Cool Mornings

On cool fall mornings I like to drive to work with my car window wide open.  It gives me a feeling that I’m thinking more clearly, I am more awake, more optimistic, more in control of my life. I’m not exactly sure what it is about fall driving that makes me feel good, but it continues to this day, a subtle, subconscious reminder of the power of our memories of personal experiences. It’s one of the most dependable things in my life, and I look forward to it when the calendar reaches the middle of August. Happens every year.  Birds fly south, I open my car window – same thing.

My best guess is that this feeling’s origin is when I worked at my dad’s lumberyard. I’d ride to work with Dad. Towards the end of the long summers, the mornings would get cold, same as today, and we’d all be wearing sweatshirts to start the morning off. But then as we started working and the sun began to get a better angle on us, we’d warm up and get down to our T-shirts.

I can’t remember too many specific things about the lumberyard in late summer – that cold morning feeling is the clearest in my mind. But school would be right around the corner. Everyone who worked at N.L. Smith Lumber during summers of what I now call ‘the high times’ was in high school or college, so they’d all pick their leaving date.  By September the place changed dramatically, because everyone had left for school.  I’m not too sure what my Dad thought as all his help left over the course of a couple weeks;  he was probably thankful the payroll would be dropping, but I think more importantly to him, he probably didn’t like to see all the young, bright, friendly, funny, hard-working guys taking off and leaving him there for the long fall and winter of the lumber business.

The one thing I do seem to remember about this cooler, transitional time of year is the ritual of making the rounds in the morning to open all the locks on the various doors of all the barns.  Since I arrived at work with Dad, it was almost always me that did the walk-around.  Once in a while one of the Mackowiak brothers got there early and would go around with me, but usually it was just me, walking through every barn in my Dad’s business. I don’t think making the rounds sticks in my mind because there was any particular responsibility associated with it – it was just the ritual of it.

Every lock was a little different.  Some big, some small, some old, all different keys. They’d all be cold when I grabbed them to unlock them, even in the middle of summer. Not so cold that it was unpleasant – just a succession of little chilled jolts to wake me up. Every door had its own personality – the first ones I’d open were the big white symmetrical wood plank doors on the main shed that dated to the 60s, I think.  Huge doors, but they rolled on their tracks surprisingly well for having been there so long. Just inside those doors, in the concrete of the stair landing, were my Dad’s handprints in the concrete from when he was four, in 1932. Then I walked through the main shed to the smaller added-on sheds that connected onto it, bending around to the right, and opening the other smaller doors on the sheds that got less traffic. Some were tough to move, not well-fitted to their openings, others pretty new and easy to open. All these sheds had been added on or modified at different times over the decades.

I think it was during those cool, quiet mornings when just me and Dad would be doing our respective tasks to open up the lumberyard that I started to think that I, as the oldest son, should take over the lumberyard instead of going to college. I was very sure of this chosen direction and took pride in the decision. It could be that I just thought it would make my Dad happy to see his son want to carry on his business, my grandfather’s business. Knowing the relationship between my Dad and me, that probably had something to do with it. But those cold, clear, ritual-filled mornings probably made me feel good about making a decision like that.

When I was near the end of high school, I finally started to become aware of the various things my Dad actually did to keep N.L. Smith Lumber running. Pricing slips, keeping the pricing catalog updated and organized, tracking inventory, making deals with suppliers and competitors. The economy in our area was never exceedingly great, so competition was very keen and collections were always a reality to be dealt with.  Looking back, he really did keep his brain working constantly on the next way to keep making a buck. He was a remarkably disciplined record-keeper. He also had a knack for creating fun sales ideas like the “Saturday Morning Sale”.  I’m sure there were many, many more things he did that I didn’t ever comprehend and never will get the chance to. 

And of course he’d give me tasks to do that sometimes had a small bit of responsibility embodied in them. Nothing much for an adult to feel proud of to be sure, but for a naïve young guy, these tasks had some caché.  Deliveries, driving the hi-lift, working at the counter taking orders.  Big stuff for a 17-year old!  As I came to understand little bits of the business, I’m sure it started to become more interesting to me.  Anything with responsibility attached to it is attractive to a young man trying to grow up: gives you material to brag to your girlfriend! Once you throw in the fact that there is some tradition associated with a family business, and that Dad made it look easy to be a success – well, it starts to become very reasonable career option.

Then one day I said, “I’ve decided I don’t want to go to college, Dad – I want to take over the lumberyard." He looked at me like I had just declared I’d go over Niagara Falls in a barrel! Then he laughed his very own laugh that I’d come to know means “What a crazy idea!” I was stupefied! Why didn’t he like this idea? Why didn’t he think it would be great to work with his son and maintain the legacy of the family business? It was one of those moments of sudden, shocking education that one does not really look for, but everyone has at least a few times in his or her life.

I did not know it at the time, but my Dad was conveying to me business lessons that he had spent over 20 years learning. Hard lessons. Important lessons not many people get to learn, or even have the capacity to learn. He faced and overcame many difficulties. Dad really didn’t love the lumber business. But he thought it was his duty to carry on, provide for his family (including his mother who had been widowed in her 40s), keep a positive attitude, and never give up, and he did that amazingly well. It took me years to actually accept that he was teaching me something – it took me a long time just to get over the disappointment of not following him in the running of a two-generation family business. I was so emotionally invested in it, but he had no way of knowing how a 17-year old feels. Heck, he was busy running the lumberyard and caring for four kids and a wife.      

Now, of course, it’s easy for me to look back and realize he did the right thing. The one thing I realize is that I needed to learn a lot more from him before I told him what I wanted to do. We loved each other and respected each other a great deal, I have no doubt, but our relationship was not one that fostered conversations about the big issues in life – choosing your occupation, choosing your spouse, raising children. I’m not sure why, but that’s just the way people were. We had more of those discussions when I got into my 40s, was divorced (as was he), had a young son, and then later remarried. But I think we both realize now we should have had more of those talks back then, when we both could have used a friend. The kind of friend that only a father or son can be.

Fathers and sons will always share the special bond that comes with their roles and future roles as head of the household, caring husbands, strong-but-wise fathers, and breadwinners. None of us should wait too long to get started having the trusting, careful, empathetic, weighty talks that allow us to understand how to fulfill all those important roles. Now that I am at my current stage of life, I realize that fathers learn as much from sons as sons do from fathers.  Maybe more since fathers have age and experience.

These talks can be hard to start sometimes - actually a lot of the time. But they are the talks that form us, teach us values: respect, love, trust, acceptance. Don’t be afraid of these talks. Walk towards them. When I think about it, they really seem like one of the big reasons we are here on Earth. A book that a great advisor of mine, Don Joseph Goewey, recommended, helped me a lot with just being more aware of how important it is to be accepting of myself and connected to others, especially those close to us: "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brené Brown.

I keep a picture of the lumberyard in a corner shelf of my office.  It reminds me of good things: lessons, friends, fun, work ethic, but really, it’s the most tangible symbol that connects me to my Dad and what he taught me.