Walking Among Giants

In the grand scheme of things I suppose few of them made much of an impact. None of them cured a disease, threw the winning touchdown pass or in a few cases were even successful in business ventures, but they were truly giants and I am proud to say I walked among them. Simple men with simple tastes, they were mostly family men who in their gray years doted after grandchildren with the love and tenderness that sometimes was missing from their attention to their own children – making up for past mistakes, I suppose.

They were farmers, ironworkers, carpenters, and laborers of all sorts. Giants like my father, my grandfather, and other hard working, rough-hewn men of their era, they worked tirelessly to provide for their families and in turn strengthen their country. They labored every day, rarely pausing except for Friday nights to cheer on the home team, Sundays to give praise (and maybe do a little fishing) and then started it all over again come Monday morning. As a child I was in awe of them: their rough clothes, work-scarred hands and how big they were! My lord, they were huge! When they weren’t working you could find them at the grain elevator, hardware store, or wherever giants congregated to discuss the news of the day: how the corn was lookin’, how the boys were doin’ overseas, or if this really was the year the Cubs were going all the way. They towered over the very land they nurtured and it seemed to my adolescent mind that I was walking in a denim-cloaked forest whenever they gathered; their conversations eventually turning to tales of “the olden days,” the days before marriage, children and long hours of work.

Many went off to war as young men (boys really), staying away just long enough to serve their country, but quickly returned home to start their own families and their own lives with their uniforms packed neatly away. A few of them were even hell-raisers in their younger days; how do you think I learned about cow tipping? They talked about running hoop nets in the river baited with ungodly concoctions guaranteed to bring in the “big ‘uns” or how they used to go to a particular house tucked away in the woods where they would play a few hands of whist and maybe take a nip (or two) of corn liquor come Saturday night.

As the giants went about their labors there were usually kids following in their wake fighting to carry the tool bucket or to be somehow involved in the giants’ efforts. A giant’s idea of “quality time” was getting the job done and teaching us the value of hard work and, in turn the worth of a man. We children scrambled for attention and it didn’t take long to figure out which giant had a pocketful of hard candies to reward the hardest working helper. Of course, an angry giant was a fearsome sight to behold and woe to the errant son who heard the epithet, “Wait ‘til your father gets home!”

Most times we looked up in admiration and awe at the efforts of the giants. It seemed as if they could move mountains, build anything and explain the most difficult problems. But sadly as we grew older we usually participated with less enthusiasm, only listened half-heartedly, and our admiration waned even as we began to stretch our own wings in the hopes (even if silently) that we could measure up to the giants of our youth. Over the course of time we moved away, fought our own wars and discovered that our giants seemed less threatening and more human. Like a favorite tool on the workbench, they have somehow lost the shine of use and have taken on instead the patina of the ages. They appear a little smaller in stature, slower in movement and finally have become in our eyes what they always were – men who loved their wives and children with all their hearts even if they might not have been able to tell us at the time.

Cherish these men if you still have the chance and even if it is too late and your own giants are gone, try to remember the days when you were held in awe by their stories and were fascinated by their wisdom. And as one by one, we lay them to rest, their ranks thinning with age, we discover that we have become our fathers; somehow, I cannot help but wonder if they didn’t know it all along.