Growing up my dad always had a pocket knife with him. He used it for everything from cutting up fish to slicing apples right from the trees to take a bite. I have absolutely no clue how many things that pocket knife went through, but my dad would use it for everything – including things to feed us. Cutting watermelon up, apples, anything that seemed to need sliced, peeled or scraped.
I also remember the times I got splinters and my dad would offer to get them out for me. I had seen my father dig them out himself with his knife, but my aunt had taught me the trick of using a straight pin and pushing a splinter out from the opposite direction. So much easier than letting my dad near my hand with a big pocket knife that had probably been through more animals, wood, and anything else that needs sliced.
Surviving childhood always amazes me when I think of the things we did as kids. Germs, dirt, raw food it was all just a part of our life growing up in the country. I remember seeing a picture someone shared of some farm kids out all licking the salt lick from the cows in the field. Growing up it wasn’t something we would have even debated as strange or dangerous to try it. Carrying eggs that had come straight out of chicken and then immediately having them for breakfast, wasn’t something to find strange…. I even took a few hard boiled to school, including goose eggs. Leaving eggs on the counter for a few days until we use them wasn’t abnormal. – Eggs unwashed will actually last quite a while.
I can still picture that pocket knife though I have no idea where it has ended up – brown with it’s gold trim at each end. My father’s hand around it as he closed it (it was one that you had to squeeze it to close). I know the thought crossed my mind every time I tried one that I was for sure going to cut my fingers off trying to close it, but for my dad it didn’t even seem to cross his mind. That pocket knife was a staple in his pocket as well as his wallet in the other pocket – that I’d swear would have moths flying if he had ever bothered to pull it out and open it. I think I ever even heard of my dad opening his wallet twice in all the time I remember… once was to get a rabbit for my oldest… That pocket knife though…. it was out every day!
The house I grew up in (we moved in while I was in 2nd grade) was a house that had been built in the early 1800s and was known as the Illk house. It was the neighborhood that my family had always been in and had I’m sure been built by a person (Abraham Illk) that in some convoluted way related to us. The bricks for the house were made in the wood near the house and my father would say this house has stood for 100 years and will stand for 100 more! When the wind would blow for a huge storm, we couldn’t hear anything from inside the house.
One of the stories I remember from my childhood was our washer and dryer needing replaced….. my father had let my brother and I take apart the old ones and play with all the parts, including using the casing to store some animal we had found in the woods. My father was in the field when the new washer and dryer were delivered….. Of course the new washer and dryer were a littler larger than the opening to turn the corner and go down the stairs. The delivery man, not having a clue what my family is like, said the famous words – If we only had another 1/2 an inch! So my mother after saying are you sure? Grabbed a hammer and knocked the plaster off the wall.
The delivery quickly put the washer and dryer into the basement and ran as fast as they could out of the house – probably expecting my dad to show up and hurt them in some way. My brother currently living in the house still hasn’t fixed the plaster, 40 years later! The lathe on the stairs is still visible, and it’s just the spot directly inside the door. The basement is unfinished with parts being dirt basically open to the outside, and in one spot there is an opening that has stairs that lead up under the kitchen going directly to the floor and into the dirt. I remember cats having kittens under the kitchen and having to crawl under the kitchen to see them.
The picture from the Oakwood Centennial book shows the Illk house before we moved in. Now the porch doesn’t have the roof and a kitchen and garage have been added on the other side of the living room windows. We actually got the house from Ralph Goodrich when as I entered second grade.
I originally wasn’t going to write anything about this, only because to me it seemed like a part of our family history that maybe should just be forgotten. I just recently read the article about the Ohio campaign person saying that racism didn’t exist in America until Obama was president. To me that was a lot like rewriting textbooks the way you want them, and also blaming the victims.
Much as I try very hard myself to not be racist – and raise my children that way… and yes I do find myself profiling people, but not on the things you would think…. Personally I have to mentally tell myself to ignore it when someone smells like smoke (I have a really hard time breathing around heavy smells – same thing with heavy perfume too), really obese (no clue, probably projection and the fact that I’m scared to death that I’ll become more heavy), and of all the weird things – people that have really bad grammar and spelling)… I try really hard to not let any of those factors make any difference on how I see someone and have had some great friends in all those categories!
What I’m really getting at though is that I had found out a few months ago that my grandmother, one of the grandmother’s that was gone before I was even alive. Gone before my parent’s were even adults…. was what I would consider very racist. The story I’ve heard is that she would walk into a restaurant and is she saw someone that was black, she would walk right back out refusing to eat there. (Especially if they worked there)…. To me that’s crazy! What difference does it make…. of course this was in the 1920s to 1940s, so before segregation really occurred. The story left me embarrassed and floored to think that a family member of mine would do this.
I did know growing up that we were in a town that was very homogeneous. The demographics of the town would pretty much make a solid pie chart on every descriptor, and anyone trying to change that would be run out on a rail. I was a very oblivious kid and had no clue (other than the 5 Catholics and I caught that because my mother was one). Leaving for college was really my first experience with anyone different in any way. My first road trip with a friend we dropped by my parents – 4 whites, 1 black in the car and my dad explained to me that I was not to bring them home again. He used a lot of not so nice words. I am amazed I wasn’t disowned after the major fight we had at the time. That was the only discussion I had ever had with my father about race…. and I think I never had another again after that.
I took a job with the university and never lived at home again, so the topic never came up, though I did bring a friend from the Philippines home a couple years later. My friend stayed at my grandmother Wakeland and the topic never came up….
The thought though that racism didn’t exist before Obama just has me amazed. I consider myself fairly young – just under 50, and also grew up very sheltered… and I remember hearing about the KKK burning crosses in yards nearby as I grew up. Stories about people trying to move to near by towns and things horrible things with derogatory words and XXXX ‘go home’ painted on big buildings in town. These were towns with less than 2000 people and this was the 70s (long before Obama was president)!
I’m sure I’m rambling, and I’m sure that there were more relatives in my family that were openly racist. There were probably even ancestors that interacted with slaves in one way or another, though I know there was one ancestor that came to the US as an Irish slave also. He was kidnapped from the docks in Ireland and put on a ship, forced to work way to the US on the ship and then work to pay off his transport when he reached the New World. The thing is, he was able to work off the passage and get freedom. He did fear for his life on the ship, but he wasn’t shackled under the decks. He was grabbed on the docks and not able to let his family know what happened, but then he had the rights to send a message back to Ireland later on a returning ship. That ancestor went on to own a plantation and in 1776 was a respected member of the Virginia community.
Notice in the above I have a hard time even saying that an ancestor may have owned slaves, yet we all know any ancestor in the south before slavery was abolished that was a landowner had the possibility. I also can’t bring myself to type the derogatory words that were written on buildings during my childhood. I recently saw someone post calling Obama HNIC and had no clue what that was. When replying that I didn’t know why they were saying it was my HNIC someone else finally filled me in to the acronym. I hated that I had used the acronym even! President Obama is just that, the President. Freedom of Speech in the US does give you the right to say free speech, but that free speech should not include bullying and insulting other people!
I would like to ignore the parts of my history that include racism, bigotry, and even slave ownership while I’m researching my family history…. but it is a part of my history. I have to take the good with the bad and I can’t just decide that it didn’t exist. What I can do personally is try to make sure that I never let race, sexual orientation, religion, or even appearance affect how I treat anyone. AND that I try to speak up for people when I have a chance to help right an injustice.
It’s the little things too, like Pay it Forward and Random Acts of Kindness that make a difference.
It’s really tough to deal with the lose of anyone, especially a close family member. A fried lost a parent and being the child though of a father that is currently suffering with dementia, you are in a tough place. I’ve mentioned before how tough it is to deal with the issue of others grief when you are faced with a parent that is being tortured inside their own body. It’s bad form to respond in a fashion of – I’d trade places. You want to try to explain how you are so happy that at least their parent didn’t suffer for a long time being tortured inside their body with a mind that doesn’t quite work right and can’t control their own body. How great it is that they went quickly as opposed to suffered in a position of not even knowing who you are, while you visit to make sure they are being treated well – all the while wondering if the care facility is just getting them out of bed for meals and that few minutes a week or day you come visit.
Personally I will miss my dad when he is gone, but I also already miss him while he is still here. There are so many questions that I would love to ask him. Yet the main part of my conversation comes down to Does anything hurt? Do you recognize me? Do you want a Pepsi today?
So we remain silent and simply say sorry for your loss…. And I know jokes are told to help lessen the hurt, but probably not taken well….. It’s just a way to make it through the day, because I do miss my dad, especially when I visit and talk to him.
