Honed. Rich Slater
the street. We liked watching the workers with their tool belts and interesting equipment. Like garbage men, the workers also had cool gloves. We had tool belts, too. One evening, Robbie and I sneaked out of the backyard and down to the construction site. Believing our assistance would be thoroughly appreciated; we pried open several paint cans and got started. As we worked, we commended ourselves for the job we were doing.
“I wonder how much they’re going to pay us!” Robbie proclaimed with a wide-eyed grin. We were not offered payment for a job well done. Instead, Dad had to write the owners a check for the damage.
“We were so mad,” Mom recalled, “but what could we do? You guys…”
A few years later a similar situation occurred when, without being asked, we helped out by harvesting all of the vegetables from a neighbor’s garden.
Curious minds and fertile imaginations, Mom believed, if lovingly cultivated, could grow to bear the fruit of great adventure and worthwhile accomplishments. This held true for kids as well as adults. Sometimes, though, our curiosity trumped our collective common sense. But Mom always thought that the more we spread our wings, the higher we’d have a chance to fly. In the meantime, Mom didn’t sweat the small stuff.
These stories not only filled the tent with laughter, but helped instill in us a sense of family identity. Our favorites always focused on our ancestors’ traits of independence, quirkiness and subtle irreverence. It caused us to embrace these attitudes. It gave me – and I know it gave Robbie – a framework which encouraged our own individuality. We may not have been necessarily special, but we were at least different.
When Robbie was older, he seemed to get a kick out of Prince Charles of England, mostly because he was married to Princess Diana, who Robbie found quite attractive. Had the prince’s mom the Queen passed or given up her title, Charles would ascend the throne as King. If Charles got his chance, Robbie wouldn’t have watched on TV as the new king rode through the streets in his gilded carriage draped in the ermine robe of regality. Robbie didn’t fault the prince for being born into a position of privilege – “Good work if you can get it” he would say, but this comment transparently masked an element of jealousy Robbie felt. Charles had been born lucky, through no effort or merit on his part. Robbie and I knew we had been born pretty lucky ourselves, also through no effort or merit on our parts. If Charles got to be king, he should at least try and be a good one. Robbie and I felt we had the same kind of obligation, albeit without a title.
This comment also masked another, though not readily apparent element of Robbie’s personality: insecurity. Would he be able to live up to Dad, much less be a great king? Though Robbie never expected anything handed to him he felt, as did I that we had to at least try and live up to the best of our legacy.
Dad always said, “In the end, the only thing you have is your integrity. What counts is the type of person you are and what you stand for. If you want to parachute off buildings or run across Antarctica, that’s beside the point.”
Or as Mom put it, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or a doctor or a candlestick maker, as long as you’re the best one you can be.”
Or, as Dad concluded, perhaps less profoundly, “I don’t care what you do – just do something.” Whatever that “something” was, however, we would have to figure out for ourselves.
As part of a lineage of characters with the courage of Grandpaps Hannah, adventurousness of Grandpa Slater, cool confidence of Grandpa Krizek, good-natured defiance of Grandma Krizek, subtle irreverence of Grandma Slater and the determination and self-reliance of Dad, as Robbie got older he felt not only compelled but entirely justified not just in doing something but in carrying that something one step further than anyone else. This was especially true when he was in the mountains, surrounded by the spirits of the wild.
Robbie knew he wouldn’t be a king, but he also knew he could – and should – seek to become the king of whatever something he chose to do.
With Grandpa Chet (Robbie on left)
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