Artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday people reflect on their memories of fathering and being fathered.
Building the Closet
by Richard Spilman
I grew up in a small house with two bedrooms and two closets, a detached garage and a kitchen just big enough for the three of us to sit. The basement seemed spacious by comparison, especially after we got rid of the coal furnace. Much of the anger I felt in that household I think came from cramped spaces.
My mother wanted a place to put winter clothes, an actual closet not just a pole from one wall of the basement to another, and because they were frugal people, they didn’t want to hire someone to do the work. Which meant my father had to do it.
My father was a difficult man, a man who’d given up art for insurance, Boston for Normal, Illinois. He was afraid of planes and water. He liked to be alone. Books, gardening, cooking. An MP during WWII, he’d come home hating two things: firearms and Texans. He knew nothing about carpentry or drywall, but there was a need and he was a guy and was supposed to be able to do such things.
I was sensitive and secretive, with the attention span of a gnat and an aversion to work. What I wanted most, at age nine, was a rifle. He decided we needed to bond, and the closet was a good place to start.
We got wood, we got drywall, we muddled about. I told my father he didn’t know what he was doing. It was not a smart move. He raged, I sniveled, and my mother kept asking what was wrong.
The problem was simple and obvious, we had to put wood on a cement floor. Then we could build a wall, using the stairwell as a prop. This required specialized equipment: a nail gun. Which back then had cartridges like a .22. We rented one at a hardware store. My father took a few shots to adjust the thing, then he gave it to me. I literally shook. This was better than a rifle. Rifles just shot little pieces of lead; this shot nails, right into cement.
It was clumsy. I shot too close to the edge of the 2X4, and at too great an angle. He helped me hold it, then he left me on my own again. I did the whole board, then he did one, then I did another.
The job took weeks. I sawed boards badly, he sawed boards badly. I nailed the lower parts of drywall to the frame, he nailed the higher. The closet wall looked as if it had been hacked with an axe. Taping (and many other things) happened without me, but I got to slather paint over the wall and drip it on the floor so that, at the end, we had a white closet with a Jackson Pollock floor.
This was not a friendly undertaking. When my father did things wrong, I was to remain respectfully silent. When I did things wrong, I was to listen and learn. I wasn’t very good a silence, and as my teachers often complained, I didn’t listen well, either.
But I got to shoot that gun. I sawed boards that were actually used on that wall. I nailed. I painted. And through it all, my father’s hands were on me—sometimes guiding, sometimes just there. His voice, when it wasn’t caustic, was encouraging. He criticized mistakes, but he allowed them. When I broke down in disgust over my failures, he demanded I try again. Eventually we declared a truce of sorts: since perfection was not possible, all right was good enough.
My mother was not impressed, but she was good at silence. And my father and I actually did bond. It may have been the crappiest closet on the face of the earth, but it was ours.
The Paper Route
by Jon Bachura
When I was ten, 1988, I wanted a pair of Air Jordans. My ten-year-old solution was to ask my parents for them. When my dad found out the price, $100, he said, “What you need is a job.” But, I’ll never forget, he didn’t say it like Archie Bunker would have. He said it with a kind of lilt of joy. It had a vicarious pride to it.
Turns out, he had been having discussions with a colleague at work. This guy at his office had a 7 day a week paper route with his 10 year old son and they were looking to get a day off. Lo and behold, my old man was already anticipating this day. We were going to take over for them on Saturday mornings and I would get $10 a week.
I was elated! And I will never forget those mornings. Just me and my hero. He would drive and I would roll papers. He had this crappy old Buick that was small and had a 5-speed, so we would whip that thing through this windy neighborhood in the twilight hours, jammin to oldies on the radio.
It was a walking route, though. So, we would stop at the top of the block and he would call out the order of deliveries. “Throw 2, skip 1 throw 4 skip 2,” he would say, as I hopped out of the car with six papers, sprinting the course of porches, sidewalks, trees, and bushes. The goal was to see if I could beat him to the end of the run.
We would repeat that scenario of different patterns and steeplechase from 4am to about 5:30 every Saturday for probably a year or better. Me running, him smoking Marlboro Lights and occasionally hopping out at the end of the run to throw a paper. And sometimes, not often, but on the occasion, we would head to McDonalds to grab some breakfast.
I get nostalgic thinking about those special moments with my dad. Shared experience is what builds relationships. And I believe that working together is what led to the relationships I have with my family today.
It wasn’t long, maybe 18 months of this, probably less, and my dad had gotten us two, seven day a week, Wichita Eagle walking routes in the neighborhood around the local elementary school. It took our whole family—all four of us—from 4am to about 6am to throw it all. And on Thanksgiving morning, more like 3am to 9am. But we did it every day, as a family, until the middle of my freshman year.
I had two other families that we were friends with who, after watching us get into it, got themselves paper routes, too. Seven days a week. 52 weeks. But, one of the things that was really great about that was that we had cover for when we took vacations. It was challenging, but we got to where we could help each other out by splitting up and just grinding it.
There was a supervisor who managed all the carriers in that part of town, so he knew all of us. All we had to do was let him know, and he would give us cover with management if people complained about their papers being a little late.
I even remember that when I would occasionally stay over at these two friends’ houses, or they would stay over at ours, our families were always there at 4am to pick our asses up and go to work. Which was always confusing, because afterwards, which house do you go to?
When I talk to other grown folks who had paper routes growing up, I’m usually talking to an entrepreneur or an executive. It is common that we all connect that experience as being truly important in the development of our young lives. Most times, the conversation goes to lamenting that kids these days (yes, I just typed that) don’t even have the opportunity to experience it, let alone the ganas to want to.
My folks let my sister and me keep all the money that came via the Eagle’s main office. But, we had quite a bit of “Carrier Collect” customers. They wanted to know their paper boy. And that meant that someone had to get that money.
My mom and I would spend around two nights a month, in her car, driving that same neighborhood, parking in people’s driveways. She would take out her little book. Make some calculations and marks in the ledger. Turn to me and say, “This is Mrs. Wilson’s house. She owes us $25. Get the money, but be nice!”
I would go ring the bell, knock on the door, stand by the stinky bushes, and wonder who might come to the door and how they might react to me standing there. Every time was different. What I remember most is needing to be patient. Stand still. People would have to get their checkbooks, wallets, purses, and then write the thing, dig through, count it out, write it down, hand it over and ask me all the same questions everyone else asked. How old are you? And where do you go to school?
This was a good source of cashflow and my folks would take a cut, rightfully. They were covering all of the gas. Someone had to buy the rubber bands and plastic sacks for when it rained. But all of us enjoyed the work and the money it brought into the family. A couple years before all of this started, I remember that my parents had filed bankruptcy. Maybe that was part of the reason we got into this? Anyway…
Because of this, I had an income at 12. Which meant that I had Jordans, a couple motorcycles, a snowboard, and could afford trips to go snowboarding. I also had a banker: my sister. She was the older, smarter, less social child. So, she saved all of her money and would loan it to me at interest. I bought my first car, a ‘66 Mustang, from her. Which she financed at simple interest paid weekly, in cash. She also bankrolled a mountain bike for me once.
It was great!