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Show me a father who doesn’t get mad when his kids do something wrong, and I’ll show you a father who just doesn’t care about his kids. But our daddy? He was our hero. He was our nekkid-butt-whoopin’ hero. Walter and I did everything with him. It was kind of like he was a sibling at times, an older brother to both of us. He taught us to fish and hunt, and he taught us how to appreciate the outdoors. That’s a gift that is still giving to this very day.
    Walter, Daddy, and I were about as close as father and sons could be. It was like he compartmentalized his roles as friend and disciplinarian, and we did the same. When he was hanging out with us, he was our homeboy, that’s for sure. But when we were messing up, well, Daddy was definitely the enforcer.
    Momma set the rules, and Daddy made sure the rules were followed. Momma would set a rule, we’d break it, she’d tell Daddy, and he’d make us pay. From the time I was about seven until my senior year in high school, I’d often go to bed fully dressed because we’d do mischievous things worthy of a whoopin’, and I knew my momma would tell Daddy when he got home. Right before I started going to bed fully clothed, I noticed that sometimes, when my momma told Daddy we’d been bad, he’d wait until about 10:30 or 11:00 at night, when we’d be in the bed half-nekkid, to come in and whoop some behind. Many nights I thought I’d gotten away with something, when all of a sudden, Daddy would rip off the covers with his belt in his hand. Each of our beds was in a corner, wedged against the wall, so we were sitting ducks. Sitting nekkid ducks. So, anyway, after a while, I figured out when my momma was gonna tell Daddy I did something wrong, and that’s the night I’d go to bed fully clothed. You know, so I wouldn’t be nekkid and so that it hopefully wouldn’t hurt as bad.
    Of course, if Daddy was using a switch, it wouldn’t matter if you had your clothes on. You’d need armor to not feel the sting of that thing! If Daddy had time to think through how exactly he was going to whoop us, he’d make us go get a switch from the “switch tree” growing in our front yard. That tree was a willow that we swore was planted solely for supplying whoopin’ switches. Between the plum trees and our switch willow, it’s a wonder I don’t cringe every time I see a tree!
    Now, I know all of this probably sounds bad to you. Whoopin’ and pain and switches and nekkid butts and all. But I can tell you that if it weren’t for my parents’ heavy-handed discipline, there’s a real good chance Walter and I would’ve been juvenile delinquents. There’s a good chance the world would’ve never known Sweetness. We were curious little boys, always getting into trouble, and without discipline, we would’ve just gotten into more and more instead of less and less. Really, we were explorers, adventurers, and lovers of the outdoors and all it had for us, just like most boys, but we’d push it to the edge. We were always staying out too long, going farther than allowed, swimming in fordidden mud puddles, and yes…stealing fruit from trees that belonged to men of God. (What, you never did that when you were a kid?) And I guess we weren’t very good at it, because we were always getting caught…and whooped. And as much as whoopin’ hurt, it worked. It was exactly what we needed.
    Dr. Spock wrote a book about talking to kids, making them understand what they’ve done wrong instead of whooping them, blah blah blah. Well, that’s all fine and good and might work for some kids up north or something, but it wouldn’t have worked for Walter and me. If my daddy had tried that, we would’ve figured out from day one that we could just play along, and we would’ve gotten no whoopin’ and probably would’ve ended up criminals. Other kids might have remorse and all of that, but Walter and I didn’t. That Dr. Spock stuff wouldn’t have worked on us. What we needed was Mr. Spock’s