Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Lessons My Father Didn’t Know He Taught Me
My childhood home, the place of my single-digit life, sat just outside Enoree, South Carolina, a very small crossroads of a town near where I typically call my hometown, Woodruff.
This house my parents rented throughout the early to mid-1960s had a large barn beside it, apparently intended as a garage, and a redneck beer joint across the street, Lefty’s.
This is the house where our family dog was killed, hit by a car in that street and buried by my father before he walked over to Lefty’s for a beer or two.
While our memories are not as credible as we would like, I have some of the most vivid recollections of my life from those years and that house. Part of that vividness is likely from my father’s habit of telling and retelling stories of his life and ours, but a significant contribution to my being able to see those years quite vividly in my mind is that my parents took 8 mm movies throughout that time as a young family.
There was the snowstorm video with the giant, frozen snowball that we watched over and over.
But I also recall playing outside in the leaves with my parents, and our own family version of ollie ollie oxen free that positioned one child and one parent together on each side of the house as we threw balls over for the other pair to catch. The greatest chaos, however, were the tea and water fights that often began at the table during lunch or dinner and then carried over into the yard before circling back into the house.
My father was apt, even after they built their own house and moved to the CONTINUE READING: Do as I Say, Not as I Do: Lessons My Father Didn’t Know He Taught Me – radical eyes for equity
