shoot up the last of the silver salutes. But none of us ever forgot how many is in a gross.
There's different types of education, Dad told us. The best education you'll ever get is learning from your own mistakes. But the freest education you'll ever get is learning from the mistakes of others. Dad believed in education, probably because he never had much formal education, and he wanted us to have more opportunities than he had. He encouraged me to go as far in school as I wanted. He worked and saved to pay for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and the man who disliked crowds, long events, and traveling much attended both graduations. He was very proud that I was the first in the family to graduate from college and he mentioned that more than once, especially after the second graduation.
When the grandchildren were born he immediately started a college fund for each of them. "My generation went to the eighth grade; your older cousins went to high school; you've got a masters'; your kids ought to be the doctors. Every generation needs to get a little bit farther than the last one. Otherwise, the family's not moving forward."
"Get yourself a good education," Dad warned us, "or you'll wind up somewhere digging ditches." In my present line of work I have dug not ditches but a hole in a slate hill for a new light pole, replaced toilets, repaired sink pipes, fixed cars, patched floors, put entertainment centers together, repaired typewriters and vacuum cleaners, and done people's laundry. I thought that I got a good education; now I'm just waiting for it to kick in.
Lesson #12 - Entertain Freely
We have a tradition at our home that every January we have an Epiphany party to end the Christmas season. Everyone from Hardin's Chapel and Bradburn Hill are invited, as our neighbors, relatives, and people from our work and the childrens' school. The crowds over the years have ranged from a low of forty (snowy weather) to a high of around one hundred and ten (beautiful warm evening for a January). Dad said that this was his favorite activity of Christmas and one that he thought was the most important of anything we did because it helped keep the two churches on the circuit in touch. He told me to do this every year and that he would pay half of the food expenses as long as he lived and after that Momma would pay his half for him.
The epiphany party the year after both he and our friend Lloyd Malone died looked like it was in trouble. The weather report called for 100% chance of a terrible blizzard that would start the morning of that evening's party. This was on a Saturday. Momma was worried about how we'd get the Sunday edition of the paper out once the blizzard hit.
Several people had called and asked about when we'd be postponing the party until. I told everyone who called, and finally called the radio station and had it announced, that the party would go on as scheduled and that there would be no snow until it was over. I explained to those who would understand that as much as Dad and Lloyd enjoyed the epiphany party that they would intercede for us in heaven and would persuade God to postpone the blizzard.
A lot of people laughed at my naive theology, and the more menacing the sky looked, I had my doubts as well.
But there was no snow in Greene County. It rained, but no blizzard. There was a foot of snow in Johnson City, in Rogersville, in North Carolina, in Morristown, in Kingsport; everywhere but here. The party was held, everyone left, and Momma, Jeff, and I started the Sunday morning route, which we delivered with no problems at all. About the time that the last of us got finished and started home, the rain changed to snow, and by morning, Greene County had its foot of snow like everywhere else.
On the local news the next day the weatherman was asked why the snow had been delayed. He explained that as the cold air was pushing out the warm air and bringing snow to the whole region, that suddenly a body of warm air pushed back in towards Greene County and was surrounded by the cold air. That is why it rained until that warm air cooled off. He was then asked what caused the warm air to push back in and create that pocket of rain surrounded by snow. He replied that he didn't know; as far as he could tell it had never happened before and there was no reason for it to have happened then.
I suppose I should have called and told him that it had to do with epiphany parties and paper routes and a man who had promised to look down from heaven and keep an eye on his family.
Lesson #13 - Know When You're Wrong
Dad was on a lot of medications during his illness, and often was taking chemotherapy and radiation as well. This made him feel very bad and sometimes clouded his thinking. One of his best friends was John. Like most of Dad's friends, they had grown up together. Now they were in varying degrees of partnerships in their farming, such as cutting wood and putting up hay and raising tobacco. They had a disagreement over a hay crop, ill words were exchanged, and they didn't speak to each other for a few months.
Then Dad had Momma invite John and his wife back to the house for supper. Dad and John apologized and talked about the more than fifty years they'd known each other. They cried, their wives cried, and the hay dispute was soon settled.
Dad told them that he had been certain that he was in the right on the hay matter. But one day when he was complaining about it to Momma she asked him if he was sure that he was right. "That's the first time in thirty-five years of marriage that she'd ever questioned my judgment. I knew then and there that I was wrong. I didn't know if it was the medicine or the cancer or what messed me up; I just knew that if she thought I was wrong, then I was and it'd bother me until I got it cleared up and made up for it."
Lesson #14 - Don’t Be Quick to Judge Others
There was an old man who sat on on the front porch of his house and watched the world go by. Every day he would watch Dad go by and Dad would wave and he would wave back as Dad threw the paper in the driveway so he wouldn't have to walk all the way down the hill.
One day the old man stopped waving. Dad drove by and waved. No response. The next day, Dad waved even more broadly. No response. The next day, he waved and blew the horn. No response. The next day, he waved and blew the horn and shouted at him. No response.
The next week instead of throwing the paper in the driveway, Dad backed up the driveway, threw the paper at the old man's feet, and shouted, "I said, 'hello,' darnnit!" No response. When Dad looked closer, he saw that the man's children had made a scarecrow out of some of the man's old clothes and sat him in the man's usual chair as a Halloween decoration.
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Dad was looking for his manure spreader. Somebody had borrowed it and he couldn't remember who he'd loaned it too. He complained frequently to us about neighbors who don't bring back things that they borrow. A few weeks later he was at the home of one of his neighbor's, Old Man Smith, who was well in his eighties.
Dad saw his manure spreader there and mentioned to Mr. Smith the importance of returning things that you'd borrowed. Mr. Smith allowed as he didn't know what Dad was talking about. "Specifically speaking," Dad replied, "I was making reference to my manure spreader. I've been looking ever place for that."
"That thing there?" Mr. Smith asked.
"That's the very one."
"Have you forgot you sold me that manure spreader five years ago?"
"'Course I ain't forgot. Reckon I could borrow it?"
Lesson #15 - Take Up for the Underdog
"The popular people and the winners in life, folks like us, always have plenty of friends and people around them. But always take up for the underdog in life, because they may not have anybody else to help them out or to take their part."
Lesson 16 - Give Things Away
I don't grow watermelons very much in the patch of weeds that I have identified as my garden. I don't grow cantaloupe very much either. We live in a busy suburban neighborhood. My neighbors are always busy and on the go. Once or twice a year we get together for a neighborhood picnic, but we don't visit much. That's why I can't get into the spirit of growing watermelons or cantaloupe.
Dad and David used to grow a watermelon and cantaloupe patch together. They ate them, they gave them away, they invited everybody to stop by the patch and help themselves. Those are communal fruits. They are meant to be shared. A watermelon is not one of those things that you can sit down and eat by yourself. Certainly those who have tried to do not recommend it.
When Dad and David didn't have their patch or there wasn't anything ready in it, every few nights one would call the other and tell them to come on over that they had brought in a watermelon to try. We and our other neighbors would gather at the appointed house and share in the watermelon and usually a cantaloupe or two.
There's something special about ending a hot summer day with most of the neighborhood gathered around talking, eating, and watching the sunset turn into hazy evening. If you don't have a memory like this, then you should go to the fruit stand this summer, find someone buying a watermelon and follow him home.
The greatest sin, the most terrible social affront, that Dad and David could imagine was to bring home a watermelon and not share it. I remember Dad being so taken aback when he saw one of his neighbors sneaking a watermelon in and not inviting anyone over to help eat it that he called David to report the offense.
David was so stupefied that anyone could do such a thing that later he sneaked over to that neighbor's and searched for the rinds before he could believe it. They were both so offended that they set up an early version of a neighborhood crime watch to see just how many watermelons had been sneaked past them. When they found that this was not an isolated incident, they talked about it the rest of the year. In fact, for years they would mention this as an example of unbelievable and unchristian behavior that they were reluctant to accept as happening in their own neighborhood.
A watermelon is like a freezer of homemade ice cream. It is meant to be shared. It invokes a time of neighbors coming together and visiting and taking time out of their schedule to sit on the porch and carport and watch the evening pass by. The few times we've had a watermelon I've felt so guilty waving at the neighbors driving by that I couldn't enjoy it. It's not my fault that I don't grow watermelons or make ice cream very often. I've got the knowledge and materials to do it with. I just can't get my neighbors to cooperate.
Lesson #17 - Keep Things Simple and Plain
Dad believed in keeping things simple and plain. He didn't like things made more complicated or fancier than they needed to be. He also didn't care for people calling attention to themselves. Several examples come to mind:
Which Way Was It Going?
One Sunday several of us were sitting on the front porch watching the world go by. Part of it that went by was an airplane. Two of the neighbors decided to figure out which way it was heading. They began debating on whether it was going due south or southwest, or due west and at what degree in the direction it was flying. Dad listened to this for a few minutes, then remarked, "If you'd asked me, I'd said she was going sideways."
Target Practice
Some of my friends and I were in the backyard shooting my .22 rifle, but we couldn't seem to hit the target. Dad came out and watched us miss. He was a good shot, so we asked him what we needed to do differently or if there was something wrong with the scope. He took the rifle and looked at it closely and looked through the scope and appeared to be examining the situation intently. Then he handed the rifle back to us, said, "Move closer to the target," and walked away.
Calling Aunt Dollie
When Dollie Hartman was eighty-nine years old the church decided to throw her a surprise birthday party. With Dollie, any surprise was risky at best. However, the only tense moment came when she said she had something she wanted to say. She thanked everyone for doing this for her and singled out one of her relatives for calling every day to check on her. This prompted another relative to remind her that they called her every day. Another person pointed out that they called her every other day. Somebody else stated that they, too, called her every day. Dad ended the contest by announcing, "And I call you just about everything!"
Soup Beans
One of Dad's favorite meals was soup beans, preferably with a big hunk of country ham in them. I decided that he would like a good thick chili made with soup beans instead of chili beans. I made a big pot of this for him and he ate several bowls. When I finally broke down and asked him how he liked that, he thought for a moment and replied, "Well, if you're gonna have to ruin a perfectly good pot of beans, I reckon that's as tasty a way to do it as any."
Lesson #18 - Appreciate People
"A lot of folks does things that they don't get noticed for or thanked proper for, so you be the person that does notice, you be the one that let's them know they're appreciated."
I carry a list with me. It's not written down, but it's always in my mind. It's a list that Dad gave me of certain people that I'm not to forget. These are people that I'm to do things for. Some of them I'm supposed to pay for their supper if I see them out at a community fund-raiser because they used to pay for his suppers when they saw him. Others I'm supposed to do things for them because they helped out him when he was sick. Some I'm to tell what they meant to him.
Two people in particular, one now deceased, I'm to keep an eye on. These two came at separate times and both offered Dad their life savings if he needed it to pay his expenses. Dad cried when he told me that one man came to see him and told him, "I know you've always been careful with your money, but I also know how expensive these sicknesses can be. I don't got much, but if you need it, it's yours."
My instructions for this person were this: "A lot of people say things like that, but he meant it. If I'd needed it, he'd given me the last dollar he had. So you keep up with him. If he ever gets sick or feeble or needs anything, you be there for him, because he was there for me."
Another person isn't on my list, but he is on my calendar. One of Dad's best friends has always done much for his friends, community, and church. Dad never felt that people properly appreciated him. When he ran for public office once, he didn't carry his own precinct. Dad was mad about that for years.
"I can't believe that his own people didn't support him! As much as he's done for everybody; there's probably not one home he's not been in working on something or fixing it or helping out, and never got a penny for any of it and not much thanks. He should've won his own precinct; there shouldn't have been anybody else even got a single vote."
Dad was also annoyed that no one ever asked his friend out for his birthday. Every year Dad would ask him, "Anybody asked you out for breakfast for your birthday yet?" David would always reply, "Hadn't been a soul say a word about it." Then Dad would always say, "Well, I reckon we'd better take care of that right now." Then they'd make plans for their birthday breakfast.
Near the end of his life, Dad was too ill to make their breakfast trip, so he told me to take his place. When we got back I had to report on what David had and what we'd talked about. Dad told me to always take David out as long as he was able to go, and to try to go somewhere he could have country ham if he wanted it, because that was one of his favorite breakfasts.
For the past few years I've had the same conversation every September. I'll call or see David, and I'll ask him, "Anybody asked you out for breakfast for your birthday yet?" To which he'll reply, "Hadn't been a soul say a word about it." Then I'll say, "Well, I reckon we'd better take care of that right now." Then we make plans for our birthday breakfast for yet another year. I promised.
Lesson #19 - Guard Your Good Name
"Don't never do nothing to hurt your good name. I want that name to mean something. When people see you coming their way, I want them to be glad instead of saying 'Aw, nuts, here comes that sorry so-and-so again.'
I've always tried, and you and the younguns try too, to live so that after you're gone and somebody mentions your name, they'll say, 'Yeah, I remember that old boy. He helped me out once, or gave me money when I was in trouble,' or something like that. That's the sort of thing that lasts long after you're gone."
Lesson #20 - Don't Seek Attention for Yourself
"Cogburns don't try to attract attention; they'd rather stay in the background and work quietly. Always brag on others, but not yourself."
Dad called me into his bedroom one day. He wanted to know about having a plaque engraved for one of his best friends and neighbors. He wanted it to thank him for all the work he'd done for him and for his church and other neighbors over the years.
I suggested that it would be a special Sunday soon that would be a good time to present it to him in front of the church. Dad didn't like that idea: "No, don't do it in front of people, because in all these years when he's done all these things, he hasn't ever done it for himself or to get attention, he's just done it to be a good neighbor. He don't want the attention like a lot of other folks would, he's just wanted to help other folks. That's the way it ought to be."
A lot of people came to the funeral home when Dad died. We knew many of them, but many of them we didn't know them or why they were there. Most of those explained there presence to one of us, and it was usually a story like, "I was down on my luck once, and Lewis gave me some money, but I guess he told you that" or "My mom was sick, and Lewis took the paper to her door every day, but I guess you knew that" or "He stopped and helped me on the road, but I guess you knew that" or "He always waved or stopped to talk, but I guess you knew that."
But we didn't know that. We didn't know because he never told anyone all the things that he did. We will never know how much gifts, money, or time he handed out over the years.
A policeman came by and told us that Dad had asked him to talk to some young man that he was afraid was going to get into trouble. We have no idea who the young man was or what type of trouble he was heading for. Dad never mentioned it.
One man stopped by on his way to work in the morning and told us that he wanted to pay his respects because he worked for the water department and Dad never saw him out working that he didn't take time to stop and talk to him. Of course, we didn't know because he had never said anything about it. For him, life was made up of doing good deeds for others, but never for your own sake or to draw attention to yourself.
"Life's been awful good to me, so I've always tried to give something back to it."
