My Father’s Advice (1)I learned from him the way children always learn. (2)A man’s main job is to take care of the people who depend on him. (3)I was 23 and about to set off for Europe. I had been saving since college, living at home to cut expenses. Now I planned to stop my job and travel as long as my money lasted. (4) A few days before my departure, my father handed me a handwritten sheet of paper. "Norman, here are some things I want you to keep in mind." (5)Surprised, I took the paper to my room. Dad wasn’t one for writing. (6)The sheet was headed "Reminders," and there were 29. The first few were sensible enough. (7) "Check in with U. S. embassy in each country." (8)"Keep change in your pockets." (9)"Put money under pillow at night." (10)Then came, as I knew it would, the advice that meant to cramp my style: (11)"Don’t pick up strange girls. You may be sorry." (12)"Do not climb mountains. You might get hurt." (13)"Don’t hitchhike." (14)"Don’t get tattooed." (15)It was always that way with Dad, a drumbeat of cheats and prohibitions from morning to night. There was never an easy conversation with him. Always, it was Dad telling me what to think, what to do, what dangers to avoid. As a teenager I decided he had devoted his life to destroying my fun and freedom. (16)That’s not the way he’d lived his adolescence, though. (17)Charles Wesson Smith was born in a small town in Kentucky, one of six children of the general-store owner. He hadn’t finished high school when he left town by jumping a freight train. (18)My mother, a Texan, met my father when both lived in Oklahoma City, she working in a bank, he as a salesman. What first attracted her was his voice: deep, rich, confident, and spiced with country expressions. "You did your best," he’d say. "That’s all a mule can do." (19)After they married, my parents traveled the United States, moving whenever the mood struck. My father could always find something to sell. They were in Texas during the big oil strikes, in Hollywood in the era of the great movie studies, in New York for the 1939 World’s Fair. Not until my brother Jim was born did they settle down and buy their first house. By the time I came along, two years later, they had left their adventuring days behind. (20) I remember Dad driving us to school, giving the same lecture every morning: "Boys, you’re getting the tools of your trade. Get them now or you’ll be like a carpenter without his tools—you won’t be able to make a living." (21)The lecture never inspired me to do much learning. I daydreamed my way through classes. In the school yard, I was in a lot of fights. That originated from Dad’s advice. "Give bullies a good fight and they won’t bother you anymore." (22)It didn’t work out exactly that way. Kids my age stop troubling me, but when word got out that the little kid in the second grade wouldn’t run, the fourth grade bullies sought me out. I followed Dad’s advice even when I realized it had a shortcoming, because I knew he wouldn’t run from a fight himself. And I wanted him to be proud of me. (23)As I grow older, however, I began to feel angry at Dad’s advice. I rebelled not only against his beliefs too. I never rejected him personally, however. And for that I’m thankful, for he died suddenly when I was in my mid-20s. (24)Years later when my son, Eric, was born, I considered what I wanted to teach him. Only then did it grow clear to my mind just how much I’d been taught by my father. I had learned the way children always learn—not by words but by example. (25)Dad’s most important lessons were ones he never verbalized. I have tried to put them into words. (26)A man’s main job is to take care of the people who depend on him. Dad did this in the old-fashioned way. He worked hard to pay for everything we needed. He took care of my mother’s family too—her sister Virgiebelle and Virgiebelle’s daughter Dodie. (27)Once, Virgiebelle phoned my mother, extremely anxious. Her exhusband, Ray, she re-ported, was acting mad again. He’d taken Dodie, then four, and said he wasn’t going to give her back. My father said he’d take care of it. He went to Ray’s hotel, knowing he wouldn’t have much standing with the law if trouble arose; he’d be the uncle-in-law kidnapping a child from her own father. But Dad was a salesman, and he knew men’s weaknesses. He brought along a bottle of whisky and said, "Ray, we’ve got to talk, so let’s have a drink first." My father could outdrink most men then, and he soon had Dodie back with her mother. (28)Virgiebelle and Dodie lived with us for the first five years of my life. when they moved into their own home, I couldn’t understand it. But years later, when my mother’s cousin Marianne came to stay with us for a few months because she was "having problems", I was old enough to realize not every man welcomed in-laws into him house. (29)Never boast, never pretend, never say anything that isn’t true. (30)Share with the less fortunate. (31)When you say you’re going to do something, do it. (32)When you’re right, don’t stop. (33) My father’s world, that of commission salesmen, was filled with big talkers. They’d often come by the house. Many had worked for my father and were looking for an "advance". Dad was an easy touch. (34)I remembered one salesman spinning visions of fortunes to be made with a new deal he wanted my father to take on. "It can’t miss, Charlie!" He said. When I asked my father about it afterward, he just smiled. "Everybody in this business has a sure thing." he said. (35)I often heard my father’s sales pitches; he’d work the phone in the evening. But I never heard him make the kind of claims the big talkers made. He never said anything he didn’t believe himself. And he never bothered to instruct me about telling the truth. I don’t think it occurred to him that it was something a father had to do. (36)Once when Dad was home working while the rest of us were at our summer house, he wrote my mother. "When I came home last night, Anna’s little girl was vitally interested in Norman’s bicycle, and I gave it to her." Anna was our longtime mother’s helper. Though Dad did replace my bike, I thought he had no right to give it away. Not until years later could I appreciate the charm of that kind of spontaneous giving. (37)Some childhood memories are impressed deeply in a way you know will never fade. One of mine occurred when I was barely four. My father is unconscious on the kitchen floor. He has passed out from drinking too much. Jim has his right arm and I have his left as we try to pull him to the living-room bed. (38)I don’t remember what happened next. Probably my mother came downstairs. But not long afterward. My father joined AA. He said he wasn’t going to touch alcohol again. And he never did. I didn’t then understand the powerful hold alcohol could have, but I did understand, growing up, that my mother never worried about my father’s falling off the wagon. He’d said he wasn’t going to drink anyone, and that was that. (39) One day in my high-school-freshman year. Dad picked Jim and me up from school. "You’d better read this before you hear it from someone else." he said, handing us a newspaper. "D. A NABS MAIL FRAUD CROOKS" declared the headline above my father’s picture. (40)Dad calmly explained that he’d done nothing wrong, but complaints had been filed against some salesmen, and an ambitious district attorney decided to make a fuss. Since Dad was the biggest fish in the pond, they arrested him. But we were not to worry. It would blow over quickly—there was no case. (41)I did worry. Not about Dad—he’d be all right—but about classmates saying some-thing. When they didn’t. I stopped worrying. (42) But then my father was accused. He could have pleaded guilty and settled for a minimal fine. but dad was innocent. Even if it meant risking jail, he’d never said he’d been dishonest. The trial took a long time. He paid a fortune to lawyers, his business was ruined, but in the end Dad was found not guilty. (43)Though innocent of crime, my father was seriously guilty of misjudgement. I can remember the dinner-table conversations that predicted his accusation. (44)"Charles," my mother would say, "you know Frank is trouble." (45)"I know, Genevieve, but he deserves a second chance." (46)Frank was Dad’s oldest friend, a fellow salesman. I knew him as a big man who drove a pink cadillac and told great stories. He’d gotten in trouble with the law, blamed it on alcohol and said he needed my father’s help. (47)Dad cut him in on some franchise sales he was handling. He separated his dealings from Frank’s, but when Frank reverted to his slippery sales techniques, Dad was inevitably dragged in, Frank was tried separately from my father and convicted. Only then did it grow clear to my mind just how much I’d been taught by my father.