My dad was pretty absent most of my formative years. My grandfather taught me all kinds of country things from gardening on a large scale, scalding and scraping hogs, nature thangs from all kinds of animal habits (and how to hunt), which knots on a toothache tree work, how to build stuff . . . the list is endless. Mostly he taught me how to work.

My father: Yeah, well, he taught me early on that people are ****ing *******s. He also taught me to duck, because more often than not, a damn fist or wrench would come flying at your head for no reason.

My mom: Taught me that you can overcome most things and still be kind, even to those that don't deserve it.

My paternal grandpa taught me how to garden and how to make people laugh.

To those of you that had good parents, may God bless you and them. For those of us that didn't...may we be better than that from which we came.

How not to treat kids and to act the same in public as you do in private. I had to live with my Grandparents and a few other family members at times. My grandfather was one of the church's deacon's all the while cussing out every other driver on the road while he raced us to church so he could put his face on and be the big guy in the church's eye. I won't even say what I found out later he had done to both my mom and her sister and one of my two sisters. My worthless father, last time I saw him before he died, I was 10 and the police were arresting him. My poor mother wasn't much better, addicted to several things plus her choices in husbands wasn't good and did it 5 times before her death.

Like LoneStarSon, my father wasn't much of one. My mom & l took the brunt of abuse that came from alcoholism. Coming up back then the resources were not there to get away from it for a mother and 4 children. Grandparents were dirt poor & we were just a step above it. Grandfather (mom's dad) passed away when l was 6, otherwise he probably would have killed my father. My father did take me fishing, but that was another reason for him to drink. He did work though and provided a home. Mom worked too in a low wage job and she managed the household finances. She aspired to be more and despite only having a GED, she is very smart. She eventually worked herself into a position in the company she was with that had her traveling to Mexico, Guatemala & El Salvador. Her doing this was an inspiration to me when l had the opportunity to go to Russia for work and to AK afterward.

If anything was passed down from my father, it was the idea that l didn't want to be like him. I have never drank anything with alcohol.

Wow. I can't imagine some of the life that you guys grew up in. It's hearbreaking that so many of you had such bad family relationships. My dad was a high school dropout at 16 when all three of his older brothers went to WW2, and like most of the men in his family, became a brick layer. Hard working does not begin to describe it. I grew up in S. Oak Cliff. I didn't think of us as "poor" because we had the just about the same lifestyle as those around us. What we did have is a loving, Christian family. One older brother and twin younger sisters. Dad never met a stranger. When I was a kid it would embarrass me the way he would just walk up to strangers and start talking to them. Many times about the Lord, but most of the time just being friendly. As I got older it became one the things that I will always look back on and smile about. He loved to make people laugh. I got that trait from him. Mom was the one who kept us in line most of the time, but if she ever told us, "wait til your dad gets home"...uh oh. Dad didn't play when it came to doing what mom told us. None of this "I'm gonna count to three [censored]" or "time out". But when I got the punished, I dang sure knew I deserved it. I remember when I was about 8 and had done something stupid that I knew was wrong dad told me something that I'll never forget and have passed it down to a lot of folks. He sat me down on our back porch, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, "Son, there's gonna be a lot of times in your life when you're gonna have to make a decision on what's right and what's wrong. Maybe your friends want you to do something that you're not sure of whether to go along with them or not. He drew a little line in the dirt and said as he pointed to each side, "one side is right, and one side is wrong. There's no middle on this line. If you don't know if what you're about to do is right or wrong, just don't do it and you'll never end up in trouble." Simple words, but man did it save me from myself over and over.

Dad taught me to hate football.


Mom, taught me how to fish. She'd pick me up from school and straight to Belton lake we went. Her and I, banked fished for hours.