"Just wait until your father gets
home!” Those words, even today, strike a
sense of fear and foreboding deep down within my soul.
Corporal
punishment was a way a life, a rite of passage, in the non-politically correct
world of the 1950s and 60s. While I only
recall a few times receiving an all-out, down-home, honest-to-gosh “whooping,” the
mere threat of such a cataclysmic occurrence was enough to keep me walking the
straight and narrow most of the time.
But
without question, the most severe punishment I ever received from my father
came not from the force of his hands but in his words of shame when I acted
most inappropriately at a football game. We had traveled to an out-of-town game
one Friday night; I must have been around 12 or 13. I saw some of my friends and asked my dad if
I could go and see them. “Just be back
in time for kickoff,” he said. Football
was like church, when the main event started you were expected in be in your
seat paying close attention.
There
were several of us who were horsing around near the end zone while the teams
warmed up. We were having a grand-old time
when the band marched out onto the field and prepared for the national
anthem. One of my friends had the bright
idea that when the band started playing we should march like soldiers. Then one of the guys said, “Hey, I know what
would be even better. Let’s do the goose
step!”
The
PA announcer asked the crowd to stand for the national anthem. Everyone stood, placed their hands over their
hearts, and faced the flagpole at the end of the stadium. As the band began playing and the American flag
started to ascend the rusted pole, a group of boys performed the goose step
march for all to see.
We
only marched two or three steps before we stopped in a fit of laughter, but it
was a nervous laughter, because we immediately knew we had done something
terribly wrong. I hung my head and went
back to the stands to sit beside my father.
I expected a harsh reprimand with a promise of a “whooping” when we got
home, but my father didn’t say a word—he didn’t have to.
We
sat through the entire game in total silence.
Like a condemned criminal on death row awaiting his execution, I
somberly pondered by fate. When the game
was over we quietly walked to the car.
The tension was palatable. I’m
sure my dad was carefully choosing his words as he smoked a cigarette, the
smoke being pulled out of the little vent window, the steady sound of the wind
whistling through the car until my dad finished his smoke and pulled the window
shut creating a sudden ominous silence.
My heart was about to burst.
“Son,”
he said sadly. “I was ashamed of you
tonight—very ashamed.”
I
tried to hold back the tears as my father spoke of the war veterans who had
been at the game, including some who had been held by the Germans as a
POW. He told me how many of those men
had seen their best buddies slaughtered by those goose stepping Germans. He talked about the high price of freedom, of
the blood that so many had shed. He told
me that I had disrespected every man who had fought for our freedom, and while
he didn’t mention himself, he was one of those veterans, too.
His
final words were, “Don’t ever make me ashamed of you again.”
Whenever
I honor our veterans in a worship service, write a newspaper article on the
significance of Memorial Day, or speak on the precious gift of freedom I think
of my father and the powerful lesson I learned that night. I know there were many times I did not live
up to his expectations after that painful event, but I don’t think I ever gave
him a reason to be ashamed of me again.
He died 18 years ago. I will be
thinking of him tomorrow on Father’s Day.
I hope I have made him proud.
