Campfire

The Way it Oughta Be

When I was a boy my Grandfather, Papa is what we called him, was one of my greatest influences. He wasn’t really the type to sit down and give you a “lesson” or go into great detail trying to explain things. He was much more likely to just tell you why he was doing what he was doing at that time and let the lesson teach itself. I remember several occasions when his whole reason for doing something was “Cause that’s the way it ought to be done”. It didn’t make a lot of sense at the time but I must say that as my years add up the value of those lessons become evermore clear.
On one fall day we had been hunting on some property a few miles from his home. I don’t know who owned it. I do know that it was at some time in the past owned by Papa’s family. We had seen absolutely no game whatsoever all morning and I being a boy of about 11 or 12 years old was bored out of my skull and getting really tired. I closed the gate after Papa pulled the old rusty pickup truck through and was anxious to get in and get home so I could take a nap. Papa shut off the truck and grabbed his old leather gloves off the dash as he was getting out. The door made a loud creak before the thump and rattle of him slamming it shut. In his usual style, slow and steady, he began picking up some trash that someone had dumped along the old fence row. Beer bottles, tin cans, old lumber and rusty barbed wire made up the majority of the mess. I sat and watched for a few minutes, rather disgusted I must say, before I got out to ask what he was doing.
“Papa”
“Yes”
“Why are you pickin that stuff up? I’m tired and ready to go home. Did you dump that there? Did the man who owns this place ask you to pick it up? Are you going to pick it ALL up, or can we go home soon?”
He stopped and looked at me and said “Let’s see here. No I didn’t dump it, nobody ask me to pick it up and we can go home as soon as we are done. Oh, almost forgot…no, I am not going to pick up ALL of it. YOU are going to pick up some of it. We are doing it because that’s how things ought to be done. You always try to leave things better than you found them.”
So far in my existence, I have accomplished little. My life has been mostly a string of screw ups and buckets overflowing with unrealized potential. I do have one thing of which I am very proud. I have participated in the upbringing of an exceptional child. She is 17 years old, very mature for her age, very level headed and extremely intelligent. She has great potential just as I did at her age. Unlike myself though she is focused, goal oriented and destined for success. She has a heart of gold and I know she is going to accomplish great things.
I am still a young man but I often contemplate the end of my life. I have type 1 diabetes and due to the fact that I have not taken care of myself, I have started experiencing some complications. I am, however, very happy with all of my personal failures and short-comings, because they have come together to make me who I am. When I am on my way home, as I stop to pull the gate closed behind me, I will be able to look back with a smile. My daughter will give me the chance to say that I am truly leaving this world better than I found it. That‘s the way it ought to be done.