Just Like Abraham Lincoln

Just Like Abraham Lincoln

Every February, I read a great picture book, Just Like Abraham Lincoln by Bernard Waber, to my second graders. In the story a young boy notices that his neighbor bears a remarkable physical resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln, his friend is a lawyer who helps people. Like Lincoln, he likes to read and discuss ideas. He also teaches the boy and his classmates about the real Lincoln.

As a boy Abe liked to read and learn. You may know stories about his reading by firelight and walking many miles to borrow and return books. Although he lacked a formal education, he valued learning and read everything he could get his hands on. He also liked to have fun and played many practical jokes on his family, including putting his footprints on his mother’s freshly white-washed ceiling.

Abe was a hard worker. There were many chores to do on his father’s farm and Abe was needed at a young age to help. He often plowed a field with a book propped in front of him. This didn’t help keep the rows very straight. As a young man he held many jobs, including splitting rails, and he always worked hard and responsibly.

Abe was honest. As a young man he was partner in a general store. He was not a very good businessman, but he built a reputation for honest dealings. His honesty is highlighted by the story about his walking miles to return two cents a widow who had overpaid him. He traded groceries for a barrel of books in which he found Blackstone’s Commentaries, a legal compendium, which became the basis for his law career. 

Abe knew the laws and he kept them. Abe was an militia captain during the Indian wars. Once, his men captured an Indian messenger. The rules of war stated that all messengers were to be given safe passage. Abe’s men wanted to kill him anyway. Abe would not allow it, even though his decision made him very unpopular with his men.

Abe was kind. He found time to help children, animals and people in trouble. Once he helped free a pig stuck under a fence, getting himself very muddy in the process. In his law practice he often defended the underdog -- free of charge.

Abe liked people. He sat for hours swapping tales with travelers and friends. He loved a good joke. A judge once fined him $5.00 for telling a joke that disrupted the court. Later, the judge asked Abe what he had been whispering. After hearing the joke, the judge repealed the fine.

Abe loved his family. Even after he was president he took time to play with his children. His boys often played around the feet of Abe’s Cabinet members.

Abe hated war. During the Civil War, he was grief stricken about the tragic loss of lives. He wrote many condolence letters to families who had lost sons, fathers and brothers. Even his face displayed his agonizing, aging visibly as the war dragged on.

When my students read about the life of Lincoln, they learned about a good man who knew what was important in life and who lived by his principles. 

They also learned that by helping others and living by our principles, we too can be “just like Abraham Lincoln.”

Mittens!

Dear Family,

  Yesterday, as I exited my place of employment, I walked
out into a winter wonderland. Snow covered all. My car was smothered
in the white stuff and the temperatures hovered in the low twenties.

While others shivered and reached for their snow scrapers, I boldly
strode up to my car and swept the white stuff off, scattering snow to
the east and west with my hands.

Was I cold? Did my hands get frozen and wet? 

NO! 

Fear not!  I had my .... MITTENS!

Yes, the very same mittens that my sainted little brother had
given me oh so long ago (30 years!). That same brother who diligently
saved the pennies from his allowance, shoveled snow, raked leaves and
stood on the corner selling matches in order to buy his ungrateful
siblings mittens for Christmas. 

Yes that little boy, Tiny Mikey we called him, worked his fingers to the bone

so that his brothers and sisters would not have to suffer frozen digits. 

And did we appreciate it?  Did we thank him?  NO! 

Well I for one, yea though it be thirty years late, repent. 

Thank you, Mikey! Your gift is much appreciated. Long may my fingers 

(so effortlessly typing this message) be warm -- thanks to YOU!
 

Your loving and many-fingered sister,
 

Lisa (2005)

PS  Did I mention he did all this by the time he was five?
 
 

Brrrrrr!

Brrrr!

When I was growing up, my father lived in a different climate. Let me clarify, while he did travel with his job, most of the time he resided with us. It’s just that he never seemed to be in the same temperature zone as the rest of us.

In the winter, he was not cold – inside the house at least. While my sisters and I complained that there was ice on our windows – on the inside – he told us that the house was not cold. We compensated in various ways. Maria slept with the cat, Carla used the dog and I kept a hot water bottle hidden in my sheets.  I could almost imagine my brothers huddled around a fire in their room, good Boy Scouts that they were.

In summer, we had the opposite problem. He was never hot. We begged for years for air conditioning, but until his allergies demanded it, our cries were in vain. Once we had the A/C, we never turned it on. “It’s not hot,” my father would assert as we melted. Of course, he was not hot. He was at work – in air conditioning – while we were at home sweating.

Now, my father was not a tyrant or unreasonably denying his children what they needed. He was just the man who paid the bills. I imagine that there were a lot of them for a family of ten. We never got frostbite or heatstroke. There was food on the table and clothes on our back and we were very well loved.

Kids always want what they don’t have. Today they want every electronic device advertised, each new fashion accessory and whatever the other kids “all” have. They can’t live without them, as they will repeatedly tell you. Parents have to be the ones who say, “No.”  I learned that when I had my own kids. Pinching pennies is a parent’s pastime. Trying to spend them is a kid’s. 

My children used to moan that there was nothing to eat in the house. Of course, we had three square meals a day. They had nothing to wear, yet their closets bulged. It’s so cold. That’s what sweaters are for. It’s so hot!  Isn’t that fresh air great? Round and round they go and when will they stop? The day they have their own children.

That’s what makes family life so great – it repeats itself. And every generation goes through the same cycles. That’s the way it should be. The parents are the teachers; the kids are the students. The lessons need to be learned. 

I look back with great fondness on my childhood. I learned my lessons well. Did you? I once heard a speaker telling parents that if they are giving their children everything they want they are teaching them a very bad lesson. Good things need to be earned. Bills need to be paid. You will not expire if you don’t have most things. You may shiver a bit, but you will compensate (remember that hot water bottle?) and come out stronger and wiser. So throw on another blanket or open a few windows.

Your kids may gripe, but you can smile thinking about how your grandkids will pay them back.   

         

         

Red-Nosed Parable

Red-Nosed Parable

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen, but do you recall… ?“  

And of course, you do. Who could forget the most famous reindeer of all?  But do you know the story behind the song?

In 1939, Montgomery Ward, a major retail store, asked one of its copywriters, Bob May, to write a Christmas story as a gift for the children visiting Santa in their stores. May was going through a particularly difficult time in his life. His wife was dying from cancer and their four-year-old daughter was confused about why her mother who was unlike other mothers and could not play with her. 

May recalled his own childhood, when he had been smaller than the other boys and clumsy at sports, and created another outsider -- a reindeer with a glowing red nose. In May’s story, Rudolph’s parents loved and encouraged him, but his peers taunted him because he was different. Of course, his oddity saved Santa on that famous foggy night. May’s daughter loved Rudolph and so did the thousands of children who visited Santa that year at Montgomery Ward. 

May’s wife died and he was left with huge medical bills. He asked Montgomery Ward for the copyright to his story -- and in the most unbelievable part of this story -- they gave it to him.  Rudolph became an even bigger phenomenon when May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks put the story to music and the great Gene Autry recorded the song we all know and love. It became the second most recorded holiday song after White Christmas. What a story! 

Certainly a parable for us all, or rather, several parables. 

First, there’s the parable of the story. Bob May, a successful copywriter for a major business, never forgot how the taunting of his boyhood friends had made him feel even smaller and clumsier than he was. He knew what it felt like to be different. He remembered how his parents supported him and realized that his lack of skill in sports may have focused his creative talents in other areas. Differences can be good. None of the other reindeer could guide Santa’s sleigh.

Then there’s the parable of the song. Johnny Marks first asked Bing Crosby, the most popular singer of the day, to record it. Bing said no. Dinah Shore, also extremely popular, turned him down as well. It was too childish, not the right image for either. So Marks asked Gene Autry, the “Singing Cowboy.” Gene took it home and played it for his wife. He was about to turn it down too, but his wife convinced him that it would be a great song for him. Taking a chance can lead to great rewards; Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer became Autry’s greatest hit.

Finally, there’s the parable of Montgomery Ward. The store commissioned the story with the sole object of making money. Enticing the kiddies into the store to see Santa raised sales. Six million copies had been given away by 1946. They made a lot of money and could have made a whole lot more with the success of the song. But in 1947 they gave the copyright back to Bob May so that he could pay the medical bills from his wife’s terminal illness. It is better to give than to receive. Montgomery Ward has long closed, but its legacy with Rudolph continues.

Bob May lived comfortably on the royalties from his story and song until his death in 1976.  Rudolph lives on, teaching us every holiday season that it is good to be different and that, on the foggy nights in our lives, we can look for a light to guide us.

By doing something to help others, like writing a story that enthralls children, or a composing a song that brings joy, or giving to someone in need, we too, can go down in history.