Trusting Dad

I came across this story which was first printed in the NY Times in May 1995, couldn’t find the link in the archives, but you can dig it out if you want to.

It’s a man recounting a story when he was a young boy. The man in question is Mell Lazarus, creator of the MOMMA comic strip, and author of a number of novels.

Lazarus recalls an incident when he was nine, back in the late thirties. His family stayed at a boarding house in the Catskills for the summer during school vacations, and he and two buddies were hanging out one August afternoon, bored. So what they decided to do was engage in a little, um, remodeling.

There was a building on the grounds called “the casino,” a small structure where guests enjoyed bingo games and sometimes a cheesy magic act would come through. The boys decided that the building was too new, too pristine with new Sheetrock, and that a little damage would be fun.

One thing led to another, and an entire wall of ‘rock was lying there in ruins.

The owner of the place was furious, told the boys’ mothers, and also told them that he would tell their fathers. The three mothers basically decided to let their husbands discipline the boys. They had really gone too far.

These were busy, working men, who looked forward to the drive upstate for a pleasant long weekend away from the big city with their children. When they began to arrive at the boarding house, the owner was there - and so were the other guests, waiting to see the boys get their comeuppance. The bingo players felt a strong lust for vengeance. They wanted to see some beatings.

As Lazarus tells it, his friends’ fathers came home first, one at a time. The first dad, upon being shown the destruction, took off his belt and began whipping his son (a gesture, Lazarus noted, seemed to be one he’d used many a time before). The second father came home and when he learned what happened, began thrashing his boy, slamming him to the ground and kicking him.

Lazarus was now terrified; his father had never raised his hand in violence, but after seeing this, the young boy was truly afraid that he’d crossed the line.

His father came home, just as the second boy was being dragged into the house by his angry father. The owner explained what had happened. Lazarus’s dad stared at his son for a moment. Then suddenly left. He got back into his car and drove off. He returned an hour later with a stack of Sheetrock boards tied to the top of his car. He took the ‘rock into the remains of the casino, then took a hammer he’d bought at the hardware store out of the front seat, and went to work. He said not a word to anyone; he just rebuilt the casino, taking most of the night to do it.

Lazarus was still worried about retribution in the morning, but none came. The father never mentioned the incident and the weekend went perfectly fine.

Lazarus says that, while he knew his father was angry, the father also believed that beating one’s child is criminal, that children “always remembered the pain but often forgot the reason.” The father also understood that a child learns nothing by humiliation - he was not going to “play into a conspiracy of revenge and spectacle” by publicly flogging his own son. That was not his way.

Did Lazarus ever do something like that again? Probably not. He learned that lesson. But he also learned something truly important: “it was also the day I first understood how deeply I could trust him.”

I am always amazed when I think of this story. The incident took place in the late thirties, when, as Lazarus writes, many fathers (and mothers) “saw corporal punishment of their children as a God-given right.” But this father understood something beyond that spectacle of revenge, the drama that the bloodthirsty bingo players wanted to see enacted. We feel it all the time, that desire for justice. As a sports fan, I know that feeling. But as a father, I want to think something different.

Just as important as the father’s refusal to get into a psychodrama is the fact that he also solves the problem of the destroyed casino. The other fathers, likely just as capable of putting up Sheetrock as Mr. Lazarus was, only deal with their sons. And Mr. Lazarus obviously understood that hitting his son was not going to fix the casino. And that the sound of the hammer banging on Sheetrock not only allowed him to get out some aggression, but also served as a stern reminder to the young boy about what he did to the building