On Raising Richard

In searching for a subject for this class, two of my sisters-in-law suggested the raising of Richard. Richard is our second son.

When he was born we named him after a brother in law, Richard Benson, and I had an Irish helper named Mike Clancy. We named him Richard Michael. When he came home from the hospital he had a black eye from the birth. Consequently, his name was Mike.

I was drafted into the army shortly after his first birthday. Shortly after I was released from the army in 1946 I was able to get a new 1946 maroon Plymouth coupe. My oldest brother was a car dealer, hence the possibility of getting a new car.

It was only a few weeks old when Mike got hold of a saw, went into the garage and started to saw on the steering wheel. Fortunately he just got started when my wife caught him and stopped him.

He was very active and climbed up on the trunk of the car and with sand on his shoes slid down the trunk scratching the paint on the practically new car.

I was building our first home of our own at Richmond Highlands, which is about 12 miles north of Seattle. There was a big brush pile in the hollow behind the house. Mike got in the car, released the brakes, and drove it down in the hollow into the brush pile. We had to have it towed back up the hill.

We had just had the windows installed in the house, they were some of the first aluminum windows in the Seattle area. This was in 1947. Mike dug out part of the putty in the newly glazed widows.

I had finally got to the point of painting the exterior of the house. I had just opened a five gallon can of paint. I removed about a quart of the paint so I could stir it. At this point my wife called me downstairs for a cup of coffee. We were living in the basement while finishing the upstairs.

When I returned upstairs the five gallon can was full and the quart can was still full. It didn't take long to realize that Mike had added water to the oil base paint rendering the whole five gallons useless.

At this point I took him down to a tree near the brush pile and tied him to the tree for about an hour. In this day and age I'd probably be put in jail for this. My wife always accused me of kicking him all the way down to the tree. I always maintained and still do that I was merely pushing him with my foot.

Sometime later he stuck his finger in the kitchen exhaust fan. He had to climb up on a tall kitchen bar stool in order to accomplish this. Luckily it didn't cut off a finger.

Next, he fell out of a tree and had what the doctor called a green stick fracture of his arm.

The last destructive act that I'll talk about was in the second house I built. It was Christmas time and my wife had bought one of those revolving angel gizmos. You burned four candles and the heat rising made it revolve and little bars hanging down from the angels would ring bells as it swung around. Mike started not only the four candles that were part of it, but also melted wax in the bottom of the tray and put about 8 more pieces of string to act as wicks. The fire from the resulting bonfire created so much heat that it was spinning around too fast for the bells to even ring any more. What he didn't realize was that the Formica counter top under the candles could only take so much heat and it finally exploded sending wicks, candles, bells and angels flying. Fortunately, the house didn't burn down.

Mike grew up, played football at Shoreline High School, now under the name of Dick. He was on the team that won the Seattle championship the first year they were in the Greater Seattle Athletic league.

He is now a very responsible computer consultant in New York City where he specializes in setting up systems in high-powered legal firms. By they way, no one calls him Mike or Dick. He's now Richard Hein.