Phil Hudgins
Remember the old TV show “Father Knows Best?” Well, if you are a father or if you ever had a father – that would include us all – you probably know that fathers don’t always know best. Sometimes they guess. But most of them try to make the right decisions, I believe, and most of them would certainly sacrifice for their wives and children.
My sister reminded me of a sacrifice our daddy made willingly and without complaint when we three Hudgins kids were young: He was always the last one in the bathtub.
Now, that might not sound like a big deal. But consider that Daddy was the last one in the tub and in the same water that the rest of us used. That’s right. We ran a tub about halfway full – nobody needed a full tub of water – and then one of us kids would bathe. Then another. Then another. Sometimes, I suppose, Mother sneaked in there, too.
“Save the bath water for your daddy,” Mother would say when she wasn’t the one who preceded Daddy.
Can you imagine what that bath water looked like after it had been occupied by three, maybe four bodies? You couldn’t see the bottom of the tub.
We could’ve taken a shower – there was one, of sorts, that came with the one tub in the one bathroom – but showering at our house wasn’t a good idea. A leak at the shower head squirted water behind the unstable, metal-like tile wall, which then came loose and fell over on the naked occupant.
“Nothing back then was done to excess,” said my wife, whose family always ate cracked eggs from the little hatchery her daddy started. “Everything was done in moderation.”
“Moderation” might not be the right word. Moderation would be only two people bathing in the same water. It would mean using cracked eggs only when you baked a cake and no one knew the whole story. A sane person certainly wouldn’t cook cracked eggs for breakfast. But they did. And nobody got sick.
Daddies are expected to sacrifice for their wives and kids. Actually, daddies are supposed to sacrifice. That meant that if your wife’s mother – who wasn’t always a pleasant person – needed a place to live, you let her move in, even though the only place for her to sleep was in the standard-size bed with your only daughter. I wonder if my sister still sleeps hanging onto the rail on her side of the bed.
Daddies are supposed to do things for their kids without griping. Ballet recitals aren’t as much fun as watching the ball game on TV, but daddies go anyway. Daddies are supposed to work hard, listen to complaints, and occasionally make a decision. Sometimes, fathers really do know best.
When the dentist told my sister she needed braces, Daddy asked her, “Can you eat OK, Elaine?”
My sister never got braces.
Today, nearly 60 years later, she has the most beautiful smile you’ve ever seen.
Phil Hudgins is the senior editor of Community Newspapers Inc. Reach him at phudgins@cninewspapers.com.