Possum Philosophy: Appalachian fathers do well by their children

By ROBERT CAHILL/Columnist

He was born Feb. 17, 1925 to Samuel and Sarah Cahill who named him Guy Spraker Cahill. He was tall and built big. He was extremely strong despite having battled diabetes most of his life. He was, in many ways, the quintessential Appalachian boy, yet in other ways he was a veritable Renaissance man. Most importantly, he was my father. Due to my grandmother’s health problems, Dad spent most of his formative years in the home of his Aunt Pearl and Uncle Charles DeBusk.
Charles DeBusk was 100 percent Appalachian. It was from him that Dad picked up many of his ways. According to my Mom and many of our friends and relatives, Dad was, to say the least, a rowdy young lad (Actually Mom said he was, “Mean as a striped snake when he was a young boy.”).
Mom also said he and I were very much alike. She said it explained why we argued so hotly and often in my younger days. In some ways I agree with her (at least now I do, looking back). For example, Dad evidently was born loving cars. He started driving at 13 years old. Hardly legal, but as Uncle Charlie (who my brothers, sister and I all thought of as a extra grandfather) was one of the earliest deputies in the Saltville-Rich Valley side of the county, not many folks said anything about it.
Dad always liked fast cars and liked driving them that way. He was pretty good at it. Good enough that, early in Mom and Dad’s marriage, some folks (I believe Mom described them as “mean old men”) offered Dad a job as a delivery person. Actually, they wanted him to haul moonshine from this area over into North Carolina. Mom did something then that she ordinarily would not do; she put her foot down and told Dad absolutely not, no way, no how was he going to be a whiskey runner.
Some of my fondest memories of my early childhood revolve around my Dad. Mom and Dad lost their first child, a son, at birth. When a couple of years later I came along and managed to survive, it was like he wanted to keep a watchful eye on me constantly. He took me everywhere. His friends became my friends early on. That is one reason I am so fond of the many great World War II vets. They were Dad’s buds and, therefore, mine too.
It would be hard for my Dad to be a dad today. I remember him having me stand on the car seat, on his lap, between him and the steering wheel and “letting me drive” the car, fun for him, a great thrill for a 3-year-old boy already interested in cars, but enough to send today’s over-parenting safety zealots into apoplexy.
And he did not believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the child (except when it came to his one-and-only daughter). If he thought one of us needed a butt-kickin’ then usually it was a butt-kickin’ we got. Even his daughter on extremely, and I mean extremely, rare occasions.
My teen-age (and a few beyond) years were almost the death of both of us. From the time I was about 15 until I was 21 or so, I was firmly convinced he had to be the stupidest, most arrogant, grouchiest, least tolerant, most demanding human being that ever drew a breath. Then amazingly, as I began to mature a little, he became a much wiser individual, in fact, having started my life as his friend, we became friends once again.
And oddly, just as his friends had always been my friends, my friends were his friends. Guess it’s that old cycle-of-life-karma-yin-&-yang-stuff nature seems to work on us. With me, he always had that tiniest spark of “I brought you into this world, and I can sure as h—- take you out of it,” while with his sons’ friends he was the “uber teenage delinquent.”
As I occasionally look back now, I am amazed at what he taught me and my brothers (and our sister too). We all did well in school, not because we were driven scholars, no sir, but simply because Dad and Mom insisted on it. A less than perfect report card could send him into a rant that would sometimes last for days (actually we were constantly threatened with six weeks of being grounded though it seldom ran more than a couple of days). But knowing that we were expected to make good grades, we did.
We were also all taught to respect our elders. We all still say “Yes Sir” and “Yes Ma’am” to pretty much everyone. We hold doors for older folks and all ladies. If they don’t like it, it is sad. We were taught to do it not to be condescending, but simply to be polite.
And I will say this, the majority of the fathers I knew were the same. And just as Appalachian mothers do, Appalachian fathers felt it was their duty to protect and correct their kids and the friends of their kids all the same. Carl Harris, Charlie Borders, Holmes Coulthard, Whitey Arnold, Marvin Little, Lolly Little, Paul Chapman, Bunk Sword, Jasper Lee, Hugh Helton, Owen Cox, Buck Tolley, the list is practically endless of fathers that wouldn’t hesitate to kick your butt if you were in their home and they believed it needed kicking.
And the only repercussions if you went home and mentioned it were that you’d get a second butt kicking for them having had to dispense the first one. (And this didn’t even begin to cover the uncles from both sides of the family that were like Dad’s deputies when it came to our misbehaviors and enforcing the law. And by the way, they still enforce the law on their miscreant nephews when needed.)
Neither my Dad nor any of these secondary Dads were perfect. They were human. Sometimes they messed up. It happens. But they also were determined to see that their kids and those of their kids’ friends would grow up to be good folks. And it worked out pretty well.
My Dad passed away far too soon. We had only just begun to become true friends. Sadly, he has been gone now for more years than I had the opportunity of knowing him. Not a day passes that something doesn’t remind me of him. Many of my friends say the same thing.
So I want to wish a Happy Father’s Day to all you grumpy, grouchy old Appalachian Dads out there. You are a pretty good bunch of guys in spite of yourselves.

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.