Happy Fathers Day!

I hope all you fathers out there are able to be with you kids today, or at least are able to get in touch with them. Don't forget your own father in the process. My children are actually with my father this weekend. I have just returned from a vacation with them all. I was able to go fishing with my father this week which is a treat that I don't get as much as I would like.

 My father didn't have a father of his own. He had an abusive stepfather instead. But, he did have a wonderful grandfather who taught him how to work hard and love hard. After he passed away when my father was still in his early teens, the only example my father had was his stepfather who hated him. My father left home at the age of 16. He got a ride from rural Georgia to rural Florida and started working in orange groves. His grandfather who had taught him how to work hard, had given him pretty much his only skill. Still, it was enough in those days. My father is a self taught man. He has read a newspaper every day that I have known him. Even though he never graduated high school, he made sure he wasn't uneducated. What ever skill he needed, he made sure he got it. He took a lot of night classes learning math and was able to eventually get a General Contractors license. He owned his own construction company and has built a lot of houses, condo's shopping centers and various buildings all over Central Florida. I know this all too well because, as his grandfather did with him, he took me and my brother to work with him.

My great Grandfather would fetch my dad and take him out to the Georgia fields to work picking cotton and other various crops. My father taught me and my brother how to work hard with a shovel. We dug footers, poured concrete, toted block, laid down wire and steel and finished the concrete. We even operated heavy equipment at a young age. I started running a Bobcat when I was 12. By the time I was 14, I was running very large front end loaders and backhoes, to the amazement of his clients. I swung a many a hammer growing up, putting up the trusses and laying out the internal framing. Screw guns were a new product back then and I I remember that the company owned 2 of them! Of course nails were still usual way to go. There is not as much need for hammers now as there used to be.

Of course, I didn't appreciate spending all my summers and spring breaks and various Saturdays with my father... at the time. Now, I wish I could have more of those days. I love my father and appreciate him for teaching my how to work hard and play hard and love hard. Thank God, he's still with me today and I can tell him this. I know some of you only have the memories of you father today. Don't have regrets today, just cherish those memories and invest in your own children. For those of you whoare missing their father today, this is for you. Remember this, our father in heaven is with you always.

-Jim