IRVIN’S LESSON
By Alan Bruce Compher
Several
years ago dad and I were on a hunting trip in David Canyon, an area of the
Santa Lucia Range of the Coast Mountains of California. This was a few miles
north of San Luis Obispo where dad was born. David Canyon was home for granddad
George “Jake” Jacob and Grandma Emma Jane Compher and their nine children until
they moved to Kem County in 1917. This was rugged country with deer trails the
only paths along steep, forested slopes. I was following dad when I stepped
into a mountain hornet’s nest hidden beneath the autumn leaves, that somehow
dad had avoided. Immediately I was engulfed in a swarm of angry insects and
instinctively fell and rolled downhill covering my face with one hand and
holding fast to my rifle with the other. I came to rest finally, caught by some
underbrush close by a dead straight drop of some 300 feet, almost certain
death. Dad let himself down carefully and rescued me from my predicament and we
went back to our camp near the old, now abandoned, home where he had spent his
childhood.
After I took off my shirt and trousers, dad
helped me pick off about 50or so hornets, most dead or dying from my frantic
blows, from my chest and back. To take my mind off my pain dad related the
following story from his childhood. I was never so close to him as I was that
afternoon.
Dad had just turned seven and was returning home
from school with his older brother Benjamin “Benny”. His dad had given him a
hand axe for his birthday and he had taken it to school to show his teacher and
classmates in the one room school five or so miles, which they walked everyday
barefooted, from home.
At this point in the story I should point out
that taking the “hatchet” to his school was not considered improper in rural
California of 1917. A hatchet was considered a tool, not a weapon, as was a
rifle a tool for putting food on the table; people did not own handguns, as
they had no need to conceal their weapons. Their weapons were their closed
fists, which they were allowed to use as often as they saw the need without
fear of the law. A man who misused his fists on women, children or the elderly
would be properly disciplined by his peers, in kind a man who robbed or killed
with a handgun would be hunted down by all able-bodied men from miles around
and possibly would not live to stand trail. Female felons were so rare that
there were no prisons to house them. Let us not judge these by gone times too
harshly least we be similarly judged by our own progeny.
Now back to the story. On the was home from
school Benny, who was jealous of the gift to Irvin from his dad, took the
hatchet from Irvin and began to crop away at a stump next to the dusty road.
Irvin asked for his axe back and placed his hands on the stump to prevent Benny
from using it, whereupon Benny lopped off the tip of the ring finger on Irvin’s
right hand and be began to bleed all over his best shirt.
About this time their dad, who had been in town
on business, rode up on his mule and took in the scene. He took the axe from
Benny and told him to hurry along home to his chores. Then dad pulled out his
handkerchief and wrapped up Irvin’s hand before pulling off his belt to whip
his youngest son with these words.
“ Benny was wrong to take your axe but you,
Irvin, were stupid to put your hands in the way of harm. I can abide as errant
son but not a stupid one. Let this be your lesson.”
Listening to my father recount this it was clear
that granddad’s words had affected him much much more than his beating. In his
day, as in my own, rarely did a week pass without corporal punishment from some
quarter: father, mother (rarely), teacher, principal, or (most often)
playground. My father actually gave me lessons in boxing when I came home
battered from the playground. Later, when I was in the U. S. Navy, his lessons
came in very handy indeed. Dad has been gone now for nearly twenty years and
granddad for thirty-three and I never missed them or their way of life more
than I do now.