Dad
In
my bedroom, I have a dark-wooden dresser with a few gashes and gouges in it
from over the years. There are flowery designs along the top and sides of the
dresser. It has a mirror that protrudes from the dresser’s smooth top. It comes
up about three feet, and there are three points on the top. The mirror itself
is clouded and covered in spots of God-knows-what. In the middle of the mirror
is a small black and white headshot of Jesus, the one you see in church all the
time. He is looking to the right. Surrounding the small picture of Jesus are
eight sticky notes with a navy-blue heading reading “Burke High School District
26-2”. On these sticky notes is my dad’s handwriting, all capital letters and
robotic looking. The sticky notes always begin the same: “DEAR KRAY, HAVE A
GREAT FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.” The sticky notes continue with encouraging messages
telling me how awesome I am and how I am ready to attack the current school
year from the fifth grade to senior year. Whenever I am having a tough day or
am feeling hopeless, I take a glance at these sticky notes to remind me how I
am important to someone.
My father comes across as brash; some people describe him
as scary even. This brashness coupled with his booming voice (compensating for
the hearing issues he has) is what most people experience when they come across
my dad. One time, teaching a shop class, a group of three high schoolers,
juniors at the time, were continuously screwing around: messing around with the
tools, talking loudly, and throwing pieces of lumber around the shop. In the
shop, there was no bell, so the kids thought they could leave five minutes
early. My dad, losing his cool, said: “where are you dumbasses going?”—not very
superintendent-like. Troublemaking, laziness, and incompetence gets under his
skin, and that is when he loses his cool. Most people do not see anything past
his scary personality, but I have seen over the years my dad is much more than
a scary guy.
My
dad spends most of his time at Burke School, so most people only see him in his
white-collared shirt and tie, tight enough to allow no room for breathing. His
walk is determined and fast because he is in a rush to go help a teacher with a
disgruntled student or needs to go help a bus driver who is having bus issues. He
marches with his head down and his arms slightly pumping, only looking up to
give a slight nod and “hello” to students or staff. The stride is one no one
gets in the way because it may feel like getting hit by a two-hundred-pound
linebacker. Ever since I can remember, my dad would wake up at five o’clock to
try to get to school before six. He wants to be available for his staff
throughout the day, so these couple hours before school are sometimes the only hours
he gets to work on things behind the scenes of the school. During school hours,
my dad is constantly busy: driving bus, helping the janitors, meeting for
conferences, or teaching classes. At times he does not leave the school until 11
P.M. due to board meetings, ball games, or work he is catching up on. His long
hours lead to him napping any time he can get: 5 minutes before a meeting, 10
minutes instead of lunch, or 2 minutes on the pot.
When
it might snow, my dad wakes up early to see what the road conditions are like. During
my high school years, I started getting up with him for these drives. He would
quietly open my bedroom door and tip-toe in. He would come sit on the edge of
my bed before he said, “Kray you want to get up? If you’re too tired, that’s
okay.” I’d roll over and look at my alarm clock’s red numbers that read “4:15.”
I would get up with a leap, thinking about the thermos of coffee my dad would
have ready. This eagerness from me to spend some time with my dad before the
roosters crowed always brought a smile to his face, revealing small lines in
his cheeks and his straight teeth. We would spend the next hour and a half in
his old Chevy pickup talking about anything that came to mind: Jesus, running,
school, politics, or deranged family. He would go to gravel roads to see how
far into the drifts he could get without using four-wheel drive. On the
highways, he would stomp on the breaks to see how well his pickup did on the
ice.
If
he did decide the roads were not good enough to have school, he spent the rest
of the day moving snow, starting with our driveway, continuing to the front of
the school, and scooping the busses out of their spots. He has a Farmhand
loader that is supposed to be orange but is a mix of black and orange due to
grease and rust. He bundles up in his overalls that are dark with oil stains,
brown stocking hat with a yellow Carhartt logo, and fuzzy yellow farm gloves,
and he spends ten hours of the day moving snow in the howling winds and
negative temperatures on top of his cab-less tractor. He even installed lights
on top of the tractor to move snow in the dark.
My dad is handy with things. In his days as a youngster,
he worked for his brother-in-law on his farm in rural South Dakota. Later,
during college and a bit after, he worked and managed a construction crew. Through
his times on the farm and working in construction my dad encountered many
things that required problem-solving and learning on the fly. These experiences
forced him to become sufficient in many things: plumbing, mechanical work,
construction, welding, and painting. For this reason, he has been able to lead
the charge in most of my family’s projects around the house. He even is
building a new house for my family in the Black Hills. He does most of this while
working his full-time job as superintendent. He also can help with any car
troubles we have as a family. He knows how to maintain cars and how to fix
small problems that arise. When my pickup may or may not have been totaled
after an accident I got in, my dad was able to reinstall a new grill and hood
for me after browsing in a junkyard for a few minutes. My dad also bought a
1986 Chevrolet pickup when I was in high school; it was originally supposed to
be for me. My lost love for the pickup and my dad’s fascination in it made it
his. Since he’s bought it, he has done numerous things on the pickup, replacing
the seats, giving it a new paint job, and installing a fifth-wheel ball for his
horse trailer and camper.
Although my dad is always exhausted and running around
with his job and projects around the house, his family is his number one
priority. He always does his best to make sure my sisters, my mom, and I feel
important. Any chance he gets, he wants to hang out with us: watching movies,
playing cards, or chatting about each other’s days. He has made sure to make
family supper a priority as well, eating together five days every week. My
father is an English guy, so he has a writing background. He often writes
little notes to my mom, my sisters, and me. His notes and words of
encouragement was something I looked forward to every year at the beginning of
each new school year. Similarly, he always writes our cards for a family birthday,
a congrats card, or a sympathy card.
He
always makes us feel special, and he always makes sacrifices for us. Growing up
in a small town, my sisters and I were heavily involved in all things, but more
particularly, sports. My dad coached my basketball team during my 3rd
and 4th grade years, and he did the same for my sisters as well.
Beyond stepping up to the plate when teams were lacking coaches, he showed up
for every meet, game, and even music concert we had as kids. In addition to
showing up, he would always come up with offseason workouts for us too. I
remember one summer he negotiated for Lacey, the older of my two sisters, and I
to shoot 300 basketball shots every day. He offered to get us new phones at the
end of the summer. He is invested in our success as athletes and students as
well, and he shows this by always encouraging us. If my sisters or I had a good
day on the track where we ran a personal best, my dad would always gush with
excitement. “I think you can run faster Kray. You just looked so smooth out
there. How did you feel? Did you feel like you could have gone faster?”
On
top of his words of excitement for our sports, my dad has always been a great
storyteller. I always look forward to times where I can hear my dad tell a
story. He makes it entertaining and he is pretty humorous, so he can have a
table of people laughing at one of his stories. The best story I can remember
him telling was a story about when he was just a youngster. He lived in
Mitchell, South Dakota growing up, and for his senior prom, he decided to do
what some kids do on prom night; he used an obviously fake ID to buy alcohol.
He said, “I’m surprised I hadn’t gotten caught using it before prom night.” When
he tried to buy alcohol from a gas station, the cashier decided to not let the
fake slide, and he kept the ID until the cops showed up.
“Why
didn’t you run away?” Lacey, my sister asked.
“Lacey,
they had my picture and my name on the ID.”
“Why
would you use your real name on a fake ID?” my sister asked, shaking her head.
“I
was a dumb teenager. I think I even had my address on there,” my dad said,
laughing at his own immature stupidity.
He
went on to tell us about how he was sitting in the jail cell for what seemed
like forever, and finally his parents came to the county jail to get him. At
the end of the story, he says, “One thing I learned from that whole deal is,
when your mom and dad are coming to bail you out of jail, never ask, ‘what took
you guys so long?’ I thought your Grandpa Roger was going to eat me.”
Storytelling
is a part of my father’s personality, and another huge aspect of his personality
is his sense of humor. He often tells jokes that leaves people gasping for air,
and he is somewhat of a prankster. When I was young, my cousin, Alex, was
graduating high school in Denver. However, he did not have all of his classes
complete, and he was going to have to take a summer class to finish his high
school career. The school was still going to allow him to walk through with the
graduates, and his mom still threw him a graduation party at their house after
the ceremony. My dad was giving Alex a bunch of crap for not finishing school
on time. For Alex’s graduation card, my dad ripped a $50 bill in half and wrote
on the card: “you’ll get the other half when you actually graduate.” Another
part of my dad’s sense of humor comes in the TV shows he enjoys watching. His
favorite show is “The Office”, and he often can barely contain his loud laugh
during moments in the show. Not only does he watch the show, but he is starting
to gain a collection of “The Office” props, most notably his coffee mugs that reads
“World’s Best Boss”. Along with props from “The Office”, he cracks jokes from
the show as well, often saying: “I Declare Bankruptcy” or “That’s What She
Said.” Moments like these are part of my dad, and they are tidbits of him most
people miss out on.
My dad does have a sense of humor, but he knows when to
be serious and when to show compassion to others. He does lose control of his
temper at times, but that usually happens after a build-up of events. Although
it is not easy to see, my dad has a soft-heart, and he cares a lot about
people. When I was an eighth grader, we were on the way to a 3-on-3 basketball
tournament that I was participating in. He got a call, and he immediately
answered. His excitement for the day of watching his son play basketball quickly
was swallowed up by a dark cloud; he was informed one of his students had
passed away in her sleep early that morning. I remember his eyes filled with
tears, and he was silent. He had to choke back his tears as he replied to the
man on the phone: “I’m really sorry to hear that. Let us know if there is
anything we can do for you.” After he got off the phone, he was silent and had
to pull the car over to gather himself.
Over
the course of his time as a small-town superintendent, he has continuously
tried to give his students opportunities other students at small schools do not
have. He set up a consortium between Burke and neighboring schools where they
can offer welding, building trades, agriculture, and engineering classes. The
trailers are moved every year, so each student gets a chance to take each class
throughout their four years of high school. My dad wanted to provide
opportunities for his students, and he wanted to give them something in school
they can get excited about. He is always heavily invested in his students’
success at the school he administrates. My dad tries to be the best
superintendent for the Burke School, and he draws some of his leadership styles
from former U.S. presidents. He gets on kicks, reading and watching everything
to do with U.S. presidents. I can recall when he was on an Abraham Lincoln
kick, and he was reading a book about Honest Abe. Every time he was impressed
by Lincoln and things he did and said, he would say, “KP listen to this for a
minute.” He would go on to read in excitement two or three pages about a
meeting Lincoln was in where he said something profound or did something
significant. My dad would stop reading, look at me quizzically, and say, “Can
you believe how bad ass Lincoln was?”
My dad is human, and a lot of people do not get to see
that. They see the man in a suit and tie who will not put up with anyone’s
shit. However, I get to go home and see him working away at his 1986 Chevy
pickup or him roaring at Steve Carell in “The Office”. He is a genuine and
complex man, and that is why people do not see him as I do. My father’s
compassion and care for his job, family, and humans in general does not come
across while he is in the school, working on four hours of sleep and a pot of
coffee.
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