Posts Tagged ‘Passing the Torch’
Passing the Torch
November 10th, 2009 | Author: Pure Thoughts Admin
John LeBlanc
Most of you know that both my dad and my father in law died in the same week this past July. Since then my wife and I have been busy literally selling the farm my parents lived on and disposing of all the farm equipment and 75 years accumulation of business, farm and personal stuff. Just going through it is a long process, not to mention disposing of it.
I found a few really neat things I had not seen since I was a kid right away. I decided then and there that there would not be any wholesale removal of anything. The memories those things brought back were just too valuable.
After many hours, days and weeks of blood, sweat and tears literally, on the top shelf of my Dad’s workshop covered with dirt daubers and spider webs was a Gerber baby food jar. Inside it was a key ring. On the key ring was a Nickel alloy almost round magnet the size of a dine and about 4 mm thick.
My dad was a radiator repairman and welder. One of the problems right after WWII was radiators had a lot of iron parts on them that caused repair problems. Dad needed a handy magnet to sort out these parts. His uncle was a metallurgist at a local refinery and made that magnet for him. As a kid I always remember it on his key ring. About 10 years ago I asked what happened to it and he told me he did not know.
He obviously put it in a safe place. I found it.
Dad, it is on my key ring just like it was on yours.
The torch is passed.
When it came time to do the same thing at my father in law’s house my brother in law “I just can’t do it” is what he told me. Too sensitive of a guy. My dad took that sensitivity out of me with a little strip of leather and the admonition to “suck it up and take it like a man”.
My Dad’s parents were both killed when he was 16 in 1932 in the midst of the depression. Dad knew what “suck it up and take it like a man” meant. He had been there, done that. I often thought of him telling me that and it got me through many a dismal hour in my youth, the U S Army, at Philmont and all along life’s path.
I even passed it along to my daughters. My 23 year old is often heard telling her whining friends to “suck it up and take it like a man” and they do!
Anyway, the time came to clean out my father in law’s attic. He notoriously saved EVERYTHING, packaged it in an appropriate box or bag, tied it with string and labeled it. This was brought to my attention when my wife and I had our first child (the 23 year old) and she was ready to start coloring with Crayolas.
Grandpa fetched my wife’s coloring books and Crayolas from the attic where he put them some 35 year earlier.
