The Key West Citizen

Hal Boyle Says

NEW YORK—'Are you the boss in your family, mister?
If you are, you are an unusual husband and father. It is getting harder and harder in our times for a man to act the role of the family boss. The former lord of the manor has become something of a mouse in his own house.

Some psychologists say it is a good thing that father is no longer the final boss. They believe the modern family doesn't need a boss, that authority and responsibility can be shared.

Maybe so, but I doubt it. You can't run a railroad or any other business without a boss, and I suspect the same thing is true of a family. A family, of course, isn't a business—but it has to be a going concern, and it needs someone at the head of it who, in a crisis, can make a final decision to which the others agree.

It is fashionable in literature now to picture the old-fashioned father as a tyrant who often inflicted his will on his family in a selfish manner, who ruled by fear more than by love.

But is this portrait true? I suspect it to be false. I believe that most old-fashioned fathers held their authority because their children both loved and respected them.

The trouble with the modern father is that he often is either too spineless or lazy to assume the proud family role nature intended him to take. No wonder his children treat him like a harmless middle-aged fossil. That's what he is.

I had an old-fashioned father. He and my mother married young and had five children. While Mama ran the house, there was never any doubt about who was the final boss—it was Dad.

I can still remember how on a summer night we children used to urge hoptoads to hop-race across the street under the lamplight, worrying that if we touched them our fingers would break out in warts.

Promptly at 9 o'clock Dad would take his feet off the front porch bannister and stand up—the tallest tower of my lifetime—and beat his palms together like thunderclaps.

"Whap! Whap! Whap!" there was no missing his bedtime summons. It could be heard for two blocks. Dogs and children might growl or grumble, but they all headed for home and slumber.

There was no whining or grumbling about it. It wouldn't do any good. Before kneeling in his old-fashioned long underwear and saying his nightly prayer, Dad checked to see that every kid was under his covers and the lights were out. He thought all children should sleep in their own homes, and we were never allowed to stay overnight with neighbors. Most of us never slept away from home until we left home forever.

My wife and I have only one child, Tracy Ann, who will be three this month. For some reason, while Tracy is very fond of me, I have no more authority over her than a piece of wet string.

I can't convince her she is too young to be a night owl.

One night recently, trying to reconcile her to the idea that bed was sweet and life would last until tomorrow, I told Tracy Ann about my father. I told her how in the long ago, on summer nights, he would stand there straight and tall on the old wooden porch and beat his echoing palms together and summon his scattered tribe to the shelter of his roof.

"Like this?" asked Tracy. She beat her two small hands together. "Pat! Pat! Pat!" then said imperiously:

Come to bed, Daddy, right now.

Well, sir, believe it or not, I went to bed.

What this country needs is more old-fashioned daughters who, when they say something to their parents, really mean it.

Or am I getting mixed up?