Dad’s “Investments”

Last weekend my five siblings and I gathered on the home place to clear the barns out from years of collecting. Our Dad grew up during the Great Depression and he believed that an item should be kept “just in case I may need it”. There were boxes of wheels of various sizes and types, engine parts, piles of metal pieces, stacks of lumber, a group of used doors, drawers full of tools, and ump-jillion coffee cans and jars of sorted nails and bolts. I could go on and on.

 

Speaking of going on and on, Dad also had “to do” lists that went on and on. He wrote notes and drew plans on everything- I even found them written on one of those old doors we hauled out for the sale. Several of the paper lists always hung out in the garage and shop, reminding him of his many fix it jobs and projects that he wanted to someday complete. I still have a couple of those lists- left unfinished of course.

Dad liked working outside on the farm. He was a perfect example of the saying, “You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.” When heading out the back door to go to the shop he would sometimes say, “Let’s go have some fun!” Those stockpiled treasures in the barn were the materials he used to tackle one of those jobs on his “to do” list. When finished he used his fat, square pencil to mark it off the list before heading in for supper.

A couple weeks before, two of my brothers used the one small working tractor and some chains to haul the 20 or so tractors that didn’t run from the side sheds and hedge row. Dad had collected these tractors over the past 50 years, scouting out models like his dad, uncle or neighbor had. It was a motley crew of machines, but they looked real fine all in a row.

After we pulled everything out of the barns, we had an auction to send the items off to new homes. During the sale, the men in jeans, plaid work shirts and ball caps gathered in small groups telling stories about them, discussing their value and how much they should bid. Others dug through the boxes of items on the trailers and assessed what the stuff was worth.

The auctioneer began the bidding and while his pleasant chatter came over the sound system, the people’s hands went up to bid as they decided how much to invest in their own stockpile of treasures that would head to their own barns and garages.

Value. Worth. Investments. Stuff. It’s gone now. The farm is clear and quiet.

Was it sad? Kind of. It was the end of an era in a way, less reminder of dad’s presence on the farm. But it was bittersweet as we all knew that the items of real worth to dad/grandpa weren’t on wheels or set out on trailers. They were walking around the sale visiting with one another and watching grandkids.

My daughter, Bethanie, wrote on Instagram, “My Grandparents’ house has always been a place where people feel comfortable gathering. We eat, we talk, we laugh, we drink lots of coffee. Today we gathered to listen to an auctioneer at their farm sale. It was strangely comforting to think about how much my Grandpa loved tinkering with those wheels and gears, but knowing that to him it was just stuff, and the things that really mattered in life was family and friends.”

Dad said that he had made his investment in his six kids and his grandchildren were his dividends. I always loved it when he said that. Coffee parties with home made ice cream and family get-togethers were part of the reason the “to do” lists never got done. But a grandchild in the lap would trump working in the shop any day.

Thanks for the lesson in investing well, Dad. Now we, your children, are making our own investments in kids and grandkids. We miss you, but we realize that we are only apart for a little while. So until then, “Let’s go have some fun!”

PS- Hey Dad, would that make our grandkids your “compound dividends”?