Posted on 06/16/2006 9:05:51 AM PDT by Valin
In TAE’s September/October 1999 issue, Ben Stein contributed his thoughts on fatherhood. Enjoy his insights as we approach Father’s Day this weekend.
It is not easy to be a father in Los Angeles, and especially in Hollywood. There are no places to ride a bike, partly because it’s so hilly, partly because the traffic is so dense, partly because even on the boardwalk by the beach—which is cement—there are panhandlers, gangs, and skate-by shootings. The few public places that are safe and not disgusting are usually shopping centers, filled with things that compel Tommy to nag me to buy him those things.
But then, none of our big cities are very kid-friendly. Big cities are about getting and spending and after-school classes, not about hanging around with your son on a dock with fishing lines in clear water. That is, it’s great to be a dad anywhere, but it’s better in a small town. That had been going through my mind for a while when, in the summer of 1992, something happened.
The story starts with a commercial director-producer named Mark Story, who has used me in many commercials: Western Union, U.S. West, Dr. Pepper, and others. Between takes, he told me he owned a fabulous home overlooking Lake Pend Oreille in North Idaho. He said it was paradise—except for a neighbor who had shot one of his dogs. He said my life was incomplete unless I spent time in North Idaho, which had a kind of rural peace I would not find elsewhere. The racists and Nazis you hear about were a hoax, he said, but I could only find out if I went there myself.
So one summer day I flew to Spokane, Washington, filled with fear of storm troopers, and headed off to Sandpoint, Idaho, population 5,000, the closest town to Mark’s house. Sandpoint was a revelation. It was on a huge lake, ringed with mountains. It had a lovely sandy beach where families played without any amplified noise. The locals were extremely friendly and respectful. Many kids recognized me from TV and clustered around. There was an adorable Main Street with sidewalks and friendly stores. The streets of the town were flat to gently hilly, with modest homes and many small churches.
Most of all, Mark Story’s caretaker and home-builder, a weatherbeaten, rugged fellow named Peter Feierabend, beckoned. He showed me around, laughed affectionately at the pomp and glory of Mark’s home, and took me on a tour of the lake. He told me how it had been created by a mighty flood caused by the breakup of giant glaciers covering what became Montana and parts of Wyoming.
A few months later, I came back with Tommy. We went to a high school football game where I was mobbed by autograph seekers. One of them offered to babysit Tommy. Peter brought over his children—Rachel, six years older than Tommy, and Alex, a mere three years older. Tommy loves the company of older boys, and Alex seemed like a god to him. They hit it off magically, wrestling in the autumn leaves on the wide grassy lawn next to Lake Pend Oreille.
The real pull of the place was not only its spectacular scenery and easygoing, safe topography, but Peter himself. He was a hippie woodworker-artisan. He was also a caretaker of Mark Story’s palazzo. But mostly he hung out with his kids. He took them to school, picked them up, played with them, read to them, taught them how to ski and sail and fish and mountain bike.
More than anyone I had seen since the days of Ozzie Nelson, he was Mr. All-American Dad. If his son wanted a toy gun, Peter would take a piece of cedar and make one on his band saw.
He shared this genius and talent with Tommy and me.
Peter took Tommy to the beaver pond next to his house on our first visit. “Have you ever caught a fish?” Peter asked.
“No.” Tommy said. “I want to catch a fish.”
“Well, we’ll go out on this raft on my pond and catch a fish,” Peter announced. “Surely you mean you’ll try to catch a fish,” I interjected. “You can’t be sure you’ll catch a fish on any given day, can you?” This was my city-boy know-it-all ignorance and timidity at work. “No. I mean we’ll catch a fish.” Peter said.
With that, he and Tommy went out on the pond. They hung two lines over the edge, and in about 30 seconds Tommy had his first fish, a little rainbow trout.
While I always warned Tommy not to jump on me without warning so that he wouldn’t hurt my old back or neck, Peter, the strong woodworker, would absorb Alex’s and Tommy’s sneak attacks, twirl them around, and then throw them up in the air and catch them. “I’ve got you, you sack of potatoes,” he would say. “I’ve got you now.” Then he would take Tommy to the dock of Keith Sheckler’s Windbag Marina and show him how to attach a lure to a line, tie it securely, and cast it onto the waters. He taught Tommy how to thread the line through the guides on the pole, and even how to untangle the line when it got caught in the spinner.
Part of the beauty of this was that when Peter showed these things to Tommy, he also showed them to me, and then he would say, “Next time, your dad will help you do that.” Peter would show me how and watch me do it: “Your fingers aren’t used to doing anything very complicated, but they’ll get used to it, and then Tommy will learn and we’ll teach someone else to fish.”
Sure enough–and amazingly–the next time I did help Tommy untangle the line or reset the spinner. Sure enough, the next time I had at least a vague suggestion about what kind of bait to use for what kind of fish.
Tommy, Alex, Peter, and I would dine frequently at a place called Connie’s, where loggers gathered drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Peter would tell Tommy in detail how to make a wooden glider. Then Peter would ask me about Hollywood or political life. When Tommy interrupted, Peter would say “Listen to your father, Tommy. He’s talking about things that are a lot more important than building a glider.”
Probably Peter was Tommy’s first idol. Certainly he was the first idol to tell him his old dad was worth listening to and respecting. Tommy listened and paid distinctly more attention after spending time with Peter.
Peter was also extremely generous in his beliefs that I could handle the boys when he was busy. If he could not take the boys skiing, he just told me I should do it and assumed I could. Even though I fell down constantly, fairly soon I could indeed take them skiing. He assumed I could take them fishing—I who hated to even touch a live fish—and soon I did that, too.
Best of all, he assumed I could discipline Tommy and Alex. He assured me that just the mantle of “Dad,” confidently borne, carried all the authority I needed to control the boys. Amazingly, he was right. I could just speak sharply to them in about the same tone as Peter, and they would pay attention to me.
Peter was like a loveable but unchallengeable drill instructor who lined up the recruits and told them that Sergeant Ben was now running the show, and they had better listen up—and they did.
This fellow whom I met by the merest chance, a caretaker, had a view that boys would be boys–would always be recalcitrant, lazy, self-obsessed, and super-wasteful, and that they were just evolving into young men, which would be even worse. It was the father’s natural job to be their boss. But he loved his boy and my boy and was most truly alive when he was around them.
He also believed that boys should not only be respectful but affectionate towards their fathers. Peter was extremely physical with Alex. He often picked him up, hugged him spontaneously and often with no clear reason, and the son responded enthusiastically. Alex was by far the most affectionate little boy with his dad I had ever seen. His example encouraged Tommy to actually hug me without being bribed to do so—usually as a means to get a toy, but sometimes on his own. Tommy is now far more physical and affectionate to me than most other boys I see, and this comes from my following Peter’s example and Tommy’s following Alex’s example.
Above all, the boys had to know who was calling the shots. And with Peter’s attitude even a little bit in evidence, they did get used to it. By watching the interaction between Peter and his son, Tommy got used to the idea that I, Daddy, naturally called the tune.
Following in Peter’s footsteps instilled in me much self-confidence. When in doubt, I would think “How would Peter do it?” and usually whatever came to mind was the right answer. Peter was the wilderness, hippie-philosopher Dad whom boys naturally respected. I picked up more of it than I ever thought I would. Peter as hippie Ozzie Nelson worked well for all of us.
For example, after watching other people having a great time on the lake with their powerboats, I decided Tommy and I should have a boat. So one cool fall day Peter, Alex, Tommy, and I went and looked at boats. A goofy salesman showed us an old Sea Ray that looked nice. The lake was deserted and smooth. The salesman started it up and off we went away from the shore.
In 60 seconds, smoke started to billow from the engine. Then a rubbery burning smell. Then sparks. The salesman turned off the engine as little flames licked around it. It would not restart, and we did not really want it to restart. The radio did not work. We had no cell phone. Despite the salesman’s earlier assurances, there were no life jackets or fire extinguisher. It was getting dark. I knew somewhere to the west was a terrifying dam. We could go over it like Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen. I was scared. In fact, I was frantic.
Meanwhile, Peter sat calmly smoking a cigarette. “What are we going to do?” I wailed, “I don’t want to fall over that dam.” Peter blew out a long trail of smoke and laughed. “The dam is about 30 miles away. We ought be drifting two miles an hour. We’re not in any danger.”
“But it’ll be dark soon,” I said. “Then what?”
“Somebody will come by. Sheriff or somebody.”
In a half-hour, we drifted by a private island. We could see two workmen on a hillside. “I know them,” Peter said. “That guy is David Braun, a beekeeper and a contractor. I’ll call him.” Then, in a staggeringly loud voice, Peter shouted out, “David! It’s Peter Feierabend. Our boat’s broken. Come get us.”
After a few more hallos like that, a man got onto a boat and headed our way.
“See,” Peter said. “That wasn’t so bad. Nobody drowned. Nobody went hungry.” We were towed back to port and, after many effusive thanks from me to David Braun and many scowls at the boat salesman, we headed back to Sandpoint.
“There’s a lesson here,” Peter said. “Make good decisions and plan. From now on, always have a cell phone if you feel afraid on the water. Always have lots of life jackets. Always have a fire extinguisher. You just learned some good things today for almost nothing.”
I had learned some good lessons about fathers and sons, too. Tommy stayed calm through the entire ordeal, treating it as an adventure. So did Peter’s son. I was the only one who was terrified. I learned if the main male leader in a group of fathers and sons stays calm, the kids stay calm.
The next summer Tommy and I bought two boats—a small one, basically a rowboat with a small outboard engine, for him, and a 20-foot motorboat for me. In no time Peter, the boys, and I were hurtling up and down the lake, from Bottle Bay to Whiskey Rock, from Hope to the Green Monarchs, without a serious mishap. Soon, I was taking the boat out with just me as skipper and Alex mooring us, and Tommy occasionally helping to steer.
The boat became a magnet for Tommy’s pals. Four or five boys and girls would clamber aboard and off we’d go, usually to a point near Garfield Bay. There, the kids would jump off the stern into the freezing water and swim around, laughing and screaming.
Just as Peter predicted, the kids followed my orders if I gave them with sufficient assurance and directness. I tried—again following Peter’s example–never to show fear on the lake, and indeed, there rarely was cause for concern. (I also had dozens of life jackets, a fire extinguisher, a phone, a whistle, an air horn, and food on hand at all times.)
I like to think Tommy also derived some status from the fact that the boat the kids were on belonged to his Dad. Tommy was always the most junior member of his team of friends. They always let him know it, in the manner of small children, or maybe in the human manner. For him to say, “You can’t drop me head first off the boat because it’s my Dad’s boat,” gave him some feeling of command out on the lake. For a little boy to feel jointly in command of a boat is not a bad feeling for him to have. Anything that teaches him responsibility is worth its weight in gold.
We came to Sandpoint in the winter, too. Snow is a basic building block of the sense of wonder. In Sandpoint, we got plenty. The first time it snowed at night, Tommy, Alex, Peter, and I headed across town from the Edgewater Hotel to the Hydra Restaurant. We passed by subtly molded lawn lamps that Peter had made with his hands in his workshop, now covered with gauzy white snow. We went under the snowfall as it poured down by the city lights. Tommy and Alex ran ahead in the snow, maybe along with another friend or two—in Sandpoint, little boys travel in packs. The boys made snowballs and tossed them at each other with indifferent results. Every so often, Alex, a bigger boy, would pack together a truly immense snowball and gesticulate menacingly towards Tommy Stein. Tommy would hide behind me and say, “You can’t hit me. When I’m touching Daddy, it’s a safe zone. “ It is magic every time I hear him say that.
There are some nights of fatherhood that cannot be explained, only described. One was the first night Tommy and I marched through the snow of Sandpoint, across the bridge over Sand Creek, along First Street, past the Elks and the Eagles, past the closed-down candy store, past the Sandpoint Bagel Shop, past the loggers eating at Connie’s, down deserted sidewalks, with the snow making a white halo behind the street lamps. Tommy would hold my hand for a minute, then run on ahead, make snowballs, and throw them at me. I would occasionally scoop up snow and throw one back. Tommy hid behind trees, behind cars in the used car lot, in alleys, and then came out and bombarded me with his white missiles.
After a while, he was tired and leaned on me as he walked and asked me to wrap him inside my jacket. By the time we got to the Safeway and then the Gas-n-Go for lottery tickets, we were both intoxicated from the cold and the beauty and from having ourselves to ourselves in the snow. I think that’s the best walk I have ever taken in my life. I felt as if I had been admitted into one of those snowstorms inside a glass ball, and that Tommy and I would live forever throwing snowballs at each other under the street lamps of a small North Idaho town. As I say, some days of fatherhood are too magical to be explained.
A contributing writer to TAE, Ben Stein is an actor, writer, and lawyer in Los Angeles.
Ben Stein rules.
Heads up, Ben Stein ping!
California is one of the most beautiful states of the nation, and Southern California has arguably the best weather in America. There is a reason the real estate is so high, despite all the social ills of congestion.
WHaaaaaaaaaaT?
Are we reading the same article?
Ben don't tell the world about Northern Idaho...all those liberals will come here and ruin it!!!
What an absolutely heart warming article.
I'm on your side, but I don't think the article tarred the entire state.
I have to agree with you on that! I didn't read any complaint about CA in Mr. Steins article.
The news stories on the nightly news in America might just as well come from Al-Jazeera as from America
What a beautiful area! Hate to loose a fellow Texas, but wow, it is tempting to move up there.......
I had learned some good lessons about fathers and sons, too. Tommy stayed calm through the entire ordeal, treating it as an adventure. So did Peter’s son. I was the only one who was terrified. I learned if the main male leader in a group of fathers and sons stays calm, the kids stay calm.
That was the most important paragraph in the entire story. Dad's, it's our job to remain in control in uncontrollable situations. I teach my kids, and my Scouts my personal slogan: "It's not an adventure till something goes wrong."
Panicking in the face of danger is the first way to escalate the danger, real or perceived.
You missed the point. Stein's not bashing the state, he's drawing a contrast between two lifestyles and sayng one more easily facilitates something of inestimable value that the other does not.
I'm a California Native and a resident of 41 years. I KNOW this State pretty darn well. The plain truth is that there are 30 million of us, here already, and another 70 million who WISH they were. But I'm not going to sit here with blinders on and make inane claims that life isn't better anywhere else, nor am I so thin-skinned as to get my hackles up opver someone relating great experiences thay had out-of-state. California is what it is and had a tremendous amount to offer; there's no need to be defensive about it.
There are granite cathedrals in the Sierra of such hidden grandeur that to enter into them is to step onto Holy ground. The invigorating surf of the coasts, the towering sequoia to the northwest, the rugged desolation of the Modoc country; there is no lack of awe-inspiring vistas here. But there is a distinct lack, in many quarters, of the kind of close-to-the earth living that Stein describes in this piece. It's just plain tough to come by in the hustle and bustle of our humongous metro areas, and even escape to resorts like Tahoe and Mammoth won't cut it; the city-dwellers rush in on the weekends, and drag their hustle and bustle right along with them. You want the kind of life in California like Stein's describing in this article, you're in a place like Yreka, or Alturas, maybe Sonora. It's just not easy to get the same 'flavor' of life here.
That's not a bash; it's just reality.
(Don't worry, I'm not a lib)
Sorry, but I've flown many times into Burbank and know the roads within a ten mile radius. It sucks.
There are great parts of California. I visit relatives in Napa and Carlsbad. I've been up to mount Paramour and the desert.
LA sucks.
Wonderful piece.
Some friends of mine had a place (probably still do) on or just off Bottle Bay. Loved that place and the area.
BTW, the SMOKEHOUSE just south of the bridge into Sandpoint has the best jerky I've ever had . . . cuts his own wood. Hunts some of his own meat. Salmon, deer, moose, turkey, beef, deer--great stuff. Not cheap but well worth it.
BTW, the Nazi's in the Couer d'Lane sp? area are NOT myths. But there are not hoards of them.
This article was about a city slicker enjoying small town life and fatherhood. Not an attack on CA.
A BUMP for Ben Stein...
Peter sounds like my Daddy.
By the time me and my siblings could swim (three or four years old) Daddy had a Zebco 202 closed faced reel in our hands and had us on fish -- mostly bluegill, but as a kid I had the great fortune to live where I had the opportunity to tangle with a few trophy largemouth bass :)
Thanks to my Daddy.
Daddy also made sure we grew up close enough to a lake to walk to a fishing hole.
Daddy had five kids (and a few vices) and couldn't afford a boat, but he was one of the first in the country to fish in a float tube (when they were unheard of). Also, I have that old float tube now hanging in my fishing cabin.
He (years) later used a float tube to catch a national record freshwater drum (in the tube) and fish among alligators and in some heavy timber in Louisiana. I was there, the last Father's Day I spent with my Daddy his request was for all his kids to go fishing with him in Vinton, La.
One brother and myself showed up on the last Father's Day fishing trip, the two outlaws in the family. My sis sent a card, she never had time for Daddy.
I have photos of it, and memories that superceed any and all in my lifetime.
My Daddy taught me to fish, and enjoy simple things, like a bluegill (or bass, trout) sucking a fly or other topwater imitation off the surface of a lake/stream. He left me a few decades of memories of experiencing this --with him laughing and enjoying it more than I did.
And I can't imagine any better legacy, inheritance, than the lessons and love my Daddy gave to me.
I can't say "Happy Father's day to him, he passed away very young in the early 1980s.
If you are reading this, and your father is alive, take him fishing, or hug him or something.
BTW -- I am leaving Monday to take five kids (four of them city slickers and two modern day Davy Crockett's)fishing, along with two other woman.
I guess I'm like my Daddy, I have more fun watching a kid pull their first bluegill/bass out than the kids do.
And, I just invested in one Barbie rod and reel and two Zebco 202s (dang, I should be working for Zebco ;)
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