Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
In the course of a bit more than two generations, we’ve gone from “Father Knows Best,” to fathers know nothing at all, at least in the fictional world of Hollywood.
Dads take a beating these days. They’re portrayed as inept, ignorant, lazy, selfish, and completely out of touch with their children.
It wasn’t always this way. Does anyone remember Charles Engels from “Little House on the Prairie?” Ben Cartwright from “Bonanza?” or even Dr. Cliff Huxtable from the “Cosby Show?” If you do, you most likely remember them as caring, wise, devoted fathers and husbands (no matter what their personal life entailed).
Who was the best TV dad? Opinions vary, and when this goes to publication, I’d enjoy reading your comments on who you consider the best father to ever grace the small screen.
I’m going with a single dad, a rarity in television today, but once common in shows like “My Three Sons”, “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” and “Family Affair.”
Who was a better father than Sheriff Andy Taylor in the “Andy Griffith Show?”
With just Aunt Bea to help, he raised his only son, Opie, without an all-knowing, all-powerful TV mom to do all the work.
The show stood the test of time well. The sets, cars, and technology are a bit faded with time, now reaching nostalgia stage, but the content, characters, and interaction, especially between Opie and Andy, are immortal.
This is the day after Father’s Day.
The first Father’s Day is a close facsimile of Sheriff Taylor.
On June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington, the first recorded Father’s Day celebration took place. It was organized by Sonora Smart Dodd to honor her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran and a single dad.
William Smart raised Sonora and her siblings alone after his wife, and their mother, passed away.
Lest you see some grand conspiracy (and who doesn’t see conspiracies in everything now), Mother’s Day was not a long-established holiday when Father’s Day arrived.
The first “official” Mother’s Day came just two years before, in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. Anna Jarvis organized a memorial service for her mother at St. Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton to honor not only her mother, Ann Jarvis, but all mothers.
Ironically, Ann attempted to create a national Mother’s Day celebration 40 years before but failed. After her passing, her daughter Anna succeeded, and President Woodrow Wilson signed the national celebration into law in 1914.
We celebrate Father’s Day maybe with a steak on the grill, a small reunion of the kids and possibly the grandkids, and maybe a new tie, a book, or other small gift. Gifts, steaks, and gatherings aren’t the reason fathers do it.
We have large segments of American society today growing up devoid of a father’s influence. In some neighborhoods, upwards of 80% of the kids in the local public school live with only their mother. Most of these women were never married, and there is a growing trend of men to impregnate and then abandon women. It’s always been there, but the numbers today are astounding, and many of these “baby daddies” have dozens, even hundreds, of unsupported children. It is wrecking the very fabric of society more than drag queens, corporate greed, liberal theology, or right-wing rhetoric could ever dream of achieving.
Which brings us to real fathers. The guy who stands by mom through thick and thin, the guy who wears the same three pairs of pants, the same five work shirts, and who owns just a couple of pairs of shoes. He drives an older, used car or truck and picks up extra hours at work whenever they’re offered.
Many fathers falling into Gen X or Millennial generations do even more. They work all day, come home at night and do the cooking, wash the dishes and try to make life easier for their stressed out, overextended wives. It’s something modern society is forcing both husband and wife and definitely a trend that Ward Cleaver, Andy Taylor, Tim Taylor, Archie Bunker or even Homer Simpson ever had an episode devoted to.
Boys learn to be men from their fathers. When there isn’t a father, grandfathers, coaches, and teachers take their place, but it’s not the same. Mom’s try, but as a veteran teacher and coach, it didn’t take long to discover which boys were living with their mom and had only brief interaction with a distant or totally absent father. The funny thing was that these boys resented their mothers and always had problems with female teachers and staff. It was as if they were striking out at their mothers for being there, or perhaps more accurately, getting the blame for their father’s absence.
If you’re lucky like I was, you had a strong father in the home. If you were even luckier, you had strong grandfathers and were able to see how they helped your father. If you were lucky on the scale of hitting the lottery, you had a great-grandfather you had the chance to know.
My great-grandfather, William Luther Bonner, my grandma Sally’s dad, passed away in 1967. I had the chance to get to know him as a little kid. He was already ancient, to me anyway, in his early 70s, but his interests in farming, especially catfish ponds, cotton, rice, and chickens (he had thousands of laying hens), made an impression.
I’ve written about my two very different grandfathers many times. Forrest Everett Tucker made his way successfully through life as a cotton and watermelon farmer in Lee County, Arkansas and earned a little extra income as a tractor and equipment mechanic. (I wish those skills were passed down a bit more firmly.) Grandpa Tucker did all this with just a third-grade education. He was an amazing man who taught me woodsmanship, humor, diligence, patience, and the value of hard work, always with a smile and an infectious laugh. He never knew a stranger or left a new place without making a friend.
My other grandfather, Eugene Gasser, was a much more serious man. Incredibly intelligent, strong, and hardworking, he arrived in the wilderness that was 1921 Wyoming with a BS in Agronomy and a yearning drive to make the world around him a better place. I had great conversations about history and geography with him, beginning when I was 10 until he passed when I was 16. I’d love an afternoon, or a day, or a lifetime to learn more from him.
That leaves my dad, Luther Forrest Tucker. An Arkansas farm boy who saw the world through his service in the United States Navy and later took my mom, my sister Susie, and me on trips across the country on deployments in the U.S. Air Force. After 20 years in the military, he lived his dream on a farm between Kinnear and Pavillion. A life well lived.
What can you say about your dad? My father was opinionated (especially when it came to my teenaged hair), forthright, diligent, never met a stranger, and worked as hard as anyone I’ve ever known. Yes, he was my father, but he remains my dad.
He passed seven years ago, and I still catch myself starting to dial his number to ask his opinion or advice. I don’t think that will ever change.
TV dads can be humorous, inspiring, or infuriating, but they’re just fictional fathers. The real thing is always much better and much more nuanced.
It’s a day late, but Happy Father’s Day.