Absolutely Nothing, thank god. He was a worthless piece of shit, abandoned my brother and I when we were toddlers, ended up in jail for non payment of child support, and then, when we reunited and got to know him as adults, discovered that he truly was a worthless piece of shit.
Maybe one good thing. My brother and I paid attention to life lessons, and made a conscious decision to marry and not get divorced. To only have children when we were ready. To have children we truly wanted. and then to not take off when things got rough. It worked. My brother and I still enjoy our 1st and only wives, we have grown and successful children, who have never been in trouble with the law, who have their own stable marriages, and we now have a gaggle of grandchildren we get to enjoy. Because we stuck it out, and didn't take off!
Toenail fungus. Seriously. He gave me his toenail clippers to use on my hands and feet. As a child, I suffered from terrible tinea on my fingers but never had a clue why. I still have the toenail fungus.
Dear old Dad was a remote, neglectful, and thoroughly checked-out codependent married to a raging alcoholic shrew.
I know a lot of y’all hate country, but my Dad loved Willie Nelson, among others, so I heard a lot of country and appreciate some of it.
I heard this song after my dad died, but it reminded me of him.
A retired colonel from a hardscrabble life in Alabama, my dad instilled in me a great moral code.
Another one I won’t put you thru is Reba McIntyre’s “The Greatest Man I Never Knew.”
YES, all that from those having had adverse childhood experiences! Much the same for me...particularly the emergent understanding of all that happened... the bad and ugly, not so much good, it's impact on my life and my inner unappreciation for the experience that lingers and stings still today.
I've found huge solace in watching the fruits of my labor as a single parent, my wonderfully proficient children, leading functioning lives, never having had to endure such profound & all encompassing circumstance. Poverty is a tough road to travel, but add to the mix physical & emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment and other related malfeance...it carries forth generational dysfunction as we see clearly on our streets, behind our doors, hiding in hills surrounding us, and maybe inside of ourselves.
As a teacher, I've had the privilege of working with beautiful children, their caretakers and others trying to assist in sharing the understanding and impact of words, deeds and actions perpetrated on the children. I continue to do so in my daily travels, anywhere I see an opportunity, simple as it may be. A fun example from yesterday perhaps is fitting to mention. Standing in line at Costco, the cutest little kid around 3-4 yo, was facing me while his dad was busied at the register. I find much joy interacting with children, so we started exchanging signals, no words....smile, wave, more smiles... then I watched as he used his chubby little helper hand do its duty to stand his middle finger on his dominant hand staight up, happily showing me his loud and proud achievement, in a Kiki like way. lol His was innocent, however, and was not attached to any meaning toward me except to show that he knew how to do it. Little curly haired cutie pie understood when I broke out my teacher finger in instruction as to say no, no, no. Not shaking my finger at him like a Karen, but the index finger straight up where it moves back and forth without any movement from hand or other digits. I'm quite practiced at it. I followed up with more appropriate gestures, thumbs up, high five in the air...Then, I had a brief conversation with Dad, making him aware that children bring everywhere what they have from home. Dad's finger started shaking at his son, Karenlike, calling his son bad. Of course, I was compelled to interrupt & take more advantage of the moment to explain that his child isn't "bad" but good & making his choices from those who teach him, much too many times not well. Essentially noting in a polite way that it was his, Dad's, fault, not his little baby boy. I call those teaching times mighty minutes.
Stubborn as hell, wear you down with facts, sources and TMI, fiercely loyal, trusting and loving, always trying to help others. Fortunately I have some of mom's traits as well...
@VACCINATE or ICU later 🐊alligator Thank you for acknowledging directly all those stepping up to the father role with love and character, and a shout out to strong women who step into the role aptly and necessarily. Sounds that your Dad did, or even if he didn't need to step into that role otherwise, being biological to you, commendable is how I've always viewed functional fathers & circumstances embraced by them to be. Along those lines, though paved in a different manner, I'm happy to have been the recipient of cards and calls on Father's Day as well. Sweetness & inspiration this message is, love it so much.
I get it. Always thought it would be great to create a line of holiday cards that express these kinds of feelings. Blank cards don't work, cuz you have write something. There's humor, but papering over issues just makes the heart hurt more. I feel better when I look at pictures of my parents as children and think about the experiences that shaped them. Trauma, poverty, isolation and no vocabulary to process any of it, just behaviors.
I have some words, well maybe many words and sentiments for that line of Hallmarks, not limited to the holidays for real. You know, thinking of you messages and such. Crafted perhaps written in a Luttig style, so as to put forth accurately yet politely. Just with more fluency. Maybe some creative art work for the card cover, too... like his record of "achievements". Also, I'm sure if I stumble upon a writer's block, I could easily seek out circumstance from others to inspire & fill my gaps in negative childhood experiences and those of the children I've encountered.
I'm in the camp of not having admirable parental figures. I learned more on what not to do or be from my father or authoritative figures.. The dynamics and poverty of their youth molded and motivated them. I believe I understand them but don't necessarily appreciate them. Lucky you that had decent parents.
My half-siblings are neocon Christians ranging from evangelicals nut cases to blind faith, no denomination, and belief in the stupidity of their bible. They inherited his patterns and property. He was amoral and corrupt.
Once he ripped off a small-town preacher telling him that his trees were diseased and needed treatment. He told the preacher to stay away from the toxic treatment about to be applied. He had my 1/2 brother and me put on protective gear and gas masks. We drilled holes in a large number of trees. We had these syringes full of the tree disease treatment and injected the trees. Then put putty over the holes drilled. The treatment substance in the ominous brown glass bottles was water. It was a total con job. It's kind of funny in retrospect but still criminal.
I was not interested in any of his traits or property. There's me and a couple of other 1/2 siblings and cousins that despise him. Get Kiki here to give him the finger for me. She's talented like that.
Apologies....I erred in imagining you were aware of the circumstances surrounding current dire conditions of those living and having lived through this intended predesigned peril. Ugh on imaginings, sometimes. Here's some of the situation on Hill 57.
Metis Road Allowance Communities: Hill 57 Montana
Compiled by Lawrence Barkwell
Coordinator of Metis Heritage and History Research
Louis Riel Institute
Hill 57, Great Falls, Montana is the location where some of the landless Chippewa, Cree, Metis Native Americans lived. These landless Native Americans settled on the west bank of the Missouri River at Great Falls south of the Fox Farm neighborhood. But the most permanent settlements were on Hill 57, Mount Royal, along Wire Mill Road in Black Eagle (an unincorporated village on the north bank of the river where the Anaconda Copper smelter was located), near the Great Falls Meat Packing Plant (now demolished, but then located several hundred feet north of 5700 18th Avenue N.), and on the bank of the Missouri River near what is now Sacajawea Island. White residents of Great Falls derided these areas by calling them "moccasin flats.”[1]
Winters at the Hill 57 camp were incredibly harsh. While many Native American families survived during the summer by picking food, clothing, and firewood out of the town garbage dump, snow and ice precluded such scavenging during the winter. Many families turned to the county government during the winter, and received minimal assistance that enabled them to survive.
Hill 57, is a local hilltop with rocks arranged as a sign that advertised fifty-seven varieties of pickles, on the northwest side of Great Falls, Montana. It began as a squatters’ village of mixed-blood Indians who moved to the area in search of work, but has persisted as the most visible community of “unrecognized” Indians in the United States. Never housing more than a few hundred people, Hill 57 came to symbolize urban Indian poverty and caused officials in Montana and elsewhere to rethink their support for the termination of federal relationships with native people.
The families who lived at Hill 57 came from two different refugee groups that migrated into Montana in the late nineteenth century. These groups were the Métis—mixed-blood Ojibwa and Cree societies descended from the fur-trader communities of eastern and central Canada—and the Little Shell band of Ojibwas, who migrated west from the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. Common family names among this group were: Azure, LaPierre, Collins, Laframboise and Poitras.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the living conditions at the Hill 57 settlement were crowded and unsanitary, shocking local politicians, social workers, and journalists. Owning no land, controlling no resources, without schools, and discriminated against by the surrounding white and reservation communities, the families of Hill 57 struggled to survive in homemade dwellings. In 1957 Montana senator James E. Murray petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs to designate Hill 57 as a reservation, but federal officials replied that the people should enroll themselves at existing reservations or relocate to a different urban area. Eventually many of the families moved into the city of Great Falls or to other Montana towns.
On May 3, 2014, the Little Shell Chippewa had the dedication ceremony for their new cultural center located on the historic Michif road allowance community site at Hill 57 in Great Falls, Montana. Guest speakers from Canada included Karon Shmon ( Director of Publishing) and David Morin (Curriculum Developer) of the Gabriel Dumont Institute (GDI) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Norman Fleury (author and Michif-language consultant) and Lawrence Barkwell (author and Coordinator of Métis Heritage and History Research) from the Louis Riel Institute (LRI) in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
[1] The federal government denied responsibility for unenrolled, non-recognized, or off-reservation Indians. City, county, and state agencies frequently refused assistance out of the misconception that all Indians were wards of the federal government. Compounding the jurisdictional conundrum were two federal Indian policies instituted in the 1950s that increased Indian landlessness and poverty: Termination and Relocation. Under Termination, the federal government dissolved its trust responsibilities to certain tribes. Deprived of services and annuities promised them in treaties, terminated tribes liquidated their assets for immediate survival. When the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe was terminated in 1953, some families moved to Great Falls to live with their already impoverished relatives on Hill 57.
In 1952, Sister Providencia Tolan, a nun teaching sociology at the College of Great Falls committed herself to alleviating poverty among these disenfranchised people. What began as an effort to solve a local problem grew into a twenty-year crusade on behalf of all American Indians, taking Sister Providencia Tolan from Great Falls to Congress. In the process, she collaborated with charitable organizations and Indian advocates to change the course of federal Indian policy.
What you and your peoples have endured for centuries is unspeakable, I have no best words for it, but you do. Each time you share these perilous facts of severe maladies of humanity, chances are others without such in-depth knowledge or experience become aware of truth and perhaps increase their compassion and understanding of these historical and current circumstances. Difficult to view as it may be, it's my hope that it does (that's my truth) and will continue to do so.
I know what you're talking about now or more who. If you had said "LIttle Shell" band I would have had an Idea. You said area 57 which I assumed to have something to do with the nearby Air Force Base.
They are basically a multi-generational group of refugees from the encroachment of Euro-Americans. They are far from their origins in the Great Lakes area and Canada. Little Shell was their leader or voice and the entire band took on his name.
I knew a number of those people. They were generally really good people. They helped me out a lot. Helped me with getting access to services. I lived relatively close to Hill 57 but never went there. Actually, I knew nothing of hill 57 back in the 70s and lived between that hill but closer to downtown. Natives were scattered about usually where they could afford housing. I was not familiar with the flag discussed. Goody, they got a flag but were displaced, disregarded, and ignored for a very long time. What that flag symbolized has likely long been violated/spat on. I met one of the Little Shell leaders back then, Robert Gopher. He got mad at me because I was involved in a racist situation but too young and dumb to challenge it which is what he wanted me to do.
Gt Falls changed a lot over the past decades. Mainstreet businesses have sprawled out towards the highway. Downtown is somewhat empty. Last I heard Littleshell had state recognition as a tribe but I don't know about FED. These people are real Natives, not some fake group of Others who popped up practically out of thin air to try to get access to casino rights. I have the blood of those people, actually more of those bloodlines than from where I'm enrolled. I am many Nations.
@Dip Dibbler Thanks for clarifying and adding your important insight. Denotation always rules understanding. Area 27 has other ventures illicit and otherwise, with Little Shell as merely one amongst them... imagining more clearly now from what little I've read and what you've said. Yeah, huge sarcastic goody, goody, gumdrops on flag lawsuit being settled, only it's not. Point sadly to mention is that, to my knowledge regarding the flag, the rightful natives don't yet have anything, the long drawn out disrespecting grift is astoundingly offensive and continues.....the no flag for you Nazis in the black robed court said so, so there it stands until appeal. There's lots of money involved, and major cultural implications, of course.
Speaking of gumdrops, I'll be soon dropping a new candidate on the Songs I Hate page, so sing along. Not lol. Won't win the big prize, but surely belongs there.
Happy to hear of this tribe state recognition, but damn, the fight for it and justice in all else perpetrated moving forward made much harder than it should be....perversion for power, money, fame, or sick compulsions toward genocide as reasons behind the snail's pace, both I imagine, damn.
If I knew then what I know now...wisdom comes with age, one of life's funny charms haha. I imagine you understand at this point in your days...I do, too, and so do thankfully many, many other reflective thinkers, I venture to imagine. Maybe not enough, however. Also, many Nations, eclectic you are, no best words but smiling at the pretty cool factor imagining but digress don't know nor understand,currently, important intricacies involved .
Literally nothing. But my BIL is a great guy, and I'm super happy for those of you who had good dads.
Absolutely Nothing, thank god. He was a worthless piece of shit, abandoned my brother and I when we were toddlers, ended up in jail for non payment of child support, and then, when we reunited and got to know him as adults, discovered that he truly was a worthless piece of shit.
Maybe one good thing. My brother and I paid attention to life lessons, and made a conscious decision to marry and not get divorced. To only have children when we were ready. To have children we truly wanted. and then to not take off when things got rough. It worked. My brother and I still enjoy our 1st and only wives, we have grown and successful children, who have never been in trouble with the law, who have their own stable marriages, and we now have a gaggle of grandchildren we get to enjoy. Because we stuck it out, and didn't take off!
My father's myopia and astigmatism.
Full head of hair at 57
Toenail fungus. Seriously. He gave me his toenail clippers to use on my hands and feet. As a child, I suffered from terrible tinea on my fingers but never had a clue why. I still have the toenail fungus.
Dear old Dad was a remote, neglectful, and thoroughly checked-out codependent married to a raging alcoholic shrew.
Happy Father's Day.
Fathers day is the first Sunday in September.
I was born on fathers day. My old man never let me forget it.
I know a lot of y’all hate country, but my Dad loved Willie Nelson, among others, so I heard a lot of country and appreciate some of it.
I heard this song after my dad died, but it reminded me of him. A retired colonel from a hardscrabble life in Alabama, my dad instilled in me a great moral code.
Another one I won’t put you thru is Reba McIntyre’s “The Greatest Man I Never Knew.”
My Love for everything American. My dad was just a happy 13 y.o. boy, when the 'Amis' showed up and the war was over.
Gardening and education as well
A full head of hair in my 60's, and I appreciate that!
YES, all that from those having had adverse childhood experiences! Much the same for me...particularly the emergent understanding of all that happened... the bad and ugly, not so much good, it's impact on my life and my inner unappreciation for the experience that lingers and stings still today.
I've found huge solace in watching the fruits of my labor as a single parent, my wonderfully proficient children, leading functioning lives, never having had to endure such profound & all encompassing circumstance. Poverty is a tough road to travel, but add to the mix physical & emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment and other related malfeance...it carries forth generational dysfunction as we see clearly on our streets, behind our doors, hiding in hills surrounding us, and maybe inside of ourselves.
As a teacher, I've had the privilege of working with beautiful children, their caretakers and others trying to assist in sharing the understanding and impact of words, deeds and actions perpetrated on the children. I continue to do so in my daily travels, anywhere I see an opportunity, simple as it may be. A fun example from yesterday perhaps is fitting to mention. Standing in line at Costco, the cutest little kid around 3-4 yo, was facing me while his dad was busied at the register. I find much joy interacting with children, so we started exchanging signals, no words....smile, wave, more smiles... then I watched as he used his chubby little helper hand do its duty to stand his middle finger on his dominant hand staight up, happily showing me his loud and proud achievement, in a Kiki like way. lol His was innocent, however, and was not attached to any meaning toward me except to show that he knew how to do it. Little curly haired cutie pie understood when I broke out my teacher finger in instruction as to say no, no, no. Not shaking my finger at him like a Karen, but the index finger straight up where it moves back and forth without any movement from hand or other digits. I'm quite practiced at it. I followed up with more appropriate gestures, thumbs up, high five in the air...Then, I had a brief conversation with Dad, making him aware that children bring everywhere what they have from home. Dad's finger started shaking at his son, Karenlike, calling his son bad. Of course, I was compelled to interrupt & take more advantage of the moment to explain that his child isn't "bad" but good & making his choices from those who teach him, much too many times not well. Essentially noting in a polite way that it was his, Dad's, fault, not his little baby boy. I call those teaching times mighty minutes.
Stubborn as hell, wear you down with facts, sources and TMI, fiercely loyal, trusting and loving, always trying to help others. Fortunately I have some of mom's traits as well...
I get it. Always thought it would be great to create a line of holiday cards that express these kinds of feelings. Blank cards don't work, cuz you have write something. There's humor, but papering over issues just makes the heart hurt more. I feel better when I look at pictures of my parents as children and think about the experiences that shaped them. Trauma, poverty, isolation and no vocabulary to process any of it, just behaviors.
I'm in the camp of not having admirable parental figures. I learned more on what not to do or be from my father or authoritative figures.. The dynamics and poverty of their youth molded and motivated them. I believe I understand them but don't necessarily appreciate them. Lucky you that had decent parents.
My half-siblings are neocon Christians ranging from evangelicals nut cases to blind faith, no denomination, and belief in the stupidity of their bible. They inherited his patterns and property. He was amoral and corrupt.
Once he ripped off a small-town preacher telling him that his trees were diseased and needed treatment. He told the preacher to stay away from the toxic treatment about to be applied. He had my 1/2 brother and me put on protective gear and gas masks. We drilled holes in a large number of trees. We had these syringes full of the tree disease treatment and injected the trees. Then put putty over the holes drilled. The treatment substance in the ominous brown glass bottles was water. It was a total con job. It's kind of funny in retrospect but still criminal.
I was not interested in any of his traits or property. There's me and a couple of other 1/2 siblings and cousins that despise him. Get Kiki here to give him the finger for me. She's talented like that.
Duct tape is the greatest invention and don't die from Alzheimer's