Honed. Rich Slater
a shiny new 3-speed and, in no time, Grandpa was cruising around the neighborhood. Also in no time, Grandpa was in the emergency room with a broken hip. For the remaining 14 years of his life, Grandpa walked with a limp. Never, though, did he wear a helmet.
“Grandpa Slater is honed,” Robbie would say, using his favorite term to pay his highest compliment. I agreed. I liked his unique use of the term “honed” so much that I used it too. Since Robbie was my identical twin, I believed I had license to use it without attribution whenever I wanted. To be called honed by Robbie meant something and it most certainly applied to our Grandpa Slater.
One of our favorite Dad stories was about Bud Ruble. We would all be in the tent, lined up in our sleeping bags. Dad, staring up at the ceiling of the tent and, judging from the look on his face, fondly looking back in time, recalled that he “had a friend who lived a couple blocks over on Alta Vista Street. His name was Bud Ruble and he called himself the “Earl of Alta Vista.” My brothers and I would start to snicker. What a great nickname.
“Bud Ruble thought, in his mind at least, he was some kind of local royalty,” Dad continued. “One day in sixth grade science class, we were all asked to bring something from home related to the study of biology. Bud Ruble brought a chicken in a bottle.” To this day, Dad isn’t sure where Bud got it; he thinks it was some kind of bottled meal. By this point in the story, we were giddy with the excitement of what we knew happened next.
“All the kids and the teacher gathered around and Bud started explaining that it was a real chicken in the bottle. Then the Earl tried to yank the chicken out through the bottle’s narrow neck, but it wouldn’t come out. The kids started laughing and the teacher was starting to get angry. Bud kept trying to pull it out and started saying ‘Come out of there, Bessie.’ The teacher’s name was Bessie Yater, and she chased the Earl of Alta Vista out of the classroom with ruler in her hand, yelling, “Bud Ruble you come here.” It was complete pandemonium,” Dad concluded, summarizing the scene with a simple statement.
It would approach pandemonium in the tent at this point as all of us, laughing, would start doing our own Bud Ruble impressions, calling out, “Come out of there Bessie.”
“Bud Ruble was a funny guy,” Dad always concluded. Years later, after hearing the story for the umpteenth time, Robbie would always add: “You might even say a comedic genius.” We all admired the guts displayed by the Earl in this stunt. We also, especially Robbie, admired the honed nickname the Earl of Alta Vista had bestowed upon himself.
Dad grew up in Moundsville, West Virginia, a small town on the Ohio River in the finger-shaped protuberance at the top of the state. The coal industry dominates the region’s economy and the mine entrances can be seen amid the thick forests that blanket the surrounding hillsides. Grandpa Slater, at various times, worked as a farmer, school teacher and ran a shop which re-upholstered furniture. He instilled in Dad a basic notion which played an important role in shaping his life: “Remember, the way out of the coal mines is through the university.”
During high school, Dad worked at the local pool each summer. It was a place where kids of all ages congregated.
“Someone donated an old rubber World War II raft which, without fanfare, was thrown in the pool for community use,” Dad told us. Dad and his fellow lifeguards, who were in charge of pool safety, watched with amusement as the raft quickly became the object of a water-borne version of “king of the hill.” Inevitably, “kids started dive-bombing the raft from the high board and there would be bodies flying everywhere,” Dad continued. This part always got our attention. “That would be so fun!” my brothers and I agreed, “but didn’t they get in trouble for jumping off the board onto kids in the raft?” we wondered.
“Are you kidding?” Dad replied rhetorically, “Back then there weren’t any parents coming around interfering or complaining.” My brothers and I knew there would never be an old World War II raft at our local pool, but if there was, we also knew our Dad would let us dive-bomb it from the high board, regardless of what the other parents said.
The 1938 K2 Expedition that included Wyoming climber Paul Petzoldt was the first attempt by an American team to summit the world’s second-highest but most horrendous mountain. The team was equipped with all the latest in high-tech outdoor gear, including wool mittens, canvas tents and leather-strapped, buckle-up crampons. Climbing without supplemental oxygen, Petzoldt reached an astounding height of 25,600 feet. It was a world record at the time, but it was still half a mile below the summit.
Petzoldt, who grew up in the mountains of Wyoming, first summited the Grand Teton at the age of 16. Later in life, when asked why he climbed mountains, responded:
“I can’t explain this to other people. I love the physical exertion. I love the wind, I love the storms: I love the fresh air. I love the companionship in the outdoors. I love the reality. I love the change. I love the oneness with nature: I’m hungry; I enjoy clear water. I enjoy being warm at night when its cold outside. All those simple things are extremely enjoyable because, gosh, you’re feeling them, you’re living them, you’re senses are really feeling, I can’t explain it.”
Many of Dad’s classmates followed their fathers into the mines. For those who didn’t, it wasn’t so much the coal mines were a filthy, dangerous and deadly place to work, but rather an education was the only way to gain true independence. To do something productive, provide for yourself and be your own boss was the means, with independence being the end. To achieve the means, Grandpa told Dad, you had to “get an education.”
Football was a big deal in Moundsville and in the many small communities throughout the state. The whole town turned out for the Friday night games. Dad was on the football team and, at six feet, 185 pounds; he played both offense and defense – quarterback and linebacker. My brothers and I already knew Dad was tough because of it; the shoes had real spikes and, although he was required to wear a helmet, it was made of leather and had no face mask. But Dad didn’t dwell on that.
“I was pretty good backing up the line,” Dad would admit, which was as close as we ever heard him come to bragging. He even downplayed the way his toughness got him that “education” his father had told him was so important. In his senior year at Moundsville High, Dad was selected to play in the all-star game at the end of the season, where he earned the game’s Most Valuable Player award and a football scholarship to West Virginia University. When pressed to describe how he had won the scholarship, however – did he score ten touchdowns, make all the tackles, intercept passes – Dad would only say “they had to give it to somebody.”
Dad didn’t wear his toughness on his sleeve. It was no more necessary than conspicuous consumption. The important thing was that it was there. As kids, Dad taught his boys to box and how to defend themselves. With those skills went a couple of simple rules which were absolutely inviolate to the Slater brothers: “Never start a fight, but always finish one,” and, “If one of you boys comes home beat up, you better all come home beat up.” The Slater boys never picked fights and they never all came home beat up.
To us, Dad was the manifestation and a living example of the lessons and values he and Mom had always tried to impart upon us and our sister Elizabeth, who we called Sissy. Independence, hard work, doing your best and following your dreams were the unifying principles. Integrity and respect for oneself and others were the foundations of Dad’s world view, which he demonstrated by his deeds as much as he taught by his words.
Dad set a high standard. We kids realized we were lucky, being afforded many opportunities and luxuries our father never had when he was growing up. Dad was the kind of man my brothers and I wanted to be. For Sis, it was Mom who she tried to emulate. The fact Dad had pulled himself up out of the coal mines by his football cleats, something we would never have to do, made his success story the more impressive to us.
“Dad’s the man!” was a common Robbie proclamation, a notion shared by the rest of the Slater boys.
While we were in high school, Dad drove a white Buick Skylark, complete with a broken-off driver’s side door handle. It ran pretty well, so Dad kept it. Dad knew-and so did we-that he could get a Cadillac