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Jewish World Review June 14, 2002 / 4 Tamuz, 5762

David Brewster

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The Value of a Father

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | The scalawags and rascals down at Pocket's Poolroom had a name they liked to call Willie Singleton. It wasn't a nice name (more of a word, really), a word having something to do with the circumstance of Willie's birth and nothing, whatsoever, to do with the lad himself. Some talked about Willie having no dad, but that was preposterous. Everyone has a dad. It's just that nobody had the slightest notion, with the possible exception of Willie's mom, who Willie's dad was, where he was or why he wasn't about to help Willie's mom bring the kid up.

We kids had little or no sympathy for Willie's plight, since he was the only boy in town who got invited to just about every father and son outing and a whole bunch of family excursions, to boot. He went on more summer vacations than any one else in town and more fishing trips and Bigtown baseball games and dad and lad church outings than the rest of us put together. Come winter, spring, summer or fall, Willie Singleton was never wanting for something to do. From time to time, some of us got a little jealous of Willie's apparent renown and would complain to our dads about it. And our envy was certainly understandable, what with our being given hour upon hour of chores, while Willie's days seemed filled with adventure piled upon escapade and topped with amusement. What was a boy to do?

As memory serves, it was the summer before junior high that our fuming over Willie's enviable life style came to a head. The boy had reached a whole new level of frivolity, and it wasn't even the 4th of July. He'd been on three camping trips (one in a neighboring state), gone boating or fishing two or three times a week since school let out, attended, nobody knew, how many ballgames in Bigtown and spent a week with the Johnson's at their lake cabin. Of course, that's not to mention the nightly junkets for ice cream, the weekly movie and Mr. Thomson's continually inviting Willie to ride the fire truck, when the volunteer fire department made its mock runs out to the Williams farm and back. We had had enough! Plans were in the making to bring Willie into line, when our little meeting behind the lumber yard was interrupted by Mr. Shawn Kennedy, lumberyard owner and grandfather to one of our co-conspirators, Mike Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy was old, really old. He was big and tall and strong and spoke like a Baptist preacher, but he was real old. There wasn't a person in town who didn't like Mr. Kennedy, and we were no exception. There wasn't a lad among us who hadn't been the beneficiary of his largess, on more than one occasion. Just for openers, at the beginning of each school year, he gave a brand-new, shinny black lunch box with a bright red Thermos bottle and twelve Clark Bars inside to every first and fourth grade kid. And if that weren't enough to win our eternal gratitude, he'd pull a Clark Bar from his ear and give it to us every time we'd come into the lumberyard, or we'd meet him on the street. Yes, indeed, we loved that old man and respected him, as well. That's probably why none of us have ever forgotten the little talk on that summer afternoon, behind his lumberyard.

Though we were never sure how Mr. Kennedy knew what we were up to, he knew and knew with an insight that, to this day, remains somewhat of a mystery.

He understood what was going on in Willie's head like he'd walked in the boy's shoes. But there was no question the old man had a dad. We'd all seen his picture hanging on Mr. Kennedy's office wall. Anyway, what we took away from Mr. Kennedy's little talk that afternoon had nothing to do with Willie Singleton or Mr. Kennedy's understanding of the boy's situation. Actually, the old man's point probably hit home with us, because it was something we'd always felt, somewhere deep down in our hearts, but had just never heard put into words.

And when we did, it stuck like glue. Unfortunately, only the notion stuck. The old man's words are gone forever, and now that I think of it, that was the really amazing thing about Mr. Shawn Kennedy. He was able to inspire a bunch of snot-nosed kids reach into their souls and sense what Willie Singleton felt every day of his life.

His words allowed us to truly value what we'd always had, while we still had it, and that's a rare thing, indeed.


JWR contributor David Brewster writes from his home near Burlington, Ind. Comment by clicking here.

Up

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06/08/01: Politics, Smallville Style
05/04/01: Consumerism Comes to Smallville, Then Leaves
03/09/01: Let there be bears
02/23/01: An Epitaph for the Living
02/16/01: The Living Classroom
02/09/01: In Search of America
01/23/01: Making sense of it all
01/05/01: Winter's gift
12/15/00: Relinquish the Wind
11/23/00: Government by consent
11/21/00: For want of love

© 2001, David Brewster