{"id":20,"date":"2015-03-14T11:08:06","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T15:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2015-04-16T16:39:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:39:40","slug":"20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"MUCH OF A MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00a0My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley<\/span><\/p>\n

My father didn\u2019t have a lot of humility.\u00a0 In my day–and even more so in <\/span>his<\/span>–you were expected to be humble if you were poor.\u00a0 Daddy didn\u2019t buy that.\u00a0 Even when he was a farm worker earning a dollar a day on a big north Georgia cotton farm, he thought he was as good as anyone.\u00a0 Or maybe better.\u00a0 \u201cOwning stuff don\u2019t make nobody better\u2019n me,\u201d he always said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because Daddy had charm and was a great storyteller, his boss began inviting him to dinner in the dining room of the big house.\u00a0 Years later, Daddy still talked about the fine grub served.\u00a0 And Daddy, though he was so tall and lean that he was always called \u201cSlim,\u201d could chow down with the best of them.\u00a0 Ham, fried chicken, roast beef, sweet potatoes, fancy breads, and, sometimes oysters.\u00a0 He never cared much for sweets, and maybe that is the reason he made it to fifty-five before having his first cavity.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Daddy told of the elegance and riches of that dining room, my mother was always amazed.\u00a0 \u201cWasn\u2019t you nervous, eating at that fancy table?\u201d she would ask, horrified at the thought of herself in a situation \u201cabove herself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHell, no,\u201d Daddy would say.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m George Junkins. I\u2019m good as anybody.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes he added, \u201cI\u2019m much of a man,\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And he was.\u00a0 Though he only had a second grade education, Daddy was intelligent.\u00a0 He had a mechanical mind and could figure out how practically any machine worked.\u00a0 During World War II he became a precision welder in the Savannah ship yards, despite having no concept of fractions or higher mathematics.\u00a0 The mills in and around Dalton had discovered Daddy\u2019s talents when he and my mother moved there in 1940.\u00a0 Despite the alcoholism that began soon after the move, he nearly always found work.\u00a0 During the times when his drinking became a problem on the job, he could always dry out and then hire on at the same mills.\u00a0 He was that good.<\/span><\/p>\n

Drunk or sober, he didn\u2019t have much tolerance for fools, even when one happened to be his boss.\u00a0 If one asked a numbskull question, Daddy never felt compelled to pretend otherwise.\u00a0 Once when he got an injury working on a lathe, the supervisor asked, \u201cOh, did you cut your finger?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Daddy replied with heavy sarcasm.\u00a0 \u201cI just thought I\u2019d bleed a while.\u00a0 Now wasn\u2019t that a stupid question?\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I suppose because Daddy was so very good with machines, most supervisors accepted such bluntness with at least the appearance of good will.\u00a0 One who didn\u2019t was fired by <\/span>his<\/span> superior, who then promptly rehired my father.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daddy liked having his talents acknowledged.\u00a0 If praise wasn\u2019t forthcoming, he took the job into his own hands and told his bosses how lucky they were to have him.\u00a0 Most agreed.<\/span><\/p>\n

One machine shop where Daddy worked ordered him to weld a leak in a huge propane tank.\u00a0 \u201cNo way,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cIt may be empty, but if there are any fumes, that\u2019s all she wrote.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The angry customer took the tank to another shop, where the welder wasn\u2019t as smart as my father.\u00a0 The tank exploded and caused injuries.\u00a0 Daddy got a lot of mileage out of that story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daddy passed on his mechanical skills, wit, and sharp intelligence to all three of his sons.\u00a0 My sister and I missed out on the first two, but we got enough of the last to do the things we wanted to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been a good legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0My latest book, HALLEY, has just been released by NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley My father didn\u2019t have a lot of humility.\u00a0 In my day–and even more so in his–you were expected to be humble if you were poor.\u00a0 Daddy didn\u2019t buy that.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}