A True Wrangler

How Did My Dad Wear His Wranglers?

The question both takes me back, and makes me smile.

The man I called 'Dad' wore them pretty low. Not because he was into that sort of look, but because he worked so hard and so long each day, he couldn't keep the meat on him. Jim, or 'Dad' was a skinny guy.

He did everything his way, come to think of it.

I first met the man my kids knew as Grandpa Jim when I first met and later married his step-son. We were at Sunday dinner and my future mother-in-law had made quite a feast. I guess Grandpa Jim wanted to keep her humble, because he took one of her rolls and threw it on the floor. It landed with a thwunck. They had been actually sort of tough, but none of us were going to say anything.

"These rolls are as hard as my head!" he declared. We all shifted uncomfortably in our seats.

Once I was officially an in-law, the summer visits to the little town in Nevada where Dad was raised began for me. It also was the beginning of some of the most harrowing traveling methods I've ever witnessed. With my new father-in-law clearly oblivious to any form of speed limit, and weaving crazily in and out, my husband and I waxed religious. We prayed for the safety of Dad, Mom, the three horses they were towing, and we, the innocent soon-to-be victims driving behind them. Many a time we'd see Dad's truck cross that middle line and drift into the oncoming lane. He wasn't a drinker (that we knew of), and he didn't act tired. What on earth was the problem?

We asked Dad that question in no uncertain terms when we stopped for gas. My husband asked it while waving his arms wildly and running his fingers through his hair.

"I like to drive loose," Dad replied, then grinned to himself. He looked over and gave me a wink when he said that. I was more than a little amused. I think he just liked to mess with people's heads.

Everyday he wore those Wranglers low on his waist, like the cowboy he was. Tales of his bronc-riding days in Nevada were legendary. I knew very little about the country and the cowboy ways, being from back East. I often wondered if he was disappointed that his son hadn't married more of a country girl. If so, he never showed it. While Dad wasn't big on compliments, he still had his way of getting the job done.

He liked to trip me whenever he could, especially if I was dressed up and wearing high heels. He liked to spill water on me and make it look like an accident. He'd smack me on the arm over things I'd say, or throw his hand down in the air as if to say 'you're not worth bothering with today', accompanied with an 'ach!' kind of exclamation.

I loved it.

He once asked me if I'd ever played any sports in high school. I laughed at the question. Me, sports? He said he was asking because he thought I had an athletic frame. It was the nicest thing Dad had ever said to me, and I still take that shred of a compliment out today and examine it sometimes. My hard-as-nails, hanging siding on the shed the day after a heart attack, tough cowboy father-in-law thought I was athletic.

Dad lost more weight when he got sick. He was told he had two years to live. Over two years later, when the hospice nurse came for the first time to meet him, she was surprised to learn that he was out on the tractor. He didn't take completely to his bed until just a few weeks before he passed, and he was out supervising the burning of some branches and refuse just a week before, mad as all get out because we weren't doing it right.

My tough father-in-law wasn't very affectionate; that wasn't how he'd been raised. He'd been raised to work through stuff he didn't like, man up, and buck up. There in the end, though, he was a hugger. His last words to me were 'love ya.' They were my last words to him, too.

How did my father-in-law wear his Wranglers? The same way he did everything in his life.

However he darn well pleased.