Thanks, Dad, for useful life skills.

(Note: A version of this article was published in MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog in 2009. I am re-running it for Throwback Thursday, because tomorrow is the first anniversary of his death from COVID-19.)

Years ago my dad had two teaching jobs: elementary school all day, and an evening gig with adolescents deemed too unruly for regular high school. One evening, a student flipped a penny at him. Dad picked it up and put it in his pocket. The teens laughed, and another one flipped a penny. Then another one.

When my father had 12 cents in his pocket, he said, “Guys, I want to thank you. All I need is 38 more of these and I’m going over to the Fairfield and have a draft beer – on you.”

He could see the horror in their faces: Man, I’m not gonna buy the TEACHER a beer! Not another penny was flung.

That was an example of what he would call a “useful life skill”: realizing that sometimes nontraditional tactics are needed to solve nontraditional situations.

In our culture, fathers are stereotyped as the ones who nag about money and responsibility. Check the Father’s Day greeting card section and you’ll see plenty of references to cash not growing on trees and the need to check one’s oil regularly. You’ll also read a lot about golf, TV remotes and naps.

My dad, Glendon Fisher, had zero interest in sports and rarely had the time to watch television. But he may have invented the power nap, which he called “taking 20.” He’d lean back in the recliner, say “Wake me in 20 minutes,” and fall instantly to sleep.

These brief snatches of shut-eye were a matter of survival, not self-indulgence. My father was and is the hardest-working man I have ever met, except maybe for his own dad – but even that would be a tie.

The fine art of making do

He and my mother married right after high school and had four kids in five years. Dad worked a variety of jobs – glass factory, truck driver, electrician in an auto plant – until he realized that an education would help him create a better future. At age 30 he enrolled in college, the first in his family to do so.

My father delivered newspapers, went to classes, worked various jobs and somehow completed his homework in a small house filled to bursting with four clamorous kids. He did well enough to win a fellowship for a master’s degree in special education. (During that time he got a grant to create math lesson plans, and used some of the money to pay a typist: me, age 12, thrilled to be earning 50 cents a page.)

Summers he either got his old auto factory job back or helped his father, a carpenter, build houses. In his spare time he did tons of improvements on our own home, from plumbing to wiring to remodeling the upstairs. It was years before I realized that most people call a handyman when things go wrong. We had a handyman on staff – that guy taking 20 in the brown recliner.

Other than those little naps, Dad didn’t sit still very often. When he did, it was to do schoolwork, pay bills or write budgets on yellow legal tablets, figuring out how much he could give to the shoe store or the dentist that month.

At times he devised ways to make a little extra: He built a produce stand for our garden surplus, and for a while took the job of recording police tickets for the township. My brother and I ran the produce stand, and at times I helped Dad with the ticket-recording. Once we discovered a ticket for a guy named “George Peed,” which put us both into hysterics – especially after reading the charge, which was “failure to maintain control.”

Mostly, my Dad made do by making do. Requiring lumber for a project, he got permission to tear down an old house. If he needed an extra set of hands, he traded labor with relatives or friends. That is, unless the job could be done by smaller hands.: That “useful life skills” phrase got bandied about quite a bit when he needed us to do things like carry cinder blocks or hold pipes while he soldered them.

Once he bought a two-story Victorian house for $1. That is not a typo. Still in the habit of attending township meetings, he heard a bank’s request to build a parking lot on an adjoining property. A house existed on that parcel. Dad offered to buy it for a buck to save them the trouble and expense of demolition.

He and my grandfather put a new foundation on the site of my childhood home, which had burned down, and then had the house transported there. My brother and his family moved in.

A chance to rest – not that he’s using it

After the house fire (and the divorce that preceded it), Dad sank what money he had into the chicken farm, an 18-acre parcel with a tumbledown farmhouse (and a bunch of dilapidated chicken houses that the previous owner kept long after the poultry was gone). For years he worked the two teaching jobs, spent weekends improving the property, and designed a small and extremely energy-efficient house. Eventually he built it on the foundation of the old house, with help from his father, other relatives and friends.

A decent chunk of his acreage is given over to Christmas trees. My father plants 1,000 seedlings every year for a nurseryman who harvests them as needed. He also has a side business of teaching country line dancing. At 76, he dances four nights a week both as work and for fun.

Dad was lucky enough to remarry, a lovely woman named Priscilla who is as thrifty and goal-oriented as he is. Yet neither of them is averse to spending money where it counts: home improvements, vacations (it’s about time!) and caring for family members. Dad poured a lot of money and time into building a small dwelling on his property for my grandparents, who spent winters in Florida and summers in New Jersey. He found a car for a grandchild who was having problems and, when it broke down, gave her rides to work.

When I was at my lowest point financially Dad made a trip to Seattle. During the visit we went to a warehouse club and he treated me to canned goods, sacks of flour, sugar and pinto beans, and 100 postage stamps. He also threw in several rolls of duct tape, because he believes in being prepared.

That’s why he and Priscilla have a generator, years’ worth of firewood cut and stacked, a cellar stocked with canned and dried goods, and a freezer full of foodstuffs bought on sale. (It was during a visit with them that I came up with the phrase “stealth stock-up.”) They plant a vegetable garden every year, too. If push comes to shove, he says, he can “tell the world to go scratch.”

My father taught me a lot, and always by example: how to make do, how to figure your way around a problem if you can’t go through it, and, most of all, that you should never give up.

Oh, and how to pick up pennies. Some things are just bred in the bone.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Live it up: Take 40, or 60 if you feel like it.

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47 thoughts on “Thanks, Dad, for useful life skills.”

  1. They just don’t make ’em like that anymore, Donna! Your dad is a heckuva guy, and I bet he’s as proud of you are you are of him. Hope he has a great Father’s Day!

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  2. Thank you for a wonderful tribute to your Dad, Donna. We live now in culture that thinks Dads are superflous—I appreciate your reminding us all that they are not.

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  3. Your amazing father sounds much like my own, whom I miss dearly. Thanks for sharing a bit of your dad with us today.

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  4. YOur dad sounds like such an amazing guy!!! Not many would work as hard as he has!! YOu must be so proud of him! I know I felt proud reading this, and he’s not even my dad!! I LOVED the penny lesson…I bet those kids never thought the same way about pennies again!! Good for them! It’s an importnat lessons! I’ve been teaching my 4 year old to pick them up (though, once his little brother comes along and is older, wonder how will divide that up!) and he’s gotten at least two dollars already this year I think in found money for his piggy bank.

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  5. My dad died my first year of high school so I haven’t been able to enjoy learning from him as an adult. But when I was in junior high, he taught me to balance the family checkbook, which became one of my “jobs” to earn my allowance. I was stunned to get to college and discover that very few of my classmates had any clue about this extremely useful skill. He also taught me how to make a recipe from a cookbook the first time, and then to know what and how to improvise and make it from what you had or adapt it to your own tastes. Both skills that have served me well my whole life–thanks, Dad!

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  6. I loved the comment about “tell the world to go scratch.” With the federal deficit being what it is, being self-sufficient is certainly a worthy goal.

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  7. I liked stopping to pick up coins so much I think my dad would walk in front of me dropping them.

    years later I had a boyfriend that teased me b/c I would stop and pick up every coin or I would look down before feeding a meter (often find coins there), I told him it was no different than him only eating pb&j every single day for lunch to “save money”

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    • @Christy: Don’t forget to check the Coinstar machine. Yesterday I found the following coins: a 1964 Kennedy half-dollar, a quarter, three dimes and five pennies.

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        • You would be amazed!!! I worked at a store with a Coinstar, people would leave all of the Canadian coins and other coins that went through without being accepted. Plus sometimes, they just hadn’t heard the coins get rejected…

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          • @Alison: I collect the Canadian coins for a year or so, then put them up on Freecycle. Last year they were claimed by a band mom: The kids were going to a competition in Vancouver. It was only a few dollars’ worth of specie, but it paid for a couple of sodas or snacks.

  8. Remember reading this a couple years ago and it still is lovely — thanks for this tribute and reminder of what matters and how to get there. Loved “George Peed — failure to maintain control” — I see where your wit and humor come from, DF! 🙂

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  9. The useful life skills did not stop getting passed down at your generation. I remember Pop-pop would pay me to help clean his house. I was thrilled to get the money, he didn’t have to clean, so it was a win-win. Just recently I referred to building my raised garden beds as a valuable life skill (forgot it was actually the word useful). He responded on FB, asking “Where did you get this ‘useful life skill’ crap?” Umm, that would be from you Pop-pop 🙂

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  10. Fathers (Parents) like yours are hard to come by these days. I wish more kids would take note of how their good fathers do things and grow up respecting them as you do your father. Thanks for this wonderful article that brings back memories.

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  11. Dear Donna, Every time I read your posts I learn a little more. Your father sounds wonderful, and the advice that he istilled in his family was information I wish my own father gave me. My father’s one bit of advice was “don’t make anyone else rich”. It took me years to figure that one out. Now, I gain inspiration from Donna and her father.

    Thank you both.

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    • Thanks, Sharon, and thanks to all who commented. The older I get, the more I realized I learned from both parents — and how valuable those lessons have been.

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  12. I love this story. I love the story of your dad picking up those pennies. Genius. He sounds like a very hardworking man. I really enjoy reading your articles.

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    • @Tammy: Thanks for your kind words. Yes, he is a very hard-working guy. It’s nice that lately he’s made time to enjoy leisure, even though some of it doesn’t sound very leisurely (growing vegetables, dancing four nights a week, taking bus trips to historical sites).

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  13. Thinking of you Donna. These anniversary days can be tough, especially the first one. Hang in there. This article proves that your Dad left you many wonderful memories (and lessons). What a wonderful Dad you were blessed with!

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  14. I admit it, you brought me to tears with this one. I lost my Dad – a guy cut from the same cloth as yours – to West Nile Virus 14 years ago, and reading this made me so homesick for him! Dads like ours are hidden gems. Thinking of you today, Donna.

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  15. Donna,
    It’s incredible to think how your Dad’s influence has had a ripple effect through you to all of us readers. What a beautiful legacy. May your dear memories be a comfort today and always.

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  16. Your Dad and my Dad would have been great friends if they met.

    My Dad was a Rocket Scientist/Engineer, no seriously he worked for NASA from 1958 to 1993. I grew up watching rockets go up and some going BOOM. My Dad was also a shade-tree Mechanic and would fix neighborhood cars under our oak tree in the backyard. He too was the plumber, the electrician, the roofer and a part-time owner of an Orange Grove when he wasn’t playing Rocket Scientist. After he retired from NASA he became a Substitute Teacher, teaching Spanish.

    They definitely don’t make Dads like they used to.

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  17. Donna, your dad sounds like a wonderful man and provided so many life skills. My dad’s gone 14 years and I miss him so much. Hopefully our dad’s are having a good time and watching over us. My dad liked to take those naps too!! Makes me smile thinking about it.

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