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First, let me say, Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers and dads out there, both singles and married, biological and step.

A person DNA isn’t the only things that makes a person the way they are or the way they will become. The culture a person is raised in. Their upbringing and teaching. Their environment!

My mother would say, “anyone can father a child; but it takes someone special to be a dad.”

I have been told that I look like one of my uncle. Some even say that I got my mother’s eyes. My mother told me that I got my real father’s nose. Yet, I find myself as I get older thinking like my step-dad, who raised me from the time I was 6 years old.

I would say that I’m more like my step-dad than my real father. You can’t tell from the picture though.

I remembered growing up, my step-dad would say, “Do you need all the lights on in the house?”

To this day, when I watched TV, I have the lights shut off to watch it in the dark. Even when I’m at church, I find myself shutting lights off that isn’t being used, to conserved energy.

My step-dad had only an 8th education; while my real father had a 3rd grade education. Yet, my step-dad was jack-of-all-trade and a master of none. He was self-taught.

He built the house we lived in on the farm himself with his own sawmill. The house is still standing, and my folks aren’t alive anymore. He believed in using the good stuff in building things; and not the cheap products. If you want something to last, you have to be willing to spend a little. Yet, at the same time, you have to save up for it if you want something good to last. He always said, “If you are going to do a job, do it the right the first time; and you wouldn’t have to redo it.”

With the stuff he made, if he patented it, we could had been better off financially than what we were. But he was a simple man who likes things simple. He wasn’t flashy!

He was tough and stern. He was a conservative, yet he didn’t voted Republicans. He voted for the person not the party.

My real father, on the other hand, was just plain cheap. My mother told me that when someone dropped a quarter, he asked her to bend down to pick it up. When she didn’t do it, he put his foot on the quarter until the person left and then pick it up himself.

He was easily taken advantage of by his brothers; whereas my step-dad would not let people walk all over him.

When he lost his job because of his age, luckily we had the farm and he was able to go self-employed by being the community mechanic. He built his own shop truck to go around the neighborhood to fix other neighbors equipment. He didn’t let being let go because of his age stop him.

So I think he would be proud of me when I saw the opportunity to jump a sinking ship when the time came before it was too late. He may even have been proud of me for creating my blog. Of all of us kids, I had the get-up and go to make something of myself. He never sat around feeling sorry for himself and he didn’t expect that from us kids either. Yet, some just doesn’t have the ump to make something of themselves. They may have the talents; but that’s about it. It’s almost like the oldest miss the mark; while the youngest hit it.

There’s one thing that surprised me though. In 2008, he voted for Obama for President. I grew up in a racist home; but yet I’m not racist. If you would listen to him talk, he wasn’t so politically correct. He told it like it was, no hold barge.

As you can tell, I’m not politically correct either.

I believe the reason he voted for Obama was: he would never vote for a woman president. I don’t think he thought so highly of John McCain either. I believed that he was upset with the way the country was going and Obama represented change.

I mean, both him and mom voted for Jimmy Carter back in 1976. The reason, he wasn’t very happy with Nixon, and Ford never stood the chance.

I would remembered him saying, “This country is destine for another Civil War.” He felt that the people will eventually get so upset with the government that they will start an uprising and overturn them.

He never lived to see Trump get elected President; but I feels that he would had voted for Trump and even say, “I told you so!!”

Like I said, he would never had voted for Hillary. He would say that Trump was saying what he was saying all along. He would laughed at those on the Left and their stupidity.

He also said, “A person may be book smart but they are not street smart.”

So you see, I see myself becoming more like dad than my real father. It was the environment I lived in. It was the teaching I got growing up from my old man. It was the culture as well. Some lessons were good and I will cherish them. Some lessons, I like to forget though. I hope that I’m not too much like my old man; at least the bad part. I hope that I carried the good and leave the bad behind. That way I can be a better man.

If I had to choose who to be more alike; I would still choose my step-dad over my real father. He was more of a dad than my real father ever was.

He was hard on all of us kids; but in his own ways he loved each and everyone of us. He even loved his grandkids as well. He just couldn’t expressed it. In a way, I too have a hard time in expressing love and appreciations to others.

Both of them are gone now; but I will cherished what I learned growing up. I hope that I can say that I can be a better man because of my old man.

This Father’s Day, cherish what I have with your fathers or step-dad. Remember, you won’t have them forever.

I love my dad but hated some of the lessons he taught us. I will forever cherish the memories of what I have.