Of his father, Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
As a teenager, I thought the same way about my father: But, after going off to college for four years, completing an overseas military tour of duty, and returning to the Mississippi Delta, my attitude toward Dad, like Twain’s, took a 180-degree turn.
While working under him for twenty-one years as manager of his cotton farming and ginning operation, I began to understand and appreciate the reasons for his tough ways, his blunt-spoken, taciturn nature, and iron-fisted supervision of employees. During the Great Depression, he had to drop out of school and work to help the family survive. He learned the value of a dollar, and held tightly to every one of them he earned.
As a boy, Dad put in long days as a carpenter’s helper, and in time became a master carpenter himself. When World War II broke out, he volunteered and served this nation four years. Then, with no education, no money, and no credit, he rented two hundred acres from a wealthy doctor who agreed to let him work the land on a crop-sharing basis.
How he supported a large family and met his financial obligations, I’ll never know, but he did, and in 1953, after borrowing every penny he could and convincing a production lender to grant him a crop loan, he took control of Dunleith Plantation and never looked back. Fifty-two cotton crops later, he retired.
Now that I am a father and a grandfather, I often reflect on what my father instilled in me that has done the most to help me find my way in life. I have no doubt about what his most valuable gift to me was: his ways. They worked for him, and he knew they’d work for me.
Dad taught me to face problems head on, to never postpone dealing with them. To do so was cowardice in his mind. He taught me to be unflinching in carrying out the responsibilities of supervision. When he put me in charge of his workers, he made sure that I never asked them to do what I wouldn’t do, meaning that I had to go to the field at daylight with them and not return until sunset. My responsibility was to make certain they earned their wages.
Now, as a college teacher, I deal with my students the same way. I have no patience with those who have been inculcated with the belief that their comfort zones, self-esteem, and tender sensibilities must be preserved. As Dad taught me, I teach them: People deserve only what they earn.
I’ve never met a man who was my father’s equal, and every Father’s Day I thank him for the most valuable gift he gave me: his ways.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
Other books by Jimmy Reed include The Jaybird Tales.
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