Fatherhood is always important, but perhaps it is of most moment for the poorest and most vulnerable families. Our culture tends to look down on them, sometimes with cause, but we need them. We need them even as they are.
David Allan Coe wrote a song about a poor Texas family, and especially about "the old man." It shows a lot that is bad about the poorer kind of family, but some things that are good about a family that manages to hang together in spite of a life made of very rough times. And somehow, though he speaks of his father as a violent drunk, 'mean as a rattlesnake,' you can hear the respect come through.
By contemporary standards, the language is extremely offensive. Probably it was offensive when he wrote it.
And when he wrote it, families like this were common. Now we see fewer of them, and more single mothers on welfare. We often talk as though a child is better off without a father like the one portrayed here. But the sons learned to work on automobiles, and to work hard -- cutting firewood, chopping tobacco, working all summer because they were planning ahead for the winter. Those are lessons you don't learn in a house supported by a welfare check.
Well, it's a harsh picture all the same. If you don't like that one, try this one. Daddy is a god-fearing man in this one.
Better? But the first song was about David Allan Coe, who pushed out of that kind of poverty to success and glory. The second father raised a son who intended only that "someday, when I'm grown, I'll be the same."
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