I was thinking the other day about my Dad. I guess the best way to describe him was that he was eccentric. He didn’t conform. He was different and did things differently. He had a genius IQ of around 145. In many ways he didn’t belong in the life he was living. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great bread winner and a loving father although I don’t remember us saying to him or him saying to us, “I love you”, I think it was understood. I do know that you didn’t want to make him mad. He took a lot from my sister and I over the years. We wouldn’t do what he or my mother said, we broke the rules a lot, we were kids who pushed the envelope. I like to think we were spunky…(whatever that means) I don’t actually remember getting any spankings, but what I do remember were the long stern talks from my Dad when I did something wrong. I think I would have preferred corporal punishment. I had to sit and listen to how disappointed he was, how I needed to do things better, on and on ad nauseum. It was a long, painful, uncomfortable event. He did most, if not all, the talking. I did all the listening and nodding. I don’t know if those talks actually did any good, but one thing was certain they would continue to happen until I got my act together. Maybe the thought of more stern talks did make me straighten up and fly right.
The Military
My Dad enlisted in the Air Force during WWII The Great War. He had grown up on a farm in southern Illinois and going in the military in his family was almost expected. Generations before him had served and so did he. He had some skills when he went in the military. He was a mechanic. He eventually became a flight engineer on a B-29 crew. The flight engineer as I understand it was responsible for everything being ready and ship shape prior to take off, then he would fly with the crew and continue to monitor all kinds of stuff. After landing he would oversee all of the after flight stuff. A man that learned to live with checklists. Eventually he applied for a program that would lead to becoming an officer. He had no problem with the tests and was in great physical shape so went through officer’s candidate school and was commissioned an officer. He also got his wings and became a Navigator. I am sure he was great at that because he was always good with numbers. Finally he became a pilot and one of his most cherished certificates was that he was a member of a flight crew that flew over the north pole. He flew B-17’s and B-29’s. He would have made a career out of the military but my mom could not handle him being away for extended periods of time and since my mother was the most important person in his life he left the military for her. He stayed in the reserves for years and finally retired as a Major. He was proud of his service and I never heard a negative word from him about regretting having to leave the military for mom.
Checklists
I mentioned checklists. He was a checklist guy. Everything came down to having and using a checklist. I am sure this started for him in the military. In his military world everything was driven in large part by checklists. It was truly essential in every sense of the word. One thing that would aggravate him was when I would leave in the morning and not have everything. He would remind me that if I just had a checklist then I wouldn’t have left whatever it was on my dresser. I knew he was right but, seriously, a checklist. That would be too cumbersome and would eliminate unnecessary trips back home or whatever. I preferred to live on the wild side, without the protection of a well thought out check list. He didn’t like the unplanned, randomness of my life. He would always say that I was trying to burn the candle from both ends. I did know what he meant, but I was moving way too fast to let something like a checklist slow me down. In retrospect he was so right. I wish I had paid a little more attention to his ideas of organizing my life. Removing some of the stress. I wouldn’t get there for years.
Smoking
My Dad smoked. I honestly don’t remember him smoking cigarettes, but I guess he smoked quite a bit and his product of choice was Chesterfields. I do remember him having a horrible cough. There were times that I didn’t think he was going to survive the coughing. One day he went to the doctor and the doctor basically told him he had to stop or die. He stopped and the remaining cigarettes in the pack he had were never smoked. He kept that pack in his top drawer. It was sort of a symbol of the fact that he had made the decision to stop. I didn’t realize how difficult it was for him to stop. I never started to smoke, but I am sure that stopping is not easy. What he did, however, was begin to smoke cigars and pipes. King Edward cigars. These came in cigar boxes. Cigar boxes are very cool. Mary and I used to keep stuff in these boxes. Only our most cherished stuff. Then there were the pipes and the pipe tobacco. Some of that pipe tobacco really smelled great. Some, not so great. He had several different pipes and the tobacco came in these colorful tins. Again Mary and I used the tins for all kinds of things. We didn’t want to throw them away…heaven forbid. In the later years he stopped smoking all together…no cigars or pipes.
The Electric Lawn Mower
In many ways my dad was ahead of his time. I already mentioned that he was eccentric. One of the things that he did before it became popular was have an electric lawn mower. He would mow our grass with this thing. It was very quiet. The biggest issue was the cord. Making sure you had enough and that you didn’t run over it. Both were important. It was always a pain to have to mow the lawn with that thing because of the cord. Why couldn’t we have one of those noisy power lawn mowers like everyone else?
The End Tables
My Dad never really built anything. There were these shows on TV where they would spend the entire show talking about a ShopSmith that could do everything. We never had a ShopSmith or anything even close to that. One day my dad decides to build two end tables for their bedroom. I don’t know why. I think they were the only furniture that he ever built. He saw the design in one of his Popular Mechanics magazines. He bought the wood and started the project. Even with his limited woodworking tools he created two matching end tables with shelves that were epic. They were beautiful. He sanded them and stained them, and you couldn’t see any screws anywhere. It was unbelievable. What a masterpiece. Clearly he could do almost anything when he put his mind to it.
The Library
When other dads were doing “manly” things my Dad was spending time at the library. He was an avid reader. He consumed books like I consume snacks. He read everything all the time. He would go to work and arrive early and read in the parking lot before he went to work. He would sit at the kitchen table surrounded by newspapers, magazines and books every morning. To say he was well read is an understatement. He was always bringing home books from the library. He encouraged my sister and I to go with him and check out books as well. We did do that on occasion but I lost interest, partly because most of the books didn’t have that many pictures, and it was kind of a pain to have the books, keep track of and not lose the books, and then return them on time. What a drag. I was never a library person like my dad. It was like a candy store to him.
Investing
Dad never actually invested. He read the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s every day. He was obsessed with the stock market and investing. He would enter these contests to compete against other people around the country. No money was involved but each person was anonymous, each person had a code name, all entrants started with a certain amount of money…say $5,000. Everyone would start on the same day and begin investing this money…(remember this is virtual money). There would be reports on how entrants were doing. I think they only reported on the top 20 or so. The contest would run for some period of time, maybe 30 to 90 days. My Dad always seemed to do well. I think one time he actually topped the list. He basically did it as validation for all of his reading and analysis of the market. He liked penny stocks. Those were really inexpensive stocks where if they went up one point you might double your investment. The one thing he really did was invest or bet on the people running the companies and the products they had. He would do extensive research on the people running the companies that he invested in. He picked winners and did it consistently. I was very proud of him for how successful he was at this endeavor.
The Inventor
He had this huge roll top desk in his bedroom. It was crazy. Only he knew where things were, which cubby hole had what and so on. He did have copious notes on inventions. To this day I wish I would have gotten my hands on all those notes. Who knows what he had put in those many notebooks. There is little doubt in my mind that some of those things he had written down and made drawings of could have become something of value. Something that could have been patented. It never happened and I don’t even know what happened to those notebooks. I do want to share one particular invention that the entire Hunsinger family was able to enjoy. For lack of a better word we will call it the Swamp Cooler or more appropriately the Swamp Coolers. These were something a little different. Everything my Dad did had some well thought out reasoning behind it. He didn’t do anything without thinking it through, consider all of the positives and negatives and then move forward. Summers in Wichita are not nice. They are hot and humid. You wouldn’t think that Kansas would have that much humidity but believe me it does. You could cut the air with a knife in July thru September. He decided to air condition our house. He couldn’t afford central air conditioning and wasn’t a big fan of window air conditioners so he created our no fan swamp coolers. He made these out of wood. So there was a wood frame that was the same size as the window space once the window was opened. On each side he put small mesh wire. In between the wire he put excelsior. Does anyone know what excelsior is? These are thin curly shavings used for packing or stuffing. At the top was a hose with small holes in it. The hose was hooked up to a faucet and when you turned the water on little droplets of water would fall down on the excelsior and as the wind blew…we are in Kansas…there is always wind. The wind going through the wet excelsior turned the hot air into cool air and we were quite comfortable inside our house. The only negative, if there is one, was that it sometimes got a little humid inside but this wasn’t enough to make you uncomfortable. Frankly his system worked and worked well. He installed 4 of these in various windows in the house and it was as comfortable as if we had real air conditioning and very inexpensive. It didn’t look great on the outside but who cares. It kept us cool. After summer these were put away for use the next year. Go Dad!!!
The Unmentionable
OK, the following story needs to be told. I will make it as quick and as painless as possible. It is like pulling a band aid off quickly. It hurts but then it is over. We used to have a chicken coop. Our lot was a half-acre. Our back yard was divided into two areas. There was the regular back yard. Then there was a fence and on the other side of the fence was the garden area and a chicken coop. We had chickens and they laid eggs. We would go out and collect the eggs. There were a few roosters and they would crow in the morning. One day we are just hanging out in the back yard. My Dad takes one of the roosters and almost without warning grabs the chicken by the neck and rings his neck. I don’t know if you know what that means but basically you are holding the neck and spinning the chicken’s body very fast and then…. I am going to say it… you pop off the chicken’s head. Ever hear the phrase… he or she is running around like a chicken with their head cut off? I have seen it…it is actually a thing… OMG!! I don’t think I was really prepared for that. My Dad was so matter of fact about it. He did grow up on a farm and that always seemed to explain these kinds of things. We then needed to catch the headless bird pluck out all the feathers and cut off the legs. Have you ever smelled wet feathers? Not a great smell. Finally, as if this wasn’t disturbing enough my dad showed us how you could manipulate the toes of the chicken’s legs by pulling the tendons. Seriously? I didn’t need to see that. This is about as quickly as I can get through this little episode. We cooked the bird and it tasted pretty good. I was in favor of buying a processed chicken at the store from then on. They aren’t that expensive and it would be cheaper than paying for months of therapy. One good thing the chicken in question had not been given a name. Thank God.
The Golfer
My Dad loved to play golf. He was pretty good at it. Like everything else he did things a little different than most. He was right handed but gripped the club cross handed. I always thought he would hurt himself, but he had played baseball as a kid and batted cross handed so that is the way he swung a golf club. It worked for him. He also putted left handed. I don’t know why to this day. He was an excellent putter. Believe it or not, with these two oddities he actually shot rounds in the 80’s. Almost unbelievable. I could never get him to change his grip but I do cherish all the rounds of golf we played together. These were wonderful experiences.
The Health Nut
As my Dad got older he was obsessed with extending his life. He read everything he could get his hands on about vitamins and supplements and more pills for all kinds of things. He had a tray of pill bottles and would take these things every morning. I have no idea how many he ended up taking each day. Everyone had a purpose and he believed that he could live an extremely long life with these pills. Nothing was prescription. Everything was over the counter. Mostly natural and homeopathic. He did live almost to 90. I have to believe that those pills gave him a few more years on earth.
The Lottery
Remember I mentioned contests. My Dad when I was a child would enter any and every contest or sweepstakes there was. He never missed one. In later years after the Lottery or Lotteries became a thing he was on board. Again, he had a system. He did attempt to share some of the elements of his system with me, but he lost me once he got into probabilities and in depth statistics, not my cup of tea. I don’t think he ever had much success, but it didn’t keep him from playing all the time. He would participate in a number of different Lotteries. He would have loved California and all of the different lottery and scratch off games that we have here. Maybe his system would have worked in California.
I think about my Dad all the time. I remember all of the mornings that I would talk to him while he was having coffee and looking over his morning paper, the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. He had a great mind and those mornings talking to him about so many different things was actually one of the best parts of my day. Normally I was on my way out and he was about ready to go to bed because he worked the third shift and had come home around 6AM. His day was ending and mine was just beginning. An interesting dynamic to say the least. I don’t know if we solved any big problems during the morning talks but we shared a lot about life and the world.
