My Self Reliance Hero

My Dad’s birthday was yesterday – his 90th. In our conversation about this milestone, he commented that “things sure have changed since I was born – a time barely out of the horse-and-buggy years.”

Knowledge has grown and technology has progressed exponentially since 1921. “Back then…” as old folks usually begin, people were more self reliant — because they had to be. There was no Walgreens or Walmart every mile or so in the city. No Home Depot or Lowes to run to for that latest tool we think we need.

They had to improvise. And my Dad was, to me, the King of Improvision. He could make or fix anything. He built our house, starting with a bare one-bedroom, one-bathroom army barrack.

He added another two bedrooms, a big porch, new appliances, and prettied up the outside. My Grandfather gave us a 1/2 acre lot to put it on, right next door to their house, on which he had already planted peach, plum, apple, apricot, and cherry trees.

Dad knew how to fix the car (no matter what was broken), build a shed, lay cement, fix small appliances, tune the rabbit ears on the TV (when we finally got one), and make stilts for us kids out of some 2x4s he had in the garage.

Our garage was never a home for the car — it was a veritable hardware, lumber, “everything” store. He never threw away a piece of lumber, scrap of metal, plywood leftovers, or a broken tool, and straightened every used nail to make it useful again. There was a dizzying array of screws, nuts and bolts, all organized in old coffee cans and labeled. His numerous tools hung neatly on peg boards, and the garden tools were “magically” attached to the wall closest to the door for easy access.

My favorite of all his creations, however, was the playhouse he built for us out under the apple tree. Slightly hidden from view from the rest of the yard, behind the raspberry patch, and generously shaded by the apple tree, we spent hours in make-believe lives in that little house.

Most of our vacations were short camping trips as we had little money for travel. Although we had a couple of army sleeping bags, the beds dad made for us kids was, I thought, the most creative.

First he would gather shovels-full of pine needles for the mattress. Then he would fold and layer several wool army blankets over them. A thick quilt would cover us and he would tuck all three edges in under the army-blanket mattress. The best part though, the hot rock he had earlier put into the fire pit to heat, was wrapped in layers of newspaper and inserted at the foot of our beds to keep our feet toasty warm.

In my adult years, I am well aware that our family didn’t have a lot of money, but I didn’t notice as a child. I thought everyone lived exactly as we did — simple, frugal, making do with what we had. And they did, at least in our neighborhood. But not having a lot of money and having an innovative, improvising dad, taught me valuable lessons about being creative and figuring out how to best accomplish a task or a project.

Dad assured all three of us girls that we could do anything we set our minds to. With a teacher and a hero like Dad, how could we dare to be anything but self reliant?

Playhouse Photo

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Joan has lived more than a half a century and is still learning new self-reliant ways – mostly because of this website. She loves to help others learn also with her website and newsletter at Family-Survival-Planning.com.