The GOOD Old Days

Allow me to wallow in nostalgia for a moment. My Dad likes to say that the "good old days" frequently weren't good -- just old. I suppose that's true, especially since he was talking about an incredibly difficult childhood and adolescence growing up on a rented farm, raised by his aunt and uncle. But when I manage to pry stories of the "old days" out of him, I hear a mixture of American Gothic gloom and rural Indiana joy. During my childhood trips to his roots and our extended family who stayed in Indiana, I saw Dad step back to those difficult years and remember what life as a young man was like. Before college, marriage, children, and 40 years of full-time pastoral ministry in the far-away places of Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

In those early years Dad learned to drive a tractor before a car, and he witnessed the lives of three uncles interspersed with a few glimpses of his own father. Dad was forced to grow up fast: his uncle Frank (with whom he lived) died when Dad was 17, and Dad ran the farm on his own for a few years before heading off to college and destiny.

The 50's were a time of exuberant teenage happiness, and this wasn't entirely lost on my Dad, in spite of the hardships of running a farm and living with his Aunt Margaret. Occasionally my siblings and I heard stories from Dad's sister Lois about how he had lots of girlfriends, danced, and went to movies. Our Dad did those things? we responded in shock. He was a real teenager? Dad has always defined sincere kindness to me, but he never displayed the joie de vivre I associate with post-war America.

I continue to look to Dad to see how life is managed. Unwittingly, he taught and I learned how to be a husband, father, and pastor, and someday I'll pull out the lessons I'm learning about how to live with an empty nest, and then never to retire. My prayer has always been that I will walk -- however haltingly-- in his footsteps.