My dad was born in 1929. So he grew up poor in Tulsa. His dad wasn't shown a lot of love as a kid and I don't believe my father heard his dad tell him he loved him in his entire childhood or teens. During my pre-drinking age time, which then was 21, I never heard him tel me he loved me. It's just the way it was. But in retrospect, he did love me, and he tried hard to show it. Mostly, he just wasn't very good at it. He'd also created this child, me, when he was 21 and a couple of months from heading to Korea, where he was when I was born. He came back, married less than 18 months and fresh from the hardest time in his life.
He was pretty harsh, and his discipline was not done well. It was more about his reaction than what was good for us. He only used a belt once in my childhood, and surprisingly, it was on my sister, 27 months my junior. I was never spanked with a belt. He spanked my sister that way, because she'd carved her initials in my parents' dresser and then when confronted, lied to him about it. I was not there, so the details of this were told to me second hand, and not close to the time frame it occurred.
Not just because of that, they had a very poor relationship for most of her adult life during his life. I do remember being spanked on the butt much by my father. I do remember being slapped hard in the face several times, and was told of more of those when I was too young to remember. These were things that were not uncommon in the 50's. Today, he'd have been accused of abuse, and maybe rightly so.
But I can also say truthfully, that I respected my father more than I ever did my mother, who showed considerably more love toward me and my sister. But she was commonly a mom whose frequent warning was, "You just wait until your father gets home." She did try to spank us with a fly swatter, but she couldn't really make it hurt, and she couldn't catch me after I was about six or seven. She threatened frequently and followed through seldom.
We were also told frequently that we could eat what was on the plate, or go without, which mom thought was too harsh and would sneak us food. Perhaps, even though I was grateful, her deception hurt her credibility with me.
Dad was logical and I understood most of his verbal discipline, but he had unrealistic expectations about me, in a lot of areas. He wanted me to be Willie Mays and I didn't have the talent to be a Class A backup. Guys like me make terrific coaches, because we have to think the game to compete at all, we make poor players even in high school, and in early adulthood, some of us make pretty good slow pitch softball players.
But he never showed encouragement, just criticism.And always made it harder on me than any other kid. I just never lived up to his expectations. Now the older I got, and especially after he died 20 years ago, I grew to understand more about his background and felt a lot less anger about who he was and how he disciplined.
He did the best he could. He loved us, but just didn't understand how to show it. But I learned respect, in large part because he demanded it. And other men who became better mentors than he was, were effective in my life, because of basics that he taught me.
So even thought he wasn't good at it, I did come to understand that on balance, he was a positive influence. And I'd much rather have had that kind of parenting, than a permissive style that encouraged disrespect and being disruptive.
I did get corporal punishment three times during my school career, twice in the sixth grade and one my freshman year at Plano. And the latter, I got ten and that day deserved none. But there were certainly times in high school when I did deserve it, so it all evened out. Despite three occasions when I still believe I got undeserved swats on the butt, I somehow survived. Probably taught me that unfair is part of life.
I'm a big believer that corporal punishment is a good idea. And I believe that the lack of that in school these days, is at least part of the reason that we need metal detectors at so many campuses.
