welcome back hacksmaniacs today i'm going to do a different type of video you may have noticed that i've done fewer projects this year and there are a few reasons for that the main one being that i lost my dad on february 3rd it was unexpected and when it happened the desire to build just kind of went out of me this is the hardest thing i've ever been through and i wanted to talk about it but i knew i couldn't get the words out and you know now with father's day coming i knew i had to make this video to honor him and i thought about this a thousand times how i want to do it and trying to figure out how to do it and i want to make sure that i do it right but i don't want to make a sad video so what i thought i would do instead is i'm going to tell you four building blocks to be an amazing dad and let me first say i haven't mastered these but i learned from a man who did my dad always loved learning new things and doing things himself he wasn't just a jack of all trades he was a master of many he was an amazing artist silversmith woodworker draftsman and so much more he even knew how to sew because he was a parachute rigger in the navy and i remember him as a kid learning new skills and perfecting them he just always wanted to know more and he loved working with his hands he always involved me in everything he did even when i was just in the way he made sure that i felt like i was being helpful because he wanted me to learn if i wasn't learning a skill we were building model airplanes when he got home from work almost everything i know how to do today i learned from my dad and i worked almost every day of my life beside him with the exception of a few years we never had any arguments because he was always patient in teaching me whenever i was young clients would come into our shop and ask don't y'all ever butt heads and i'd laugh and say no as long as he does everything i tell him we don't have any problems as he got older he still loved learning and teaching he even started learning the ukulele after he retired he would have art classes with my girls and over the last year and a half he would work with the girls on projects for my videos [Music] if you don't like building or creating that's okay the thing is you're always teaching anyway every day you're either teaching good or bad habits because our kids are always watching and learning from how we live our lives my dad busted his tail at work every day then when he got home he did all the work that needed to be done there he didn't have a lazy bone in his body when i was about 10 years old i would go around the neighborhood mowing lawns and don't tell my mom this but raking roofs now it's hard to expand your business when you're little and you're dragging a lawnmower down the road so to encourage that behavior my dad built a trailer that i towed behind my bike that held the mower and all the accoutrements a 10 year old needs for a flourishing landscaping company sadly for the other kids in the neighborhood they just couldn't compete anymore i thought i was big time rolling down the road with that setup when we started our cabinet shop i did most of the paint finishing while he did most of the construction i'm much bigger than him but he was as strong as a bull he could work harder and longer than men half his age even in his late 60s not one time in my life can i remember him complaining about work he simply did what was needed to provide for his family and he did it with a happy attitude i know now that all of his hard work helped pave the way so that my sister and i would have an easier life than him my mom and dad met when they were teenagers and you wouldn't find two people who loved each other more than my mom and dad this year would have been 53 years they were married i heard him tell my mom i love you a million times growing up and me too i learned how to be a man and how to treat my wife and children because i saw how he loved his family and treated us growing up he taught me to love god my family and my country later he enjoyed living with us and he loved spending time with the girls he loved all his grandchildren very much [Music] every weekend was spent just across the house at nanny and papa's watching movies every once in a while we'd catch him watching a cartoon and he'd say oh i was watching it with the girls and they left and when we pick on him we knew better is a big one and it's the biggest problem in the world today because so many people don't have it both he and my mom taught me to always strive for more but be grateful for what you have i've never heard my dad complain about somebody having it better or having more he understood almost nobody gets a lucky break that's just an excuse lazy people use so they don't have to try harder when he found out he might not have much time left he still didn't complain or feel sorry for himself instead he said he was grateful for the good life he had when he was just days from passing we were all around him and out of nowhere he began to pray not for himself but for his family he thanked god for the family that he had given him if you don't have gratitude that void can easily be filled with anger or resentment or entitlement i wish i had my dad for a hundred years being angry about losing someone might make it easier to deal with but i realized that i had more meaningful time with my dad in his 73 years than most people would in a hundred and for that i'm grateful [Music] dad's wanted to build this little fairy cottage in this tree stump for the last year and a half every time he'd drive by he'd mention it or he'd come out here and measure it he just wanted to build it for the girls and then his uh his hips started bothering him and he wasn't able to get out here so it's not as good as if he'd have done it but that's for dad [Music] bye
