106

[fbhjr]

My father died in 2000. But, yesterday was the 106th anniversary of his birth.

85 was doing pretty well. That’s the longest any of my male line (father, father’s father, father’s father’s father, etc.) has done since 1700 at which point I lose track of exact dates. The one born in 1713 did make it to 82, but he’s the only other one to even make it to 70.
I’ve already passed 2 of the 7 and am coming up on a third soon.

One of the biggest reasons I didn’t get along with my parents was my unwillingness to follow in his footsteps.
(He claimed he didn’t care, but didn’t stop my mother from going on about it a lot…)
So, I went to a different engineering school than he did and became a mechanical engineer instead of an electrical engineer. (Ooo, what a major divergence…)

One of my mother’s biggest arguments about this was that mechanical engineer’s make less money. And, when you adjust for inflation, my father is still ahead of me in this regard. Of course, I’m comparing his salary from when he was 15 years older than I am now. Maybe I’ll get there by 2036.
But, even two years ago when my company stock unexpectedly shot up giving me a much bigger bonus than expected, I don’t hit is adjusted 1980 salary.


I do make almost exactly the median salary for someone in my position with my years of experience. (And, the difference between mechanical and electrical is not noticeable when you’re a manager like I am…)
So, I’m not doing badly, I’m doing very average. And, if you count the bonuses, above average.
It would be nice to be able to prove my mother wrong. But, the numbers don’t support that.
I do think I’m happier than my dad was. To me, that counts for a lot more.

When he was my age it was August 1972. My sister was 24, I was 8 and my brother 6. We all still got along fairly well at that point.
It was 10 years after his first wife died, 9 since he married my mother and still about 4 before whatever fight he and my mother had that made her so bitter.
(I’ve always suspected it was something on the order of him saying he preferred his first wife, but I only have my mother’s sobbing shouts of “I should divorce him!” to go by, so maybe it is something else. Whatever it was, there was a clear change in their relationship and my mother’s attitude to life after 1976 or so…)

He was a licensed engineer, I’m not. Of course, he got his license by having been working as an engineer for more than 20 years when they started licensing people, so he was grandfathered in.
I’ve been working as one for 35 years now, and could qualify for a similar process if I wanted to pay the fees for it.
But, it is not something that is needed for my job, so my company won’t pay them. And, I don’t feel the need to get the license if it doesn’t make a difference for my job.
But, he was very proud of having his.

I do have six patents saying I invented totally new things. I’m at least as proud of that as having a couple of initials after my name. And, he never got any of those. He probably could have under the newer rules where you can patent procedures and such. But, back then you had to physically build something and his plans to protect the power grid weren’t physical. (He used to talk about things like what happened in Texas this winter and what he did to make sure they didn’t happen here. That was 40+ years ago…)

While I did give up performing music, and he never did, I do perform other things. More or less still. (Hopefully we’ll book shows again…)
He never ran any kind of performance group, despite being a member of many.

He did graduate college in 1936 in the middle of the great depression. So, even with the financial issues of 2008, I think he has me beat on living through tough times. Not to mention his being in World War 2, even if he didn’t see combat.
I have no desire to challenge him on his beating me in those categories.

He made it through the flu pandemic of 1919, so I guess we’re about even on that one now.

Despite what this looks like, I really don’t spend much time pondering this sort of thing. It’s more just noticing patterns and looking around for others.

I do see patterns run through my family. Even my wife has said a few times “the way your cousin said that really reminds me of your dad”.
Things like income and such as less to me than being happy. And, I’m doing OK at that one. I think better than my dad.

Who knows?
106 years ago things were certainly difference.

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[ravena_kade]

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