Never Learning Cursive

This story is about the profound influence an individual has had on my life who I have never met - well at least we never met in this life.   Let me start by recounting my first experience when attending an Elders Quorum meeting.  For those who are not LDS, young men who turn 18 and are considered worthy are ordained an Elder and join a quorum of adult male priesthood holders with whom they meet every Sunday.  I remember being rather intimidated by meeting with approximately 30 adult men who were all older and more experienced than me.  The lesson that first Sunday was on controlling our speech, with an emphasis on refraining from swearing.  

Near the end of the lesson, Ed Sharp (a man about 45 years of age) raised his hand and said he had an experience that he wanted to share.  He said a few years before while working in the early morning hours of a graveyard shift at the sugar beet factory in Nyssa, Oregon, the large conveyor belt broke that carried all the sliced beets into the factory.  It took quite a while to stop the beet cutting operation and so several tons of sliced beets spilled out all over the front part of the sugar factory creating a huge mess and effectively shut down the factory.  He watched as the foremen and mechanics arrived and said each of them began swearing and uttering profanities because of all the trouble this would cause.  He then said Lorin Goates, the Assistant Superintendent who was in charge of this shift and managing the approximately 60 men who were working, came on the scene.  Ed said everyone was quiet while my father surveyed the situation, and then my father said, "Well, I'll be darn!"  Ed went on to say that my father immediately began giving orders as to what various individuals were to do to clean up the mess, repair the equipment, and get the factory back into operation.

A cursive weapon when combined with manure

I could tell that Ed Sharp and the others in the Elder's Quorum were impressed by that story and the fact that my father, the person with the responsibility to make that shift productive, didn't resort to swearing in the midst of what was viewed as a horrible problem.  My father's reaction, however, was no surprise to me because I knew he didn't swear.  I had spent many a cold morning with my father milking cows at 6 a.m. in the winter, when the temperature was below freezing and a cow would step on your foot, kick you, or swish you with their tail that was covered in manure.  Under those circumstances, when no one of any importance is around and a cow's tail just covered your face with manure, there is an excellent opportunity to express oneself with language that would not be appropriate for church.  I would like to say that never happened, but in fact I have seen it all happen to my father while milking cows.  I mean I have seen it all happen except for the cussing and blaspheming, because I never heard my father swear - not once.

Clara Evan Goates

It would be another 20 years before I learned why my father never swore.  It was while driving across Oregon with my oldest sister Irene to visit our parents decades later that I recounted the Elder's Quorum story above and commented on never hearing father swear.  She then said, "Well, you know why don't you?"; and then, because I had no idea, she explained it was because his mother had made him promise when he was a little boy that he would not swear or take the Lord's name in vain.  Most little boys would not be able to keep such a promise, but my father could and would keep his promise.

Clara Evans Goates and children

While I have incredible respect for my father, it is my widowed grandmother, Clara Evans Goates, who amazes me.  This woman would die in the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1920, twenty-seven and a half years before I was even born, and yet her influence on me is profound.  It starts with having a father who didn't swear, but he also didn't drink or smoke (another promise he made to his mother) and was morally clean (also something he promised her).  

My father didn't lose his temper, because it seems that if you can control your language, you can also control you anger.  My father was physically very strong, but I was not afraid of him because his temper never got the better of him.  I have seen fathers who when they felt challenged, fought with their sons; it is ugly and no one is the winner, no matter who comes out on top.  But that never happened to me and I credit both my father and my grandmother.  I have a deep debt of gratitude for Clara Evans Goates for how deeply she has blessed my life; and all because she made a little boy make promises to her.

Weighting to Change

Parents often tell stories and explain principles to help their children learn.  But some of their most powerful lessons are never conveyed verbally.  This story is about a life changing principle that my father taught me without portraying it in words.

Wayne growing up on the farm

Let me start by saying that I was a tall skinny kid growing up on my parents 44 acre farm.  We always grew alfalfa hay that three times every summer had to be cut, baled, loaded in the field and then stacked.  As a kid, it was my job to roll the 80 lb wire-tied bales (which weighed almost as much as I did) into rows so the men father hired to help load and stack the hay bales could work faster.  I thought it was great fun trying to run ahead, rolling the bales on each side as the men would come through with a car and trailer to load all the bales.  

I am not certain whether it was my exuberant effort, my scrawny physique, or a combination of the two that impressed dad; but following the stacking of the first cutting of hay when I turned 14, father made the comment to me that possibly it was the right time to get me a set of weights.  As I remember, the following Saturday we took some livestock to sell in Caldwell and then stopped at Albertson's and Safeway to purchase food.   It is strange how you can live with someone for 14 years and yet have no idea of the important events and activities that have shaped and helped make them who they are.  I was about to learn about one of the primary determinants in my father life because that Saturday he bought a muscle man magazine.

 

Lorin in Canada wearing bear chaps

Let me just say that to the uninitiated, a muscle man magazine looks just a little weird with men in tiny swim suits, posing with bulging muscles and puffed out chests;  but hey -  what was I going to say because my father was impressed.  To my astonishment, it turns out that my father was something of a muscle man in his day and it came with this brief story.

Father and his twin brother Warren were tiny little boys, smaller than their peers as they were growing up.  With the shortage of men available to work during World War I, they spent the summers of 1916, 1917 and 1918 working for their uncle and cousin in Canada herding sheep.  Father said when the first summer was almost over he remembered getting on the barn scales and weighing only 73 pounds as a 13 year old.   (*Note - for comparison purposes I was very skinny and weighed 93 pounds as a 13 year old - so even though my father was shorter, at 73 pounds he was very small.)

Lorin flexing

The results of flour power

 Father's life story recounts how it was a few years latter that he read "a monthly magazine called Physical Culture published by Bernard McFadden. I was so impressed!  It wasn't long until we twins had barbells and a punching bag in our bedroom. We enjoyed weight-lifting, swimming, boxing, wrestling and other sports. We tried to keep the Word of Wisdom by eating good wholesome foods. We grew and soon became quite strong. I remember the time when I could raise a 125 pound barbell over my head with one hand in the bent press; also was able to walk on my hands the length of our high school gym. We were each able to tear a deck of cards in half and then quarter it with our hands."

Lorin doing a handstand

Mind you, these were the kind of barbells into which one poured lead shot B-Bs to increase the weight; and then they would add sacks of flour on top of the barbells when more weight was needed for bench pressing and other exercises.  I guess it was a little like cooking, in that the recipe for improving bench presses required you to add more flour.

As a 9th grade student I played basketball on the junior high team, but it was not a pleasant experience.  I remember father telling me that I would probably mature physically later than other students and he said while it may not seem like it, this would actually be to my advantage.  Well if anything it gave me an inferiority complex.  You really do start questioning yourself and your worth when thrown into the world of sports and you are the last of your peers to mature.  To say that you feel less or inferior would be an understatement.  

Other than tennis, I did not participate in high school sports my sophomore year.   Looking back, I believe the primary thing that kept me from just crawling in a hole and wishing the world would just pass me by was a set of weights, and a belief that by spending several months grunting and groaning with them could possibly transform me - so that possibly I could be an equal with my peers.  I faithfully spent my sophomore year lifting weights.  Father and I even built a strong bench to facilitate the required exercises (like bench presses) and I drank some strange concoction which according the muscle man magazine was guaranteed to help me put on weight and build muscle.

I cannot say that I was an amazing body building success.  But this much I do know, I took confidence from the fact that I was doing something about what I considered at the time to be my inferior situation.  It was fortunate that my efforts were made at the same time that I began to mature physically, but it is also important to realize that my body type was different from my father and I would never match his strength and physique.  While my results may not have been very impressive to anyone else, I was pleased to have "beefed up" my 6' 4" frame to 145 pounds by my junior year when I went out for football and basketball.  Of course the fact that I made both teams probably had more to do with the fact that I went to a small rural Idaho high school with only 220 students in grades 10 - 12, but what I remember is how I felt about myself.  I no longer felt that I was less than others.

By my senior year I was up to a whopping 155 pounds and actually started on the football team.  I began as a defensive end, but after the opposing team swept around my side three times in a row, the coach replaced me with a 200 pound freshman to anchor the defensive line.  I was, however, a starting offensive end and our team was the co-conference champion - so life was good.  

So what is the powerful and impressive life changing principle that comes from a muscle man magazine and months of grunting and groaning while lifting weights?  It is understanding that a person needs to take responsibility for their own life.  It is the realization that while you cannot always control the cards you are dealt in life, there is always something you can do to improve or make the situation better; and sometimes with consistent effort it can actually change your life.

Carlfred Broderick put it this way, "Take responsibility for the solution to your own problems.  Give up the luxury of blaming things on 'them' (spouse, employees, children, parents, friends, even God).  Acknowledge that while what happens to you may not be your responsibility, the way you respond to it is under no one's control but your own.  This is a hard doctrine and may seem to contradict the Law of Emotional Space.  It is based, however, on the assumption that no one's emotional space is ever reduced entirely to zero and that, therefore, there is always some choice of responses.  It is important to own up to the possibility of choice. Doing so immediately increases one's emotional space, since it enlarges one's sense of control and competence."  (from "Couples" by Dr. Carlfred Broderick)

Lorin at age 97 with his barbells

My father taught me this lesson with a set a weights; and he learned it with some barbells and sacks of flour.  The important thing is that this principle works for more than just helping skinny boys become strong and confident.  If you don't like something in your life, or you feel powerless, there is always something that you can do about it, and the results may surprise you from something as simple as just adding a little more flour.