My Father Was a Car Salesman

When I sent in my last column (the one that compared my students to race horses in the home stretch), my editor was upset. She thought t was suggesting that only children from wealthy families do well in school. "It wasn't true for me," she said. "My father was a farmer!"

It wasn't true for me, either. My father was a car salesman, and he was good at it. He took care of his customers. He told them that if they ever broke down they should call him at home, and he'd come and fix the car -- he could fix anything - or give them his car to use. I can't remember how many times the phone would ring, sometimes after midnight, and Dad would go out to rescue someone. Dad believed - correctly - that if he took care of his customers, they would keep coming back to him. Late in his career, he was hired to coach young salespeople, but he soon quit in frustration. "All they want to do is make a quick buck," he told me.

My dad grew up on a farm. He went into the service when he graduated from high school, got to Europe just after the fighting ended, and drove a truck for a USO canteen unit. When he came back, he drove a cab. That's how he met my mother. They got married right after Mom graduated from high school. She wasn't even 20. It must have disappointed her parents, both of whom were college graduates. My grandfather was a newspaper editor. I idolized him. When I was in eighth grade and had to write a report on my future career, I said I would become an editor. Selling cars was not for me.

I guess the ugly truth is that I didn't respect my dad as much as I should have. I figured I had nothing in common with him. I was more my mother's son, from the intellectual side of the family. And it's probably my mother's genes that steered me into college, made me a magazine editor, and now an English teacher. (She'd be horrified.)

But lately I've begun to realize how much of my personality I owe to my father. I don't have his ability to fix things, but I have inherited his even temperament and optimism, his faith that serving people ultimately pays better than shaking them down. I wasn't planning to write a Father's Day column. But thinking about Dad has led me back to where I started - the direct correlation of parental income and educational attainment to performance in school. It's true; all the studies confirm it.   

But studies deal with large numbers. My parents were high school graduates with a modest income, but they taught me to do my best. We all teach children, even if we have none of our own. We teach them by the way we lead our lives. If we conduct ourselves with honor and decency, like my father, we inspire honor and decency in young people. If we go for the quick buck, if we ignore the midnight call for help in favor of our own comfort - well, they learn that lesson, too.