Great Father’s Day — By Tommy Purser

What a great Father’s Day I had!
All my children came to Hazlehurst to see Dear Ol’ Dad.
Actually, that wasn’t why they came to Hazlehurst. They came because they were summoned here by the good wife. They were summoned here to rebuild a deck behind our house.
And they accomplished the task in two days of work. Two days of work in swelteringly hot weather.
Actually, only two people — my only son and my only son-in-law — did the great bulk of the work. My eldest offspring, the wife of the aforementioned son-in-law, did some work, too, but mostly the work was of the go-fer variety.
I helped a little bit but my main contribution to the project was to shut up and get out of the way and let the two guys do it however they wanted to.
I am unabashedly proud of the fact that I did, indeed, shut up and get out of the way.
It was a refreshing change of nature for me.
The good wife, on the other hand, had no such self control. She did what she always does when I’m working on her projects — she intervenes, filled with the mistaken assumption that she, not I, know how best to accomplish such tasks.
This time, she was unfazed by the fact that I was nowhere to be found to graciously accept her critical assessment of my work effort. She deftly shifted gears and directed her critical assessments not toward me but toward my unwittingly naive son and son-in-law.
My granddaughter showed up later with my soon-to-be-grandson-in-law in tow. He was a great help to me during the weekend, once he completed the task of seeing to the needs of his soon-to-be-wife, i.e., my granddaughter, who threw a wrench into the works by stepping on a protruding nail. After a trip to “urgent care,” a tetanus shot and a dose of pain medication, she, too, went to work. And it was real work, not the managerial type, intrusive work ala the good wife.
Anyway, the work was completed, the good wife was made happy, and THAT, dear friends, is the greatest Father’s Day gift I could have wished for.