fatherhood

Fathers Are As Strong As Brick Walls
by Tim Herrera
Tim's Family Room

Western Pennsylvania summers are muggy and stifling. The humidity gets so high that it almost feels like the air surrounding you is also sweating. It’s hard to forget working outside on those sweltering summer days when I was young. I think my father planned it that way. It was his way of sending me in a certain direction without really pushing me there.

Dad was a bricklayer with arms like Popeye and shoulders like a linebacker, compressed into a frame just a few inches taller than five-feet. He was proud of his work. Often we’d drive around and he’d point and proudly say, “I built that wall” or “I did the brick work on that building.”

Dad was the first member of his family to finish high school and he did so just barely. His lack of education and his lack of real interest in getting one sent him to the steel mills and labor pools scrounging around for wages to help his parents and siblings survive the rough economic times surrounding World War II. He tackled that same hard work every day for more than 25-years.

Hard labor was all that he could do since he had no other training. College was never in his cards. But he wanted me to have a different life, not as hard as his was. When I was in my teens and my father needed help with a side job away from the steel mills he’d tap me on the shoulder and tell me that I had just volunteered for his labor pool. I’d go along for two reasons: I’d make a little money, and I really didn’t have a choice.

“I need cinder blocks, right now,” he’d shout. Dad would be slapping cement with a surgeon’s precision and laying down the block faster than I could bring it to him.

“Hurry up and mix that mortar before it’s too late,” he’d yell. I’d race back to grab the hoe and continue churning the cement that I stopped mixing because I had to tote cinder blocks.

When I wasn’t carrying bricks, I was pushing wheelbarrows full of cement, or carrying tools, or dropping heavy things on my toes. Honestly, I hated that work. I especially hated the work on typical Western Pennsylvania summer days. I knew early on that it wasn’t for me. And I think that’s why my father made me go with him on his side jobs. I think he wanted me to get a taste of hard labor to help convince me of the importance of an education. He never told me so much, but I could read between the lines when he used the subtle approach to push me toward getting an education.

“We sure could use a doctor around here,” he’d say, subtly. I guess that was his way of saying that I should become a physician. If I did, I’d be able to corner the market on sick people living in our little borough of 5,000 people. He also mentioned professions such as “dentistry”, but I never took the bait. However, I never told him that runny noses or root canals weren’t for me for fear that he’d make me help him build a patio.

I eventually gravitated toward the typewriter, rather than the operating room or the steel mill. That suited Dad just fine. He wanted me to have it better than he had. And he got what he wanted. I’m sure he was proud of my accomplishments. He never really said so, but I read between the lines that he never wrote or spoke.

The physical labor that my father endured put a roof over our heads and dinner on our table. We never had a lot of money, but we also didn’t have a lot of needs. Dad’s been gone for ten-years now and every time I see a brick wall or a building, I think of bricklayers. Then I think of Dad, someone strong, sturdy and protective, like a wall.

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Tim Herrera is a nationally recognized family writer and the author of "I'm Their Dad! Not Their Babysitter!" and "Where the Dust Never Settles". His e-mail address is thedadof4@yahoo.com and his website - proudly built without the help of his technically superior children - is www.timherrera.com.

This article provided by the Family Content Archives at: http://www.Family-Content.com

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