1. My Papa

My father, Alexander Jackson Douglas, was fifty when I was born. He had lived longer than most men of his years, having been a farmer, a schoolmaster, a college student, a lawyer, a State Senator; and, when we first met, a rural preacher.

He had also sired a large family and was a grandfather to children older than I, so that by the time we of the second crop came along little kids were no novelty and certainly no treat.

My younger brother and I were taught by our mama to call our father Papa, which we did, and continued to do until the end of his days.

Mama, too, who was his junior by more than a score of years, called him Papa, except on infrequent occasions of brief but brisk annoyance when she addressed him as AJ. Mama was sincerely devoted to Papa but when she called him AJ. we all—including AJ.—took to cover.

When I was a small boy all men in their fifties were elderly. It was not to any man’s advantage to appear youthful. The world had always been operated by and for old men and my papa had been brought up in that tradition. In his youth all work was done by hand. There was no power machinery. Even the horse-drawn conveyances and implements on the northern Ohio farm where Papa grew up were primitive. Grass was cut with sickle and scythe, dried and cured into hay with hand rakes. The mowing machine, the hay-tedder, the grain harvester were yet to appear. Wheat was threshed on the barn floor by the same kind of flail used in Egypt during the reign of the Pharaohs.

In the field of manufacture, a man who built wagons made the whole wagon. To do that he had to be a draughtsman, a carpenter, a blacksmith, a wheelwright, a painter and a merchant. It required long experience to acquire so many skills.

This venerable wagon-maker was assisted by poorly paid apprentices who turned the grindstone, fired the forge, dressed the lumber, and stood at the old fellow’s elbow, handing him sharpened chisels and dirty looks, and wishing him dead.

The same conditions applied to all other varieties of employment. In the bank, in the store, on the farm, on the sea, in legislative halls and professorial chairs, it was the old man who paid the piper and called the tune. For economic reasons, then, it was important that a man should take on the appearance and behavior of maturity as soon as possible. Youngsters in their late teens and early twenties grew beards.

When power machinery came into common use and youthful agility was more in demand than seasoned experience, the beards disappeared from the faces of all men who brought their dexterity to market rather than their wisdom. But the statesmen, doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers and preachers kept their whiskers for many years after the men in the mill had disposed of theirs.