“When did you realize your father was a success?” I could ask myself. In a way Dad and I had lived in different worlds. His formal education had ended at fifteen; mine had continued until I was twenty-eight. His life had been in farming and agriculture in Northwest Missouri. My adult life had been spent in New York city as an educator in religion and psychology.

Taking myself thoughtfully by the hand, I might journey back in time. First, my Dad when I met him was an intelligent new father. His own father Walter had died when Dad was a teen-ager. After graduating from high school at fifteen, Dad took care of Grandma Vira’s farm, and Uncle Dingley’s farm ¼ mile away. Because Dad was being the ‘man’ of the house, a younger brother and sister were able to complete college and become teachers. Younger brother Jack chose to become a successful small businessman.

When Dingley died his 120-acre farm was left to my Dad, and that was first home for me and my six brothers and sisters. On our small farm Dad terraced and put in a centrally located big pond for planned water management, all according to latest conservation knowledge through the County Agricultural Stabilization and Conversation Service (ASCS), coordinated throughout Missouri state.

On this diversified farm, we raised corn, soybeans and hay. Part of it was pasture for the dairy herd of 20 Holstein and Jersey cows. These cows produced cream and milk for sale. Mother raised chickens and produced eggs in the new long pole shed that my Dad built. Each year young chickens were purchased. When mature, they were often all slaughtered on the same day. Frozen, they became our family’s poultry meat supply for the coming year.

Dad bought and sold tractors, and miscellaneous trucks and machinery. He would buy things low, often broken, fix them up to sell or trade off. In the eyes of a critic, he might be dismissed as a ‘horse trader’, as if that were something bad. In reality he was shrewd, always alert. Only rarely (maybe never) did he lose money, and his trading income helped his big family.

When I was middle school age he took up traveling livestock feed sales for Lucas Products, a local business. I enjoyed hearing of his sales and training meetings, and I sometimes went with him as he traveled the country from farm to farm. Able to talk to anyone (it seemed to me), he was always looking for new sales prospects. His ease at palaver was aimed at establishing relationships, thereby making  sales. While I remember seeing unproductive visits, I never felt that a door had been closed. Ground had been laid for future business.

Besides conversations and livestock sale barns (always mixing business with pleasure), his main recreation seemed to be hunting coons (raccoons). Again, not wasting time completely, he skinned and sold the hides from animals he caught, simultaneously training and selling the tracking dogs (coon hounds). I remember Spot and ‘Old Blue’ two special dogs that trained the others, and somehow never got sold.

When I was thirteen, Dad bought a bigger 320-acre farm, fifteen miles away in Hopkins. That farm would be terraced in the same modern, for those times, way. It too, would have a farm pond, bigger than our first, as part of the terracing system. As part of a water system for the whole farm, those ponds of ours were fenced to keep livestock out. They were part of a guarded conservation system, more than natural ‘mud holes’.

Our first pond was like a Missouri lake to neighborhood boys. We had no sea shore to go to. Swimming pools were miles away, in towns and for city kids. At our pond, we swam, fished and camped every summer. Older neighbor boys, the Pruitt’s, built a diving board there. Dad always stocked our ponds with Bluegill Crappie and Largemouth Bass, their minnows secured through the County Extension Office. Our ‘fishing’ helped maintain a healthy water environment so it wouldn’t get overpopulated.

In our new neighborhood, Dad went to work again as a traveling salesman for a bigger company, Walnut Grove. He continued the farm’s planning, how all acres would be used, and what would be row crops, pasture or hay. Busy as he was, he always helped with the work too, but that was also a part time job for me as a student. Especially during summers I worked on the farm with chores and crop fieldwork.

The oldest of us seven children, I went to college directly out of High School. One week after graduation I got married and in the Fall went to seminary 2 ½ hours away in Kansas City. Two years later, son Chris was born. Now I had a new young family of my own, and had been accepted at Union Theological Seminary in New York City for doctoral studies,

How I was going to pull it off? The untold possibilities for my future, and the financial commitment, seemed huge. In exploring all my resources, I asked Dad if he could help me. He said he would give me $1000 but he would not be able to do more. This expression of his confidence in me was worth more than the money so valuable then to him and to me.

I got that  PhD in American Religious History, sister Annette has a PhD in Educational Psychology, and sister Kay is a Judge. My four other siblings graduated from college Brothers Mike and Mark are successful businessmen in Texas and Oklahoma. Sister Sue has three beautiful girls, just received a sixth grandchild, and is writing a book on Fairy Tales. Sister Diane, who I always thought was the smartest of us all, is a successful businesswoman in CA, an accomplished poet, and my advisor on computer publishing.

All of us have married and most have children or stepchildren. Only baby Mike (at 52) is too young to have grandchildren. I have lost count of how many times I am a grand uncle. As of last night it was one more.

Dad, everyone can see, was a wonderful man, both in numbers and in his many contributions to our character. From him we learned life was positive and upbeat. His wonderful sense of humor is a family legend. Working hard at everything, he succeeded as father, farmer, salesman, trader, tireless conversationalist and raconteur, grandpa and great grandpa.  Dad has been universally liked, held in high regard in his community and family.

Most important to me, he was a model. None of us are perfect. I suppose he wasn’t, but neither am I. Always looking ahead, ever busy, my 90-year-old Dad was his own man. Under whatever pressures of life, his glass always seemed half full. Isn’t that as good as it gets? I don’t know just when I knew. I may have been a slow learner, but some things about my Dad are clear.