The Patriarch of the Foster Clan…

Johnny-on-the-Spot … by John Foster …

Before every big Foster family meal, the tradition is to stand in a circle and hold hands and a prayer is offered.

All 13 of us circled up for Easter Sunday dinner and I said, “So who’s gonna lead this? “My older daughter, Nikki said, “You Dad. You’re the partriach,” and so I said grace before we chowed down.

I’ve been doing it for a long time, too.

“Patriarch” is by definition, the male head of a family or tribe; the chief or father of the family; a man who is father or founder; the oldest member or representative of a group; a venerable old man.

In a Biblical sense, the term carries a “meatier” definition.

As it stands, I guess I’m the “patriarch” because I’m still upright and breathing.

In my youth, I never thought I was destined to be a “patriarch”.

I was but a year or two old when my Mother dyed Easter eggs and I set my gaze upon a beautiful turquoise-blue number.

I picked it up and was so excited until I bit into the hard-boiled beauty, shell and all.

I though it would taste better than that.

This was the same kid who would go to our Burns Street neighbor, Harry Wilkinson and beg for peanut butter crackers.

“Zoosie, ah peedie booe!” which “Wilkie” understood.

He’d give me 3 or 4 saltines slathered in creamy peanut butter and I’d jam them in my craw and waddle home to my Mother.

She’s have to scrape the sticky, crunchy mess off the roof of my mouth.

Doesn’t sound like a “Patriarch-in-training” to me.

This is the same kid who used to don his football helmet and shoulder pads, plus his football and kazoo and play “One-on-none” football on the side yard.

I’d toss tight spirals in the air and attempt diving touchdown catches, occasionally pausing to be the public address announcer summoning our family physician, Dr. Wadsworth, to the sideline.

At halftime, I’d grab my kazoo and do a one-man-band “Script Ohio”, probably spelling out “O-H-I-O” on my own.

Patriarch, huh?

When I got my first bike at Christmas, I begged and pleaded with my parents to allow me to take it out for a ride.

Mom and Dad finally relented.

I pedaled down the driveway, right onto snow-covered and slushy Crestwood Drive whereupon I rolled right into the mailboxes because I couldn’t turn on the icy roadway.

So much for the pedaling patriarch.

I was a youthful gardener, too.

Planted all sorts of critical food stuffs.

Like Indian corn. Gourds. Parsley.

I dabbled in green onions and radishes.

Missed one radish with the late summer harvest so when I turned the soil next spring, I uncovered this gnarly, wormy, nasty-looking thing about the size of a baseball.

It even smelled hot.

My favorite flowers were nasturtiums and I dabbled in bachelor buttons, morning glories and zinnias.

My parents accommodated my “green thumb urges” by allowing me to dig up an area at the end of the backyard for planting.

One year, I bought alfalfa seed so I could grow a crop, only to spade it under to better nourish next year’s garden.

The patriarch in training.

But my advance into complete “nerd-dom” happened when I built a weather station in the backyard.

I had some “fatherly” assistance because I needed to use shutters for doors to get accurate temperature readings, plus dig a hole for the 4×4 upon which the station was mounted at 48 inches of the ground.

I bought a “recording” mercury thermometer which used floats in the mercury tubes to record the temperature extremes, a mercury sling psychrometer, one with a “wet” bulb to compute relative humidity, plus a rain gauge as well as an anemometer for wind speed and a wind vane.

Most of my wind speed measurements were based on the Beaufort scale of observing smoke, leaves and branches.

This eventual patriarch also cut the daily weather maps out of the local newspaper and I glued them into a stenographers’ pad along with my daily weather readings.

How long did I do this?

Well, I remember checking my rain gauge after my high school graduation party and it was filled with amber fluids than reeked of stale beer.

“Patriarch” sounds so noble but I guess it’s more about simply breathing longer than any of the other potential office-holders.

Had I known in my youth that I was destined to become a patriarch, I might have chosen some more noteworthy actions.

Come to think of it, maybe those things I did in my youth allowed me to make it to the “patriarch-zone”.