He
never seemed to mind though, guiding his noisy new brood with a firm
hand and a wisdom beyond his words. Way back in the 70's, when he knew
Richard and I were saving money to buy sleeping bags, he told us to look
in his car for a couple of bucks we could have. What we found there
were two brand new sleeping bags. It sounds trivial, but to my brother
and me, those sleeping bags were launching pads for our imagination,
portals to adventure. Garlon understood this, and it remained unclear
who took more pleasure from the purchase: us or him.
For
more than 35 years Garlon worked for Sears Roebuck as an appliance
repairman. Dishwashers, refrigerators, washers and dryers - he could fix
em all. I know this because people from all over Saulston would call
him asking fo help on their homemade repairs. I have many memories of
him cradling the phone while we ate dinner. You see that white wire, he
would say, clip it and attach it to slot B... no not the red wire, the
white one. Trouble was, he knew his appliances too well. He’d have that
thing fixed and be off the phone before I could finish raking my butter
beans into a napkin.
Garlon
believed in the value of hard work and he taught his boys to appreciate
it too. We shucked corn, dug potatoes and raked acres of pine straw. I
used to swear we had the cleanest ditches in town, because he was always
handing me a garden hoe and telling me to go clean out that back ditch.
He instilled in his sons a work ethic that benefits us to this very
day.
In
the army, Garlon was diagnosed with osteo-arthritis. It would plague
him the rest of life, making it painful to move and sometimes impossible
to sleep. He suffered mostly in silence. In the early 80’s, alcohol
nearly got the best of him. So he went to rehab - long before it was
fashionable - and beat that demon. He came home thicker, quicker and
more involved in our lives than ever before.
He
and my mother remained married for nearly fifty years. In that time, he
herded three unruly punks through adolescence and into full adulthood.
Eventually, each son repaid the favor with a gaggle of grandchildren who
adored him. I can’t tell you how much fun it was watching the man who
once towered over me with a garden hoe sit somewhere low and play with
his grand-kids. As the number of grandkids grew, Garlon Pittman grew ever more benevolent, delighting in the family around him and
treating Brenda like the blessing she is.
When
Garlon passed away Monday, it brought to an end seven years of living
with Alzheimer's. It was tough watching him go through that. Our only
solace was knowing that Garlon, or as we knew him, Dad, understood just
how much he meant to us. He knew because we told him. What went
unexpressed was the way in which he somehow made three very different
boys grow up to be better men.
Just like him.
