My daddy was a guy with a lot of “pasture smarts.” Maybe I should call them “woods smarts.”

Well…anyway, he had no "street smarts," that’s for sure.  Now I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I’m simply stating a fact.

When people use the term “street smarts,” a person would normally think that someone grew up in the city learning how other people in the city act. That wasn’t my dad. My dad was a country guy through and through. He grew up in the pastures and woods of north Harris and southern Montgomery Counties. He has fished in Spring Creek, Willow Creek and Cypress Creek. He camped in places that are now occupied by cities and communities like Tomball, Spring, Cypress and The Woodlands.

He has hunted deer from Hufsmith to Waller to Stuebner to Kickapoo Road and in and around the Cypress areas. He learned to work in the rice fields of Waller County and the gas plants of Cypress and all points in between. He was a jack of all trades and a master of several. I miss him a lot.

I have caught myself over these years after his passing of sometimes actually talking out loud to him. Most of the time, however, it’s out of frustration. I keep wondering why he did things the way he did.

That is like the time I was working on an electrical plug up at the ranch. I had been troubleshooting this plug for about an hour trying to figure out why it was not working. I kept checking the power and tracing it back to either dead ends or other circuits to no avail.

I finally worked my way to one plug that just so happened was behind the stove. After pulling the stove from it’s location, I started to unscrew the front plate only to discover the plug box was so stuffed full of wiring and tape that I almost had to pry the plug out of the box. Once I freed the plug from its prisoned placement, I saw that my dad had actually used this plug as a makeshift junction box.

Now, a little earlier I said my dad was a jack of all trades and a master of several. Needless to say, he had the basic knowledge of electrical wiring and could do well in a fix, but he, like myself, had an honorable fear/respect for electricity. Our method of repairs and fixes may not have been up to the latest and greatest code.

As I began removing the tape and tracing back wire after wire, I soon found he had no less than five different wires going in five different directions from this one plug. As I fiddled and fiddled with the wires trying to trace each direction, I finally threw my screwdriver into the wooden floor of the camp house and asked him out loud, “Daddy, why in the world did you cram all the wires into one box?”

Of course, he was not there to answer me, but then another thing I learned from my dad kicked in. That was patience. I simply kept working and working until I solved the problem.

I do believe if my dad would have had to live in a city for very long, he would have been very unhappy. Daddy liked the outdoors. He liked his fishing and hunting, and simply working outside. I could never envision my dad behind a desk like myself everyday.

I see the same thing in my little brother, Keith. Keith has worked outside all his life and he is now trying his hand at a new career. Luckily for him, the work he is doing gives him both outside and inside opportunities.

I was on my way to the ranch a few days ago and as I arrived, I noticed the sign my son had placed on the gate: “Est. 1978.”

I then began to calculate the fact that I have actually worked the cows at the ranch almost as long as my dad did before his passing. Each and every time I go up there, I find myself doing more and more things like he used to do.

I catch myself repairing things that should have been thrown away a long time ago. I have some tractor implements that I could have sold for scrap metal and bought a new one cheaper than the hour upon hour and expense upon expense I have put into repairing them.

But, that is the way he was and that’s the way I’m headed.

Never mind that I spend three days welding a broken gate that can be re-bought for $85. Never mind that I spent several pounds of welding rods and torch gas into this thing. I fixed it and it’s back up and working just fine! Just don’t figure the overall expenses I have put into the project.

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