Some More Stuff My Daddy Said
I have written much about my father. There are reasons for that. He was a man bigger than life in many ways. At six-two and 240 pounds, he took up a lot of physical space. His four years in the Marine Corps had toughened him up physically and reinforced a sense of honesty, integrity and responsibility. Only those who knew him very well realized he was a dreamer in the old romantic sense. His favorite poem was “If” by Rudyard Kipling. The poem is almost a guidebook on how to be a good person. It is about keeping all things in perspective, about rising above the petty grievances we all have, about winning gratefully and losing gracefully, and about giving our world, our friends, and ourselves the very best we can give. He taught me the poem and he lived by its precepts.
Dad was not a child of privilege, all his parents had to give him was their kindness and a safe home. Both worked full-time in the cotton mills around Union, South Carolina when the mills were not shut down during the depression and found work where they could until they opened again. When many mills were closed, Springs Mills in Fort Mill continued to run and to my eternal gratitude, my grandparents moved here to work bringing my father with them. He finished high school in the old Central High School, later called A. O. Jones, where the Fort Mill Post Office is today. In Fort Mill, he met and married my mother, Dorothy Case and soon after was sent overseas as a Marine.
On his return to Fort Mill from the Pacific, Robert Hill, called “Bob” worked every odd job he could find. Eventually, he signed up as an agent with State Farm Insurance Company which was just hiring agents in South Carolina. He began with zero policyholders and knocked on doors all over Fort Mill and Indian Land until he had built a sizeable agency. He later got his real estate license and along with a builder/partner, Red Yarborough, built houses all around Fort Mill.
Dad was serious about hard work and about taking care of his family. I knew that when I was growing up. I didn’t know until after his death, that he had quietly given assistance to needy people in Unity Presbyterian Church and had helped more than a few local business people grow their companies successfully. He was outgoing and funny and eventually became a leader in various local clubs and organizations. Countless times at meetings he was asked to “Start us off with a story.”
It was not easy to follow in his footsteps. He was so forceful, so in charge and so often right that I still stand in his shadow. He was easy with people and comfortable in a crowd and had trouble understanding why I was not so easy or comfortable. Napoleon is credited as saying, in French, of course, that it is very difficult to have a great man as a father. Napoleon was speaking of himself as the great man, I am not.
It is a maxim in comedy that one should never follow a better comedian on stage. Here are a few examples of the comedian I had to follow.
In the eighties, Dove Shoots were a common social event for local men. Dad and I were not real hunters but enjoyed participating, especially for the stew-and-beer gathering after hunts. Once Dad and I were part of a group scattered around a field on what is now part of the Anne Springs Close Greenway. During a lullin the action, I walked over to stand beside him. While we had done our share of shooting, the dove population had not been diminished by the Hill family. Of course, Dad had good reasons. “I’m not leading them enough.” He told me. When I asked how he could tell, he said, “I can see them look back behind them when I shoot.” As if that was not enough, he followed it with, “Of course, I am only shooting at the bucks.” For those even less knowledgeable than I am, determining the gender of a dove in the air is impossible.
Bob Hill was ready with a witticism for any sport. Once he was playing golf with my good friend, John Morris, and John was not having a good day. Dad was right there with advice, “Swing hard, John, in case you hit the ball.”
When we took beach trips with the “whole fam damily,” his words, he would keep a running commentary at poker games with the grandkids. “Read ‘em and weep,” “Pair of cowboys to Case,” or “Are you feeling lucky, kid?” kept us all entertained.
As he reached his eighties, Dad refused to give up on humor. When asked what the doctor said after a check-up, he always had a comeback like, “He said not to buy and five-day deodorant pads,” or “Don’t buy any green bananas.” My wife, Cheryl, worked for him during his last years at his office. He still had some real estate holdings to manage, but mostly he worked on his genealogy research. Once Cheryl was working hard transcribing and editing a book that he wrote for his children and grandkids. Dad was researching genealogy on his computer when he suddenly exclaimed, “Cheryl, I have done plowed up a snake!” It was his way of saying he had found an ancestor who might better have stayed lost. “We have two kinds of relatives,” he told her. “The ones we don’t claim and the ones who don’t claim us.”
Dad loved to travel and once related that many times he would meet folks in some campground in Wyoming or Maine and they would ask where Dad and Mom were from. Dad gave them a standard answer. “We are from Fort Mill, South Carolina, home of Springmaid sheets, population 3998. We had 4000 before we ran Jim and Tammy Baker out of town.” That usually identifies us, Dad said.
Bob Hill loved life. One of his greatest compliments to me was, “You are a gentleman and a scholar and a judge of beautiful women, fine horses and good whisky.” I humbly confess, however, that I don’t know much about fine horses.
He was brimming with advice and recounting it all would take more paper and ink than I can afford. Here are a few of his words that resonate with me every day.
When I was a teenager and peer pressure made decisions difficult, he called me aside once and said, “Son, If you don’t feel right about doing something, you can always use me as the bad guy.” It was an advantage that kept me out of more than a few bad situations.
Dad didn’t talk down to people. “Don’t ever think you are better than anybody and don’t ever think anybody is better than you.”
Because I was shy and sometimes timid, “Son, no matter how hard you try, everybody is not going to like you. Don’t try so hard to please everyone.”
When I was going through a rough patch, he put his arm around me and said, “Don’t bleed all over your friends. People will only feel sorry for you for so long.”
He loved mother, my sister and me and was proud to love our spouses and children and grandchildren. He instilled his values in us all. Even as an adult, I was able to use him as an excuse.
He loved to travel and I was lucky enough to go with him. I was in my forties when we spent ten days on a tour of Russia. We stayed in a hotel owned, I was told, by the Russian mafia. Times were very hard and money was scarce in Moscow and the hotel turned a blind eye to women who were, let’s say, supplementing their income. I took the elevator down to the lobby one evening around eight o’clock. On the ride back up, a beautiful, well-dressed college aged woman stepped into the elevator after me. As the elevator made its slow way back to the seventh floor, she reached out and touched me on the chest with one finger. “We are making love?” she asked. I was not at my cool, James Bond best and so I answered.
“No Ma’am, I don’t think so. I’m from Fort Mill, South Carolina and I’m staying in a room with my Daddy.”