Speaker 1: And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
Speaker 1: story from our regular contributor Dennis Peterson. Today, Dennis shares
Speaker 1: with us the story of something his father did called
Speaker 1: make him do. Here's Dennis.
Speaker 2: It surely had something to do with his having grown
Speaker 2: up on a farm and during the Great Depression. But
Speaker 2: Daddy expressed few desires for things, and he seldom made
Speaker 2: impulse purchases. He bought only what he needed. If he
Speaker 2: needed it but couldn't buy it, he made it or
Speaker 2: did without. He was always looking for the better deal
Speaker 2: on what few things he did buy. Daddy hated death.
Speaker 2: He had built his own house on his own land.
Speaker 2: The only debt he incurred was for the drilling of
Speaker 2: a well on his property, something that he was unable
Speaker 2: to do himself. He paid his brother in law, my
Speaker 2: uncle Dylan, ten dollars a month until the total was
Speaker 2: paid off, and he never owed anyone a dime after that. Rather,
Speaker 2: Daddy saved money. Actually it was probably mother who saved it,
Speaker 2: but Daddy certainly was behind her efforts, never fighting against
Speaker 2: her on it. I recall that every time the Knoxville
Speaker 2: News Sentinel raised its subscription rate, Daddy threatened to stop
Speaker 2: the paper, But Mother always found some way to trim
Speaker 2: the household budget, usually through getting better buys on her
Speaker 2: grocery purchases, and saved enough to pay the higher rate
Speaker 2: and keep getting the paper for years. Home delivery of
Speaker 2: the seven day subscription was only fifty cents a week.
Speaker 2: But if Daddy needed something, he saved for it, not
Speaker 2: making the purchase until he had the cash in hand
Speaker 2: to pay for it. That's what he did when buying
Speaker 2: a car or a truck. He saved and saved over
Speaker 2: a long time. Then when he was approaching the amount
Speaker 2: needed for the purchase, he began shopping around for the
Speaker 2: best deal. When he thought he had located the vehicle
Speaker 2: he wanted, he sat down with the salesman and stated
Speaker 2: his terms ninety days same as cash. If the dealer
Speaker 2: wouldn't accept those simple terms, Daddy simply got up and
Speaker 2: walked out. That's how he bought every car and truck
Speaker 2: he ever owned. Daddy was not tempted to exceed the
Speaker 2: top amount he had determined to spend by any dealer
Speaker 2: add ons, options, or extra features or enticements. He wanted
Speaker 2: no luxury features, no radio or air conditioning. When those
Speaker 2: features were optional, he did at them when they became standard.
Speaker 2: His trucks never had radios. They were work trucks. No
Speaker 2: wide white sidewalls if it was extra, no fancy hubcaps
Speaker 2: or wheels, no more chrome than was standard. And those
Speaker 2: were the days before most of the cars were made
Speaker 2: of plastic. That he saved more than money. Though he
Speaker 2: seldom threw anything away. We might need it someday, he
Speaker 2: would offer as a reason for hanging on to something
Speaker 2: many a time when I had nothing to do, when
Speaker 2: I went to work with him, or on rainy or
Speaker 2: cold days when we could not work, he had me
Speaker 2: pull nails from scaffold boards that had been nailed together.
Speaker 2: After I removed them, he instructed me to straighten them
Speaker 2: and store them in a large coffee can or jelly
Speaker 2: jar or old wooden box. He might need to reuse
Speaker 2: them later. He also had a similar collection of old
Speaker 2: as or died sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers, and
Speaker 2: rubber gaskets. Then when a need arose for one of
Speaker 2: those items, it would be available. He wouldn't have to
Speaker 2: run to the hardware store to buy one. He would, however,
Speaker 2: spend an hour or so searching through endless cans and
Speaker 2: boxes and other kinds of containers until he found the
Speaker 2: right item for his current need. This was all part
Speaker 2: of what he called making do. But to make do,
Speaker 2: you had to have a ready supply of material and
Speaker 2: tools to make do with. That's why he saved not
Speaker 2: just money, but everything. But I was impatient. I couldn't
Speaker 2: understand Daddy's thinking. Daddy, I sometimes tried to reason with him,
Speaker 2: You save all these nuts and bolts and washers and
Speaker 2: screws to save money, But then you'll spend an hour
Speaker 2: or more hunting through the whole collection trying to find
Speaker 2: the right wa Don't you know that time is money.
Speaker 2: He couldn't see it that way. I'd resign myself to
Speaker 2: his never changing. The problem was that it was often
Speaker 2: my time too. The place where Daddy's making do concerned
Speaker 2: me most was on the job site. He sometimes improvised
Speaker 2: in ways that clearly were unsafe to himself, me and
Speaker 2: other workers. For example, when I was so young that
Speaker 2: I could carry a maximum of only three bricks at
Speaker 2: a time, I was working with Daddy on a house
Speaker 2: that on the upper end was one story tall, but
Speaker 2: on the lower end was three stories. The pile of
Speaker 2: used bricks that had been dumped on the upper end
Speaker 2: meant that I had to transfer them as needed on
Speaker 2: the scaffold all the way to the other end of
Speaker 2: the house. Daddy rigged a two by ten walk board
Speaker 2: running from the brick pile to the uppermost scaffold. I
Speaker 2: was to carry my three bricks up that board and
Speaker 2: along the scaffold walkway to the other end of the house.
Speaker 2: My problem was that with both of my hands on
Speaker 2: the bricks, I had no way of balancing myself on
Speaker 2: the walkboard. I would fall off. Listening to my complaint,
Speaker 2: Daddy conceded and agreed to put a handrail on one
Speaker 2: side of the walkboard. That sounded to me like a
Speaker 2: safer solution to the problem. But after he added the
Speaker 2: rail and I tried it out, I discovered that the
Speaker 2: rail made the walk space on the board even narrower,
Speaker 2: forcing me to walk toward one side of the board.
Speaker 2: Daddy insisted, however, that it was safe. I tried to
Speaker 2: make it work and promptly fell off the side without
Speaker 2: the rail and into the pile of bricks below. Daddy's
Speaker 2: making do once just about did him in too. He
Speaker 2: was working high on the scaffold in the gable end
Speaker 2: of a house. He used two walkboards nailed together with
Speaker 2: sixteen penny nails to span the central part of the scaffold.
Speaker 2: Is that safe, I asked, with genuine concern. Of course
Speaker 2: it's safe, he responded, sounding a bit hurt by my doubts.
Speaker 2: I built it, didn't I. He walked across it once
Speaker 2: and then recrossed it, bouncing up and down on it
Speaker 2: a little to demonstrate his point. Over the course of
Speaker 2: the day, however, his repeated walking and bouncing across the
Speaker 2: gap caused the nails to begin working loose. Near the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the boards suddenly separated as Daddy
Speaker 2: walked across them and down he fell about twenty feet
Speaker 2: into a wheelbarrow of freshly mixed mortar. Other than a
Speaker 2: skinned shin and a bruised ego. He was uninjured, but
Speaker 2: what would have been the result of that fall had
Speaker 2: that barrel of mortar not been there to cushion the fall.
Speaker 2: On another occasion, when Daddy made do, he nearly burned
Speaker 2: our house down. We had been having some trouble with
Speaker 2: our water heater, not being able to meet the demands
Speaker 2: of a family of six. One Saturday, we asked Daddy
Speaker 2: to look at it and see what the problem was.
Speaker 2: Upon examining it, he determined that one element had burned out,
Speaker 2: but he thought that he could jury rig it so
Speaker 2: that it would still produce heat. I don't understand electrical
Speaker 2: appliances enough to know exactly what he did, but I
Speaker 2: think he somehow bypassed something and rewired some other thing
Speaker 2: and it worked. Problem solved, or so we thought. On
Speaker 2: Monday afternoon, we drove into the garage when we got
Speaker 2: home from work, and for some odd reason I happened
Speaker 2: to look toward the opposite side of the garage where
Speaker 2: our water heater was. I saw on one side of
Speaker 2: it blackened from bottom to top. My eyes followed the
Speaker 2: direction of the rising soot stain to the ceiling joys.
Speaker 2: They were charred, and the insulation between the joys was blackened. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: the fire caused the circuit breaker to do its job,
Speaker 2: cutting off the power and preventing further damage. That's what
Speaker 2: can come from making do. But Daddy remained a make
Speaker 2: do man all his life.
Speaker 1: And a great work is always by Monty Montgomery and
Speaker 1: a special thanks to Dennis Peterson, and you can go
Speaker 1: to Dennis Lpeterson dot com to hear more of his stories,
Speaker 1: the upsides and the downsides of having a making do
Speaker 1: kind of dad or mom or anyone around you. And
Speaker 1: I've had enough them around me in my life. And
Speaker 1: sometimes they're a joy, and sometimes they'll kill you. The
Speaker 1: story of Dennis Peterson's dad. So many dads around this
Speaker 1: country like them. Here on our American Story.