Whatever happened to grown men? You remember grown men, don't you? They wore hats and neckties and often carried pocketknives and watches on gold chains. They invariably smelled of tobacco and aftershave.
It was the approach of Father's Day that started this train of thought. I was thinking about how much I missed my own father, and it occurred to me that there just aren't many like him around today.My father was a grown man. He was not my pal. Even when I became an adult myself, it was always understood that he was the father and I was the son.
I never doubted for a second that he loved me, but we never went off together to the neighborhood bar for a couple of beers. He did not tell me his innermost secrets, nor did I tell him mine.
Things were like that in the time and place where I grew up. Fathers were grown men. You said "yes, sir" and "no, sir" to them. They went off to work every weekday, and they took their jobs seriously. On Sundays, they went to church.
If all this makes these men seem cold and forbidding, it's not intended. It's just that there was a difference in them that's hard to define, hard to explain.
The men of my father's generation came through some tough times. After weathering two global wars and a worldwide Depression, they had an air of seriousness about them that we have lost.
Life was not a joke. A man didn't have time to "get in touch with his feelings" or discover his "inner child." There was a living to make, a house to pay for, a family to feed and clothe, children to bring up and educate.
It never occurred to these men that the government or anyone else owed them anything. And it never occurred to them that they weren't totally and absolutely responsible for their own actions.
To tell you the truth, I don't think we are the men our fathers were. I know I'm not.
My father had to leave college when his father went bankrupt. He had been studying law. He came home and went to work and he never stopped working until his health forced him to retire almost a half-century later.
I never heard my father complain. I never heard him use hard profanity or tell a dirty joke. I never heard him use a racial slur. I never saw him behave impolitely to anyone, ever. Not even one time.
I don't mean to make him sound like some kind of grim paragon. He wasn't. He was human. It's just that today's crazy world makes men like him seem so good now.
It has been almost 20 years since my father died, but a lot has changed in that relatively short time.
We have become a nation of people who got older but never grew up; a nation of people who are not willing to do the hard things necessary to maintain a worthwhile civilization.
These days, men often sound like children: "I can't help it." "It's not my fault." "He did it." "I'm a victim."
Men father babies and then abandon them. Multimillionaire athletes threaten to go on strike, demanding more benefits.
People claim their "rights" have been violated by a copy of the Ten Commandments on a courthouse wall. The president of the United States bares his preference in undergarments to a snickering nation.
Whatever happened to grown men? Boy, we sure could use a few of them right about now.