Hard Lessons – Postcards & Poverty

Fathers often teach lessons they never intended to children more observant than expected.

Photo: Wikipedia by Jeremy Yap, https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/pdm/

Lone man

Slightly under a million years ago my father and I were in the countryside of a Midwestern state.

It was adjacent one of those proverbial “backroads” in the era after small towns became ghost towns.

At most the place might have once boasted a few hundred residents and by then perhaps a few dozen.

There was a paved, dusty and vacant, abandoned Main Street, a closed Bank and former Grocery.

Inside the repurposed latter was a sort of repository of detritus from this former settlement…an “antiques” store, which is a modern euphemism for worthless junk.

Structurally, the building was exactly like you are envisioning: replete with scattered shelves, dimly-lit partially-functioning fluorescent overheads, tile floors covered by grime and a ubiquitous dank odor.

The ramshackle place was manned by a poorly dressed, rather dirty, proprietor who had three young children in similar attire that seemed otherwise happy playing amongst the aisles.

Our host welcomed us, certainly the only visitors this day and likely the only patrons all week, to have a look around.

Being – even at a young age – an aficionado of High Art and Fine Collectibles it was clear the solitary thing within for me was a curious anecdote and I suspected my father would feel similarly…

Only he did not.

Instead of immediately making for the doorway after a polite interval, my father roamed inside for ages; or what those fifteen minutes seemed like to me at the time.

He eventually found a scrapbook of not terribly vintage postcards worth approximately nothing.

Being a moron, I naturally whispered to him such was their obvious value.

My father smiled and said, “Well, I’m going to purchase something.”

So he drummed across those pages filled with colored cards until he chose four or five of passable interest.

He paid. We left. I asked.

“Why on earth did you want those?”

His response, “Because it’s a hard way to go.”

And that, Sportsfans, is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn in your life.

The man who ran the establishment was a baby once and parents who loved him had their own hopes and dreams. His three children had their individual visions of the future. A ten dollar bill, or thereabouts, brought them some little joy on an oppressively sweltering afternoon.

It did not matter their religion, Or their politics. Nor their choices, good or bad.

Enough for my father was that some people – for whatever reason – have hard times.

You should help them, even if you don’t want particularly whatever it is they may offer.

Because it’s the right thing to do.

I think I’ll put that on the back of one of those postcards, which I still have, and mail it to our Washington politicians.

Undoubtedly, it is a lesson they were never taught.