July 17, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Our American Stories listener and regular contributor from South Carolina, Dennis Peterson, shares the story of working with his dad in bricklaying—and how, despite thriftiness being mostly a positive trait, it sometimes led to unexpected consequences on the job.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story from our regular contributor Dennis Peterson. Today, Dennis shares
with us the story of something his father did called
make him do. Here's Dennis.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It surely had something to do with his having grown
up on a farm and during the Great Depression. But
Daddy expressed few desires for things, and he seldom made
impulse purchases. He bought only what he needed. If he
needed it but couldn't buy it, he made it or
did without. He was always looking for the better deal
(00:52):
on what few things he did buy. Daddy hated dead.
He had built his own house on his own land.
The only debt he incurred was for the drilling of
a will on his property, something that he was unable
to do himself. He paid his brother in law, my
(01:14):
uncle Dylan, ten dollars a month until the total was
paid off, and he never owed anyone a dime after that. Rather,
Daddy saved money. Actually it was probably mother who saved it,
but Daddy certainly was behind her efforts, never fighting against
her on it. I recall that every time the Knoxville
(01:37):
News Sentinel raised its subscription rate, Daddy threatened to stop
the paper, But Mother always found some way to trim
the household budget, usually through getting better buys on her
grocery purchases, and saved enough to pay the higher rate
and keep getting the paper for years. Home delivery of
the seven day subscription was only fifty cents a way week.
(02:00):
But if Daddy needed something, he saved for it, not
making the purchase until he had the cash in hand
to pay for it. That's what he did when buying
a car or truck. He saved and saved over a
long time. Then when he was approaching the amount needed
for the purchase, he began shopping around for the best deal.
(02:23):
When he thought he had located the vehicle he wanted,
he sat down with the salesman and stated his terms
ninety days same as cash. If the dealer wouldn't accept
those simple terms, Daddy simply got up and walked out.
That's how he bought every car and truck he ever owned.
Daddy was not tempted to exceed the top amount he
(02:45):
had determined to spend by any dealer add ons, options,
or extra features or enticements. He wanted no luxury features,
no radio or air conditioning. When those features were optional,
he did get them when they became standard. His trucks
never had radios. They were work trucks. No wide white
(03:07):
sidewalls if it was extra, no fancy hubcaps or wheels,
no more chrome than was standard. And those were the
days before most of the cars were made of plastic.
Dady saved more than money, though he seldom threw anything away.
(03:28):
We might need it someday. He would offer as a
reason for hanging on to something many a time when
I had nothing to do, when I went to work
with him, or on rainy or cold days when we
could not work, he had me pull nails from scaffold
boards that had been nailed together. After I removed them,
he instructed me to straighten them and store them in
(03:50):
a large coffee can or jelly jar or old wooden box.
He might need to reuse them later. He also had
a similar collection of old atar did sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers,
and rubber gaskets. Then, when a need arose for one
of those items, it would be available. He wouldn't have
(04:11):
to run to the hardware store to buy one. He would, however,
spend an hour or so searching through endless cans and
boxes and other kinds of containers until he found the
right item for his current need. This was all part
of what he called making do. But to make do,
(04:31):
you had to have a ready supply of material and
tools to make do with. That's why he saved not
just money, but everything. But I was impatient. I couldn't
understand Daddy's thinking. Daddy, I sometimes tried to reason with him,
You save all these nuts and bolts and washers and
(04:52):
screws to save money, But then you'll spend an hour
or more hunting through the whole collection trying to find
the right one. Don't you know that time is money.
He couldn't see it that way. I'd resigned myself to
his never changing. The problem was that it was often
my time too. The place where Daddy's making do concerned
(05:20):
me most was on the job site. He sometimes improvised
in ways that clearly were unsafe to himself, me and
other workers. For example, when I was so young that
I could carry a maximum of only three bricks at
a time, I was working with Daddy on a house
that on the upper end was one story tall, but
(05:41):
on the lower end was three stories. The pile of
used bricks that had been dumped on the upper end
meant that I had to transfer them as needed on
the scaffold all the way to the other end of
the house. Daddy rigged a two y ten walk board
running from the brick pile to the uppermost scaffold. I
was to carry my three bricks up that board and
(06:03):
along the scaffold walkway to the other end of the house.
My problem was that with both of my hands on
the bricks, I had no way of balancing myself on
the walkboard. I would fall off. Listening to my complaint,
Daddy conceded and agreed to put a handrail on one
(06:24):
side of the walkboard. That sounded to me like a
safer solution to the problem. But after he added the
rail and I tried it out, I discovered that the
rail made the walk space on the board even narrower,
forcing me to walk toward one side of the board.
Daddy insisted, however, that it was safe. I tried to
(06:46):
make it work and promptly fell off the side without
the rail and into the pile of bricks below. Daddy's
making do once just about did him in too. He
was working high on the scaffold in the gable end
of a house. He used two walkboards nailed together with
(07:08):
sixteen penny nails to span the central part of the scaffold.
Is that safe, I asked, with genuine concern. Of course
it's safe, he responded, sounding a bit hurt by my doubts.
I built it, didn't I. He walked across it once
and then recrossed it, bouncing up and down on it
(07:28):
a little to demonstrate his point. Over the course of
the day, however, his repeated walking and bouncing across the
gap caused the nails to begin working loose. Near the
end of the day, the boards suddenly separated as Daddy
walked across them and down he fell about twenty feet
into a wheelbarrow of freshly mixed mortar. Other than a
(07:52):
skinned shin and a bruised ego, he was uninjured, but
what would have been the result of that fall had
that barrow of mortar not been there to cushion the fall.
On another occasion, when Daddy made do, he nearly burned
our house down. We had been having some trouble with
(08:12):
our water heater, not being able to meet the demands
of a family of six. One Saturday, we asked Daddy
to look at it and see what the problem was.
Upon examining it, he determined that one element had burned out,
but he thought that he could jury rig it so
that it would still produce heat. I don't understand electrical
(08:33):
appliances enough to know exactly what he did, but I
think he somehow bypassed something and rewired some other thing
and it worked. Problem solved, or so we thought. On
Monday afternoon, we drove into the garage when we got
home from work, and for some odd reason I happened
(08:54):
to look toward the opposite side of the garage where
our water heater was. I saw one side of it
blackened from bottom to top. My eyes followed the direction
of the rising soot stain to the ceiling joys. They
were charred and the insulation between the joys was blackened. Fortunately,
(09:15):
the fire caused the circuit breaker to do its job,
cutting off the power and preventing further damage. That's what
can come from making do. But Daddy remained a make
do man all his life.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And a great work is always by Monty Montgomery and
a special thanks to Dennis Peterson, and you can go
to Dennis lpeterson dot Com to hear more of his stories,
the upsides and the downsides of having a making do
kind of dad or mom or anyone around you. And
I've had enoughing around me in my life. And sometimes
(09:53):
they're a joy, and sometimes they'll kill you. The story
of Dennis Peterson's dad. So many dads around this country
like here on our American Story.
And we returned to our American stories. Up next the
story from our regular contributor Dennis Peterson. Today, Dennis shares
with us the story of something his father did called
make him do. Here's Dennis.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It surely had something to do with his having grown
up on a farm and during the Great Depression. But
Daddy expressed few desires for things, and he seldom made
impulse purchases. He bought only what he needed. If he
needed it but couldn't buy it, he made it or
did without. He was always looking for the better deal
(00:52):
on what few things he did buy. Daddy hated dead.
He had built his own house on his own land.
The only debt he incurred was for the drilling of
a will on his property, something that he was unable
to do himself. He paid his brother in law, my
(01:14):
uncle Dylan, ten dollars a month until the total was
paid off, and he never owed anyone a dime after that. Rather,
Daddy saved money. Actually it was probably mother who saved it,
but Daddy certainly was behind her efforts, never fighting against
her on it. I recall that every time the Knoxville
(01:37):
News Sentinel raised its subscription rate, Daddy threatened to stop
the paper, But Mother always found some way to trim
the household budget, usually through getting better buys on her
grocery purchases, and saved enough to pay the higher rate
and keep getting the paper for years. Home delivery of
the seven day subscription was only fifty cents a way week.
(02:00):
But if Daddy needed something, he saved for it, not
making the purchase until he had the cash in hand
to pay for it. That's what he did when buying
a car or truck. He saved and saved over a
long time. Then when he was approaching the amount needed
for the purchase, he began shopping around for the best deal.
(02:23):
When he thought he had located the vehicle he wanted,
he sat down with the salesman and stated his terms
ninety days same as cash. If the dealer wouldn't accept
those simple terms, Daddy simply got up and walked out.
That's how he bought every car and truck he ever owned.
Daddy was not tempted to exceed the top amount he
(02:45):
had determined to spend by any dealer add ons, options,
or extra features or enticements. He wanted no luxury features,
no radio or air conditioning. When those features were optional,
he did get them when they became standard. His trucks
never had radios. They were work trucks. No wide white
(03:07):
sidewalls if it was extra, no fancy hubcaps or wheels,
no more chrome than was standard. And those were the
days before most of the cars were made of plastic.
Dady saved more than money, though he seldom threw anything away.
(03:28):
We might need it someday. He would offer as a
reason for hanging on to something many a time when
I had nothing to do, when I went to work
with him, or on rainy or cold days when we
could not work, he had me pull nails from scaffold
boards that had been nailed together. After I removed them,
he instructed me to straighten them and store them in
(03:50):
a large coffee can or jelly jar or old wooden box.
He might need to reuse them later. He also had
a similar collection of old atar did sizes of screws, bolts, nuts, washers,
and rubber gaskets. Then, when a need arose for one
of those items, it would be available. He wouldn't have
(04:11):
to run to the hardware store to buy one. He would, however,
spend an hour or so searching through endless cans and
boxes and other kinds of containers until he found the
right item for his current need. This was all part
of what he called making do. But to make do,
(04:31):
you had to have a ready supply of material and
tools to make do with. That's why he saved not
just money, but everything. But I was impatient. I couldn't
understand Daddy's thinking. Daddy, I sometimes tried to reason with him,
You save all these nuts and bolts and washers and
(04:52):
screws to save money, But then you'll spend an hour
or more hunting through the whole collection trying to find
the right one. Don't you know that time is money.
He couldn't see it that way. I'd resigned myself to
his never changing. The problem was that it was often
my time too. The place where Daddy's making do concerned
(05:20):
me most was on the job site. He sometimes improvised
in ways that clearly were unsafe to himself, me and
other workers. For example, when I was so young that
I could carry a maximum of only three bricks at
a time, I was working with Daddy on a house
that on the upper end was one story tall, but
(05:41):
on the lower end was three stories. The pile of
used bricks that had been dumped on the upper end
meant that I had to transfer them as needed on
the scaffold all the way to the other end of
the house. Daddy rigged a two y ten walk board
running from the brick pile to the uppermost scaffold. I
was to carry my three bricks up that board and
(06:03):
along the scaffold walkway to the other end of the house.
My problem was that with both of my hands on
the bricks, I had no way of balancing myself on
the walkboard. I would fall off. Listening to my complaint,
Daddy conceded and agreed to put a handrail on one
(06:24):
side of the walkboard. That sounded to me like a
safer solution to the problem. But after he added the
rail and I tried it out, I discovered that the
rail made the walk space on the board even narrower,
forcing me to walk toward one side of the board.
Daddy insisted, however, that it was safe. I tried to
(06:46):
make it work and promptly fell off the side without
the rail and into the pile of bricks below. Daddy's
making do once just about did him in too. He
was working high on the scaffold in the gable end
of a house. He used two walkboards nailed together with
(07:08):
sixteen penny nails to span the central part of the scaffold.
Is that safe, I asked, with genuine concern. Of course
it's safe, he responded, sounding a bit hurt by my doubts.
I built it, didn't I. He walked across it once
and then recrossed it, bouncing up and down on it
(07:28):
a little to demonstrate his point. Over the course of
the day, however, his repeated walking and bouncing across the
gap caused the nails to begin working loose. Near the
end of the day, the boards suddenly separated as Daddy
walked across them and down he fell about twenty feet
into a wheelbarrow of freshly mixed mortar. Other than a
(07:52):
skinned shin and a bruised ego, he was uninjured, but
what would have been the result of that fall had
that barrow of mortar not been there to cushion the fall.
On another occasion, when Daddy made do, he nearly burned
our house down. We had been having some trouble with
(08:12):
our water heater, not being able to meet the demands
of a family of six. One Saturday, we asked Daddy
to look at it and see what the problem was.
Upon examining it, he determined that one element had burned out,
but he thought that he could jury rig it so
that it would still produce heat. I don't understand electrical
(08:33):
appliances enough to know exactly what he did, but I
think he somehow bypassed something and rewired some other thing
and it worked. Problem solved, or so we thought. On
Monday afternoon, we drove into the garage when we got
home from work, and for some odd reason I happened
(08:54):
to look toward the opposite side of the garage where
our water heater was. I saw one side of it
blackened from bottom to top. My eyes followed the direction
of the rising soot stain to the ceiling joys. They
were charred and the insulation between the joys was blackened. Fortunately,
(09:15):
the fire caused the circuit breaker to do its job,
cutting off the power and preventing further damage. That's what
can come from making do. But Daddy remained a make
do man all his life.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And a great work is always by Monty Montgomery and
a special thanks to Dennis Peterson, and you can go
to Dennis lpeterson dot Com to hear more of his stories,
the upsides and the downsides of having a making do
kind of dad or mom or anyone around you. And
I've had enoughing around me in my life. And sometimes
(09:53):
they're a joy, and sometimes they'll kill you. The story
of Dennis Peterson's dad. So many dads around this country
like here on our American Story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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