So, the old farts, when you were a kid...

[Further]

I was 15, 50 years ago, so some old guy teaching me the ways of the world, say he was 50, a lot of the knowledge I have is 100 years old.

An old guy I worked with in a mill, had been a mule driver in a coal mine when he was a kid. He had some stories...

[Wilbur ★]

I was lucky enough to have a guy who made himself my mentor and advisor.  He flew on a Ford Trimotor  to immigrate to Canada.  He flew Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes in WW2, flew DC 2, 3 and C-46's during the Berlin Airlift and The Hump across the Himalaya's. 

He flew every Douglas aircraft from DC-2 to DC-10 and retired at 82 with 35, 000 flight hours.  At 74, he was break dancing with young college girls at a club on the Riverwalk in San Antonio and was the life of the party, yet 100 % dedicated to his wife of 50 years.  I learned a lot about flying and about life from Brick Bradford. 

[Razors Edge ★]

43 minutes ago, Further said:

I was 15, 50 years ago, so some old guy teaching me the ways of the world, say he was 50, a lot of the knowledge I have is 100 years old.

An old guy I worked with in a mill, had been a mule driver in a coal mine when he was a kid. He had some stories...

I'd say it is about time you found some 15 year old to transfer some knowledge to!

[Dottleshead ★]

When do I get a mentor? WTF?!

[maddmaxx ★]

I've mentored several.  They in turn have mentored others.  Soon there will be too many of us to resist.

[donkpow]

Nope, I had to beat them to get anything out of the old coots.

[maddmaxx ★]

I think there's been some mentoring going on in my back yard.

[Razors Edge ★]

8 hours ago, Dottles said:

When do I get a mentor? WTF?!

Apparently, Further has an opening, Maxx is always hiring, and you want to avoid OHIO like the plague.

[Randomguy]

I wish I had a mentor, never had one.

[MickinMD ★]

11 hours ago, Further said:

I was 15, 50 years ago, so some old guy teaching me the ways of the world, say he was 50, a lot of the knowledge I have is 100 years old.

An old guy I worked with in a mill, had been a mule driver in a coal mine when he was a kid. He had some stories...

I was like Mark Twain who said something like, "When I was 14, I thought my father was the stupidest man in the world. When I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in 7 years."

In my childhood's mostly blue collar neighborhood, there wasn't a lot of formal education but everyone was buying their own house so they were children of The Depression who weren't stupid, had impoverished childhoods, but were hard-working and doing their best after WW2.

When I was a kid, only ONE man in my neighborhood knew enough to help me with Algebra - which he had learned in night school on his way to getting a degree in Electrical Engineering then working for Black and Decker.

So I wasn't too impressed with the people in my neighborhood as a kid and that was typical in my area and probably the reason so many of us became teachers and clergy: they were our examples of successful, educated lives.

But, after I was finished grad school and returned to Maryland, I got a lot of help on home carpentry, plumbing, cars, etc. and realized the neighborhood people were very talented in various ways.

The mother of a childhood friend in the neighborhood, "Miss Velma," (Maryland has that Southern habit of calling all adult women "Miss") who probably never finished high school, grew up on a farm in North Carolina.  Her father got through the Depression by identifying failing farms whose ground was wrong for the crops being grown, buying one, planting the right stuff the right way, then selling the thriving farm at a profit and moving on to restore the next failing farm.

Miss Velma knew so much about agriculture - she had half of a 1/4 acre of land beyond her back yard as a mini farm - she could probably take driftwood out of the Bay and make it grow!  She taught me how to pinch-off vine runners near grape bunches to make them grow bigger, to put certain veggies, like asparagus, in raised beds or on little hills to improve drainage and warm the soil faster, etc. etc. She even planted a fig tree in Maryland - she had her husband wrap a blanket around it in the Fall, tilt it over, cover it with a foot or so of dirt, then stand it up again in the Spring and it thrived.

She was also very kind: when her family had the only color TV in the neighborhood, she invited all the kids on the block to watch "The Sound of Music" on Disney's show "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" providing Kool Aid and snacks.

I spoke and mentioned that at her funeral as did another from our block who said that when his family couldn't afford it, she paid for his high school ring.  Her daughter had samples at the funeral of Miss Velma's recipe for her famous Fruit Cake - the only decent tasting fruit cake we had known - which the daughter then passed on to my sister who makes it on holidays.

 

[JerrySTL ★]

I had a mentor. His name was Tor. Tormentor. 

[Kzoo]

11 hours ago, Further said:

a lot of the knowledge I have is 100 years old.

So my father was my first and strongest mentor.  He learned the ways of the world from his father so the knowledge he passed down was already 100 years old.  Wait, my grandfather was mentored by his father who was also a huge influence in my fathers life so right there, doing @further's math a lot of knowledge I have is 200 years old - OK maybe not quite but it was Further's math.  My dad's grandfather was born right after the Civil War.  Talk about a time warp...

I learned things like: You do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. or  Of it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.  or  We may not know what we're doing, but we will by the time we're done.

[Razors Edge ★]

5 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

I heard things like: You do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. or  Of it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.  or  We may not know what we're doing, but we will by the time we're done. Then I ignored it all.

FIFY

[2Far]

6 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

 My dad's grandfather was born right after the Civil War.  Talk about a time warp...

 

MoFo2 was born in 1902 & passed in 1996, she witnessed a lot of change in that lifetime.

[jsharr ★]

I loved taking drives around Corpus Christi and the Texas Gulf Coast with my grandfather.   He could tell me stories about the freight trains, and refineries, and shipping and everything we saw on our drives.

Born in Indian Territory in 1905 to parents that ran a boarding house.  He watched the end of the cattle drives, saw cowboys on horseback ride into town.  Sold newspapers on the trains that he rode from Denison, Texas to Dallas, Texas.  Learned to work on trains and used to be sent out to repair trains that broke down on the tracks.  Badly injured in a train coupler.  Became a grocer and then sold the store and moved to Corpus Christi to work for the Naval Air Station to support the war effort and spent the rest of his life working in the refineries in Corpus.

The changes that man saw.  Horses, to steam trains, to cars, powered flight, two world wars, space travel.  Birth of so much technology from TV to computers and cell phones before he passed away at the age of 93.  He was of the age that if you needed something, you made it, built it, fixed it, etc.   He passed that knowledge onto my father and my father passed much of it along to me.

Great thread Further.

[Kzoo]

22 minutes ago, 2Far said:

MoFo2 was born in 1902 & passed in 1996, she witnessed a lot of change in that lifetime.

Horse and buggy to the space shuttle.  My dad worked the fields as a young boy with a team of horses.  He told the story about remembering the day that the first steam powered tractor came into the county.  A lifetime of change...

[jsharr ★]

38 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

FIFY  Sometimes I should just keep my piehole clamped shut.  Use both hands if I have too even.

FIFY

[Kzoo]

1 hour ago, jsharr said:

FIFY

Without question this is Nominated.

 

[Tizeye]

I was to self directed and as a kid wouldn't know a mentor if he/she slapped me across the face. I learned from the School of Hard Knocks where I graduated Magna Cum Laude

[Dottleshead ★]

8 minutes ago, Tizeye said:

I was to self directed and as a kid wouldn't know a mentor if he/she slapped me across the face. I learned from the School of Hard Knocks where I graduated Magna Cum Laude

This.

[12string]

I enjoy mentoring kids.  I suppose this means I'm old.  I've taught them life lesson like "get off my lawn", "blue isn't a hair color" "pull up your pants" , "get a haircut, freak"

[jsharr ★]

1 minute ago, 12string said:

I enjoy mentoring kids.  I suppose this means I'm old.  I've taught them life lesson like "get off my lawn", "blue isn't a hair color" "pull up your pants" , "get a haircut, freak"

You could get a job working at this place

 

[ChrisL]

I’m sure my dad molded me some but I really don’t have a lot of memories as I was pretty young when he died.  My mentors were the Senior NCO’s I served under, especially my first Platoon Sergeant SFC Snyder.

But these guys were only 10-15 years older than me...

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

Besides my Dad, my first mentor was when I was 8 or 9. A guy lived a few houses down from us. He was in his 20’s, had his own car, a two seater convertible of British descent, not sure which line, probably MG. He also had a motorcycle and was always washing and waxing them. He was always nice, spoke to us as people and not down to us like adults did. Gave me $10 once to get a can of wax and let me keep the change. He had friends that were cool too but they were a motorcycle gang who wore the vests, patches and WWII style helmets. Anyway Richard was a cool guy, one day his Mom told me that he died in a car crash on Topanga Canyon. I always thought of him when we drove through the canyon.