Guil Puffer: A Father of the '50s

(I was fortunate to have a subscription to STORYWORTH that helped me put some memories into book form = YANKEE CAME SOUTH AND STAYED and this is a chapter from that book. It is in answer to the question of who may have had the most influence on me in my young life. Since we just had 2024 Father's Day, I thought it appropriate to share in this space.)

My father probably has the most positive influence on my life when I was young because the example he set is one that I have followed closely for most of my years. I followed this example with little conscious thought or discussion.

My father was a father of the fifties until he almost overnight became a father of the future.

Guil was born November 14, 1916. This means he was a child for the First World War, a teenager in the Depression, and he was in the first wave of his generation to be drafted as World War II loomed over the country and was later declared. I cannot remember any extended discussions about any of those topics. I also cannot remember any extended discussions about topics like happiness or responsibility or doing what you are supposed to— any of the other things that we think are so vital to parent/child communication in today’s world. Do not, for any split second, read the previous observations as criticism.

First, it was a different era. Second, and most importantly for this writing, the words might not have been said but actions left deep lessons. When I look back on any of those topics and quite a few more, I realize that my learning from my father came from watching my father. He was present, and his presence was a continuing class in two major subjects: What you should do and what you should probably not do. Unlike school or training, however, there was no unbundling of the lessons as they happened.

Never in my life with my father did I have to hear him make any comment about life, being fair, unfair, or anything else that would blame or credit life with what was happening. While he could have complained and complained loudly (and I did hear him do that sometimes), it was never life he complained about. You were here and living, so you had to find a way to make that life. He did.

Guil was a worker

Most of my childhood years, my father worked most of every day. He was a paid fireman with the City of Rome, New York. On one or two occasions, I had the opportunity to see him on the job climbing up a ladder to get to the windows so he could get the water to the fire or moving through smoke, flames, and ashputting out a grass fire. Throughout my childhood in St. Aloysius, every time I heard the fire truck siren it triggered a Hail Mary for the safety of my father and the other firemen. Being a fireman did not pay all that well, but it did, however, provide time to find or develop other jobs. My father used his ladder-climbing skills to partner with another fireman to put on storm windows for houses in the fall and take off those storm windows and put in screens for the summer. When they weren’t doing that, they were painting houses - inside and outside — though in Rome, N.Y., the outside work was mostly summer, and the inside was the rest of the year. He and Eileen had four boys, and those jobs did not provide enough for much more than basics. So he did what he needed to do to earn money. I know there were several winters he worked at gas stations pumping gas — back in the days when stations pumped the gas, checked the oil and air pressure, and washed off your windows. Those were not jobs with meaning, happiness, or fulfillment — they were jobs that provided money for food on the table, a roof overhead, and the exorbitant interest rates of the lenders who got many people from pay period to pay period.

You do what needs doing

In case it is not as obvious as I might hope, one of the major lessons from my father is that you do what needs doing to provide for your family, and you need to embrace the opportunity to work, even if it might not be something that youmay have been “called” to do. (Personal insert here — One of the major blessings of my life is that in nearly all of the work experiences I have had, there has been a significant element of both choice and calling that have made them add major meaning to my existence. I think my father was happy for me because he could tell it had happened even if we never had any discussions about it.)

The big lesson — There is no such thing as women’s work or men’s work - It is family work.

There was not enough money in no matter how many jobs because four boys and the rising expenses of the fifties made living expensive — not just for the Puffers, but for everyone. At some point after Mark was born, my mother’s ability to be a stay-at-home mother came to an end. I was not privy to any of the discussions they might have had. I never overhead them in the dark of night. I just know that at some point Eileen (I never called her anything but Mom) went to work for the Sesito Insurance Agency.

Overnight - it seemed to me - my father, who continued with three jobs at a time, also was cooking many meals if he was off from the Fire Department. I would sometimes accompany him to a laundromat where he would leave our laundry, and then a day or so later we would be back to pick it up. I think it was from myfather I learned how to mop a floor and run a vacuum cleaner. He just picked up a lot of what my mother had been doing so that she would be able to work. This was much more of a strange time in America than an essay like this could describe, but women were getting back into the workforce, and with those jobs the discussion of “women’s lib” was all the rage.

My father very actively made it less of a hardship for my mother to return to work. Now, he had to increase his own workload, and he just did it. While disagreements were no stranger to the Puffer household, I do not remember ever hearing a row because of one or the other not doing their part. I believe my mother enjoyed being able to get back into the workforce. Refereeing four boys all day every day can take a toll. She had been an office assistant out of high school and through the years my father was overseas. She enjoyed and even thrived in knowing that she was helping make a difference for clients and bosses and having adult conversations that did not center on kids. The family needed the income, and it made a difference; I also think the money coming in from my mother took some of the pressure from my father. That would be an interesting discussion over a hamburger.

Thus, I have to say that the example I had from my father about doing what needs doing has been one of those lasting life lessons. At the time, no one knew these were lessons. They became lessons in the processing, years down the line.

I learned as I got older, and particularly as I moved to the place I have lived most of my adult life, not as many men in the South made the accommodations my father made. Southern women had to go to work, but they did not (in general) get anywhere near the at-home support my father provided during those times of family social upheaval. (Heck the same was probably true in the North. I just did not observe it as closely.)

And now the lessons that we never want to talk about. Alcohol was a part of the life I grew up with. It was normal to drink. It was pretty normal for many to drink too much. My father was a beer drinker. He often drank too much. He was not an alcoholic, but as he got older he lost much of his tolerance. The day my brother Tom got married, my father walked out of a kitchen door at the reception and totally missed the steps, landing on his back. It was, for him, the last lesson he needed. As far as I know, he never drank again after that episode. He stopped drinking cold turkey. That was part of his unusual ability. For nearly everyone back in the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties, tobacco was the drug of choice. Tobacco was the drug of the capitalistic economy, and nearly EVERYONE smoked. You smoked indoors, you smoked outdoors, you smoked at work, you smoked at dinner, you smoked when you wanted to smoke. Then the studies began to clearly show that tobacco was killing people - lots of people - in painful cancerous experiences.

I do not know what my father’s reasons were, but even before he quit drinking he quit smoking. He put his pipes down, he quit buying the pipe tobacco, and he just STOPPED. There was no plan. There was no process. He quit and never did it again. I have been fortunate in my life to have had some of those genes as part of my makeup. One or more of those life style changes probably helped him get to 83. And, I also think some might have had to do with his ability to enjoy motor boating a lot in his retirement years, where he also became a pretty accomplished cross-country skier.

My mother also taught a lot

Know that I learned a lot from my mother. My mother knew how to set her expectations. She knew that when Dr. Spock’s writing did not do the trick, a palm to the bare butt would probably change behavior, and that if it didn’t work the flat end of a wooden hair brush deftly and rapidly applied did not have to be repeated - at least that day.

She also demonstrated much more that shows in my life today. She was deeply involved in community. Our house was the neighborhood center for the Mothers’ March Against Polio. She was the President of the Democratic Women’s Club of Rome, and she worked the polls for just about every election. My mother had a lot of interests, and she had a lot of opinions about a woman being able to be more than a mother. She was involved in her insurance career, she was involved in politics, she was an avid bowler, she was an active golfer, and she was a social person.

So while I chose my father’s actions as most positive, arguments could be made for lots of other “right” answers to the question of “Who had most positive influence in your life as a child?”