According to my parents I was lazy. I still to this day carry that around with me. I suffer from FOLA...Fear Of Lacking Ambition. But I will argue my laziness was due more to my environment than anything else. And the summertime it was worse than usual.
Back in my incubation to adulthood I suffered 'domicile abuse' from my parents. First and foremost was the lack of air-conditioning. We were forced to swell our sinuses under the droning roar of a swamp cooler. And if it got too much to handle indoors, we had two old kitchen chairs out under a huge elm tree. Holden and I were forced to do nothing but play mumbly-peg for hours on end. Video games were conspicuously withheld from us simply because they wouldn't be invented for another thirty years.
My laziness ran rampant as I woke every morning at 4AM to deliver newspapers. This again was a result of the abuse of which my parents were guilty; forcing us to buy the things we wanted for ourselves.
And after delivering papers my brother and I were forced to hang our own laundry on the line to dry in the morning sun. Momma Cash didn't get a modern washer and dryer until I had kids of my own. But she still rubbed salt in my abused wounds by still hanging her laundry outdoors even when she had a clothes dryer..and when I would visit she had the unmitigated gall to ask me to help her fold the dried sheets. I cringe with those memories.
Yes, I was lazy. The whole time my brother and I were mowing the lawn, edging with a non-powered edger and weed-eating with hand clippers we were dreaming of wasting our time shoving dimes in the pinball machines at the bowling alley. We were incorrigible and almost a lost cause. To hide our laziness all us boys put a total of three roofs on Pop's house and painted it so many times none of us can remember the actual count.
And the laziness didn't end at home. In an effort to fund my addiction to laziness I worked at the corner gas station every shift that Bill the owner would give me. Wasting my time away by changing and fixing flat car tires with a hammer, bar and spoon on an old "Armstrong" tire mount. I burned up hours being lazy by sweeping the garage bays, washing cars, stocking oil and antifreeze, washing windows and pumping gas, 2 bucks' worth at a time.
And to top off all that Summer laziness, I was forced to tag along with Pops and survey on the weekends, after making sure the Church lawn was mowed by Friday evening. In an effort to cure my chronic laziness Pops would drag me all over three counties at the dumb end of a chain. At the tender age of 10 I could slam an 8" hickory hub with two roundhouse swings of a 10 pound long handled sledge. Again the abuse was administered by my father. He also forced me to carry the survey equipment and clean and care for it. The abuse was rampant.
But I understand in their own way they were trying to "cure" my laziness. I guess they might have failed...I still consider myself as lazy. I was thinking about that this morning when I got up at 4AM and started putting together a job folder for the crew. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got just enough time to pull some weeds in the flower beds before I really get lazy and watch some basketball. I'm hopeless...
Are you sure we aren't brothers of some kind? The parents sound much the same. And the earliest helping with the laundry was pumping water by hand to fill the big pans on the electric kitchen stove to provide the hot water and to fill the big Number 3 washtub for rinsing, then help dispose of it all when the washing was complete. Firewood pile for the huge heating stove in the middle of the living room needed attention or we would all get cold. Gather eggs from the hens (and blacksnakes) in the nest boxes in the mite-infested chicken house. By the time I was finally tall enough to effectively push that *&#$^(&(& reel-type mower Dad bought a small power mower that required more cord yanking than pushing.
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Holy Cow, post: 376650, member: 50 wrote: ...By the time I was finally tall enough to effectively push that *&#$^(&(& reel-type mower Dad bought a small power mower that required more cord yanking than pushing.
All us kids of those times gone past are brothers. I remember in the early summer we each had our own salt shaker. Lunch was provided by the tomato, squash and cucumber vines that were right there by where we had spent a good part of the morning pulling weeds. July was a treat because the melons and apricots would "come in". I can still taste those warm tomatoes. I won't buy the hot house grown kind they sell at the store.
Momma Cash had an old wringer washer on the back porch. It ran with an electric motor after the gas-powered one caught fire...but wasn't thrown away. It occupied a corner of an old garage in back. Holden and I finally put the two-cylinder Maytag engine on a go-cart. We still had to fill a hot wash by hand. And we heated the water on the kitchen stove. I still have one of the huge kettles with handles we used over fifty years ago. Funny how people hang onto stuff.
We had a reel push mower and it really did work pretty good. You have to keep them sharp and oiled. The trick is getting up the forward inertia before you hit the tall stuff. Pops caved and bought a power mower from Monkey Wards one year. When I sold their place six years ago that old push mower was still hanging in the garage rafters.
Yeah, I was so lazy I'm lucky I lived...;-)
Good God, how old are you blokes:-P, or was America so far behind civilised Australia?
Here running water was the norm, so long as you didn't mind what colour it was nor whether it was inside the pipe or escaping on its way to the tap.
I even had the trusty Fergy 28 as a mode of transport and until a car arrived it was useful for lazy-bum here to visit the girl friend cum wife.
Had the latest of lawnmowers, complete with fancy cast iron wheels that bogged in the "lawn" and an even fancier hessian bag for a catcher.
Ah. Those were the days. Stories of yesterday lost in the mist of time.
No wonder when we talk of such the younger ones think, "poor bloke, he's really lost the plot" and assign us to the dementia brigade.
Love your story Paden. They need recording for posterity.
I recall pushing my grandpa's reel-type mower when I was barely tall enough to make it go. Left some fancy curly-ques in his yard to deal with. He must have been amused because I don't recall getting in trouble.
Richard, post: 376669, member: 833 wrote: Good God, how old are you blokes:-P, or was America so far behind civilised Australia?
Here running water was the norm, so long as you didn't mind what colour it was nor whether it was inside the pipe or escaping on its way to the tap.
I even had the trusty Fergy 28 as a mode of transport and until a car arrived it was useful for lazy-bum here to visit the girl friend cum wife.Had the latest of lawnmowers, complete with fancy cast iron wheels that bogged in the "lawn" and an even fancier hessian bag for a catcher.
Ah. Those were the days. Stories of yesterday lost in the mist of time.
No wonder when we talk of such the younger ones think, "poor bloke, he's really lost the plot" and assign us to the dementia brigade.Love your story Paden. They need recording for posterity.
I think Cow and I have determined here in the remnants of the "Dust Bowl" people were affected by the environmental and economic bad weather that occurred in the '20s and '30s more than some realize. And I think we were both raised by folks that had endured those eras as impressionably young.
We never threw anything away. Fixed it if you could, keep it if you couldn't...in case somebody else might fix it. Nothing else, keep it for parts. And we had running water in the back porch (an unheated shed roof area off the back of the house). It was from a cold water spigot. The hot water heater was small and only ran to the sink and the tub, so we made hot wash water on the stove. Sounds funny nowadays, but that was just the way it was. And I think a lot of it had to do not so much because my folks didn't have any money...they just didn't want to spend what they had.
I loved my childhood. Wouldn't trade it for the world. But if some kids nowadays were treated similarly, they'd howl like their tail was in a trap.
That's just how it was. All up and down the road. Parents that lived through the Depression. Many local parents had experienced either WWII directly or indirectly at home while the other was in the thick of it. Grandparents had experienced both the Depression and WWI. The kind of people who put patches on top of patches to attempt to keep air in their car tires, if they ever had the luxury of having one.
Rural electric lines came by in about 1947. Parents didn't connect until 1948. Grandparents held out until 1959. Rural water lines were installed in 1963. Parents built new house in 1964 to take advantage of that. Outhouse and two handpump water wells, one for the house, one for the barn lot until then. County upgraded the road to a chip-seal type in 1964. Crushed limestone or river gravel until then. First TV in the house in 1958. Watched the radio before that. Four one-room schools and a two-room school were forced by the State to become one in 1947. When I started there in 1959 we had four in 1st, two in 3rd, two in 4th and none in 2nd Grade plus about twice as many in Grades 5-8. High school with about 20 kids per class was three miles away. We were lucky to be so close. Their football team literally played in a cow pasture that involved removing nasty stuff and picking bull thistles before real games, but not for something as simple as practice.
paden cash, post: 376677, member: 20 wrote: people were affected by the environmental and economic bad weather that occurred in the '20s and '30s more than some realize
Yes that's same here.
It was perhaps more evident in rural areas.
Also many of those families were still reeling from WW1 where whole districts of men went off to war and often only a few came home. Some all of one family line.
It had severe impact in those areas. Honour boards in local halls can tell some grim realities. It's about as sobering as reading the early headstones of young children taken too early. Thankfully something that is not as prevalent these days.
Paden and HC that was my parents' background, too. We always had enough, as long as you didn't define that as all you saw the neighbors had.
Electricity was available before I can remember but we didn't connect until 1962. That may have been the year they paid off the farm.
Dad achieved one of his big goals of seeing three kids graduate from college and start out with a new car.
In later years the house got such bad shape Dad didn't think it was worth fixing properly but he wasn't going to ever move so he never did have running water. Hand pumped by the bucket and heated if necessary on the kitchen stove or in winter on the stoves that heated the minimum of rooms.
The week he died we moved Mom into a good house in town and she has had many years now of comparative luxury, well earned.
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I was so lazy that at eight years old I took two different push mowers apart with a butter knife and pliers. (Grew up with a single mother in the 70's / 80's dirt poor, literally) And cleaned parts with gasoline, out of an old gallon milk jug. Put one back together out of the parts, fixed the spring of the pull cord and got one running. I was in business $5 a yard.
A couple of weeks ago I had to punish my 14 yr old for not going his school work. Cutting the grass was punishment, you would have thought I asked him to build the Washington Monument. I mean come on man. Since then yard work has been a larger part of his life. And I can see a major change in his attitude towards work. I see pride in his eyes of a job well done. Hope I didn't coddle him too long and he understands the value of work.
ÛÏHard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.Û
-Steven Wright
Aegean islanders like to tell a joke about a prosperous Greek American who visits one of the islands on vacation. Out on a walk, the affluent Greek American comes upon an old Greek man sitting on a rock, sipping a glass of ouzo, and lazily staring at the sun setting into the sea. The American notices there are olive trees growing on the hills behind the old Greek but that they are untended, with olives just dropping here and there onto the ground.
He asks the old man who the trees belong to. ÛÏTheyÛªre mine,Û the Greek replies. ÛÏDonÛªt you gather the olives?Û the American asks. ÛÏI just pick one when I want one,Û the old man says. ÛÏBut donÛªt you realize that if you pruned the trees and picked the olives at their peak, you could sell them? In America everybody is crazy about virgin olive oil, and they pay a damned good price for it.Û
ÛÏWhat would I do with the money?Û the old Greek asks. ÛÏWhy, you could build yourself a big house and hire servants to do everything for you.ÛÛÏAnd then what would I do?Û ÛÏYou could do anything you want!Û ÛÏYou mean, like sit outside and sip ouzo at sunset?Û
Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life
Daniel Martin Klein
Loyal, post: 376658, member: 228 wrote: [MEDIA=youtube]sFQHeSt0oPA[/MEDIA]
Ron Lang, post: 376686, member: 6445 wrote: ..Since then yard work has been a larger part of his life. And I can see a major change in his attitude towards work. I see pride in his eyes of a job well done. Hope I didn't coddle him too long and he understands the value of work.
I think our union card requires us to 'ride' our kids and worry about them being coddled. 99.9% of them actually get it together and sail on successfully. I did the same thing with my 2 sons that are 42 and 45 now.
I remember once I was giving my oldest some friction about how easy life was for him at that time. The old standard "uphill both ways" routine. He looked at me funny and told me, "you raised me this way..didn't you WANT me to have it better than you did?" I had to admit, he had a point. We work hard to provide our children "something better" than we had...it's probably not fair to hold it against them.
And like you said, at some point the light comes on. And you can see it when it does.
I remember my youngest at one of the first jobs he had; he was up and ready to leave early one morning. But it was about an hour early. When I asked why he was going in early he told me he liked to get there before everybody else so he could get a jump on things...I knew then I had done MY job. A good feeling for a father.
We curse our children it seems. My oldest will have experienced five ball games since Monday evening and only have played in one of them. The middle daughter is starting a 1600 mile journey home from a family vacation with six people from nine to 66 in the vehicle. The youngest daughter is in her office already attempting to get things done that simply couldn't be done in the prior five days that were allotted. Not much chance of catching any of them feeling rested at day's end.
Since we're on the subject I thought I'd share a picture with you all to show kids how tough we had it when we were their age.
Here's the old-time chainsaw Pops made us use to cut firewood: 
paden cash, post: 376734, member: 20 wrote: Here's the old-time chainsaw Pops made us use to cut firewood:
Perfect. Absofrigginlutely perfect!
Best laugh of the week!
Especially since the chain is on backwards.
