Hello, My Name Is Bob: the Story of a Common Man

By Robert K. Cunningham

It seems that government wants to invade every part of our lives: our workplace, our religion, even our families. And now our debt! As a small businessman, I am appalled at the spending deficit, year after year. Dont our people in Congress know that even the interest on our national debt is a backbreaking load on our economy? Perhaps we have too many lawyers roaming the Hallowed Halls and too few responsible businessmen.

The awful specter of death overwhelmed me. Never again would I hear her bubbly laughter as she jumped into my lap to hug me. Never again would she delight us with her little-girl antics. I begged God to spare her. I confessed every sin I could remember. It was not to be. In His infinite wisdom, God took her home. Oh, Susan.

I consider the Bible to be the most practical book ever written. It teaches us how to live in a world that seems to consider honesty and integrity to be a fault. It teaches purity in a world where chastity is pictured as unnatural. It promotes self-sacrificial friendliness to a grasping, self-seeking world. It teaches us to live peaceably, and finally, it can prepare us for eternity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449797164

Robert K. Cunningham

Bob Cunningham resides in Covington, Indiana, with his wife, Roberta. The Great Depression and World War Two made an indelible impression on him—the need for family, and for personal endeavor. A small businessman and a devoted Christian, he’s an outspoken critic of government programs that destroy initiative and independence.

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Contents

Dedication

Preface

Family

Commentary on Family

Marriage

Comments on Marriage

Grandchildren

Comments on Grandchildren

Business

Comments on Business

Religion

Comments on Religion

Government

Sex and the Media

The Present and the Future

P. S.

Family

Business

Government

Religion

Sex, the Media, and the Family

Closing

Dedication

I greatly appreciate the help and encouragement of these ladies, without whom this project would never have been completed.

Bethany, my granddaughter. She obtained a copy of a manuscript that I had written many years ago, had it made into an attractive book, and surprised me with it on Christmas last year, 2011. She now is working with the publisher on our behalf, to make the book available to the public. She’s the Creator.

Nancy, my daughter, who has worked with me tirelessly, proofreading, correcting grammatical errors, and spelling. If I were to call her to take out a line, or insert an event that I had just recalled, she was always available. She’s the Editor.

Roberta (Bert), my wife, who has been after me for years to finish this book. She has encouraged me when I needed encouragement and pushed me when I needed a shove. I’m not sure she didn’t threaten me a time or two, also. After all, it’s her life too. She’s my Partner.

Doni Duckett, our friend. This gifted teacher spent many hours reading, suggesting, fine-tuning. She took us through the Final Exam. Thank you, Doni.

Preface

Hello, my name is Bob.

Well, really, it’s Robert, but no one calls me that.

Except business acquaintances and salesmen that didn’t know me very well.

My mother called me that when I was in trouble.

The IRS always called me Robert.

I’m a common man. I’ve never had any special talent (I used to think I did, but reality took care of that). I never went to college. I was married at twenty, and when I was twenty-one my wife and I opened a small restaurant. We spent more than forty years in that business. We were moderately successful, not because of entrepreneurial skill or progressive promotions, but because of plain old hard work and perseverance.

Why, then, do I aspire to write a book? Because I believe there are millions like me.

We love our families, and we want the best for them.

We believe in working for our living, and we enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done.

We don’t like handouts, because they destroy our initiative and set a bad example for our kids.

We’re patriotic. We still get a lump in our throats when Old Glory passes by.

We want to support our government, but we expect our government to respect us as individuals, and not intrude on the freedoms granted to us by our Founding Fathers.

We honor honesty and integrity, and we hope to be such an example to our children and grandchildren.

Outdated? Naive? Perhaps, but aren’t those the principles that our country was founded on? Aren’t those the principles that made our country great? I believe in them, and I believe there are millions like me. Richard Nixon called us The Silent Majority. Jerry Falwell named us The Moral Majority. Whatever the name, we are, and people need to know ho we feel.

I am deeply concerned for the moral strength of our nation. For thirty years we have followed a conscious path away from morality and character. Our young people have been bombarded by profane, adulterous role models in television, movies, and professional athletics. The courts have intruded upon our schools, stripping away the authority of the teachers and administrators. The teaching of morality has been abandoned in our classrooms, but the teaching of immorality has been taught zealously through our television sets and the media.

And the family! We must realize that the moral strength of our country comes from the family. In today’s twisted society we can learn the difference between right and wrong only from the family. Only in the family can we acquire the love, nurturing, and stability that a young child so desperately needs. These values and strengths have deteriorated so fast. In our forty plus years in business we have dealt with hundreds, perhaps thousands of young people. I have seen them, as a group segment of the work force, gradually regress from mannerly, hard working, family oriented kids to ill mannered, obnoxious, dishonest young people who care very little about the quality of their work. I believe this can only be attributed to the deterioration of the home, and the values that are taught there.

I must emphasize that these are the thoughts and impressions of a common man. There is nothing scientific about this narrative, no polls or textbook references. I draw only from the experience of a lifetime among people, a lively interest in current events, and a comparison of the times of my youth and the world we live in today.

As you read my story, my thoughts, and my philosophies, I doubt that you will agree with everything I say. In fact, I would not expect you to, but perhaps we will find a chord of agreement. Perhaps we share the same work ethic, the same moral ethic, and the same patriotic pride. Perhaps, together, we can call our nation back to morality and a pride of accomplishment. Perhaps we can elevate the family to the honorable position it must have if our country is to thrive. Perhaps we can still be the nation that God wants us to be.

Family

I WAS A DEPRESSION KID. ANYONE my age or older remembers the Great Depression vividly. Triggered by the stock market crash of 1929, without government support programs, people were thrown out of work, with no way to support themselves or to feed their families. It was a desperate time. This is when I came along. I was born in 1929 in Danville, Illinois, and grew up in rural areas north of town. I was the third son of Earl and Wilma Cunningham. Oren was born in 1923, and Myron in 1925. For fourteen years, I was the youngest (the baby, according to my mother), until David came along in 1943. I have heard it said that the baby is always pampered…coddled…spoiled rotten…Ha! Don’t you believe it! In my family it meant that I got the jobs my older (and bigger) brothers didn’t want. My clothes were handed down, not once, but twice! I had patches on top of patches! When I got the bicycle, it had already been worn out twice. I hated washing dishes, but being smaller, I always got that job. I swore that I would never wash dishes when I grew up, but as a small town restaurant operator, I had many opportunities to regret that statement.

We were (and still are) a close family. We had to be to survive. I never realized it at the time, but although everyone was poor, we were poorer than most. Oh, but we worked! Everyone had his job. For me, it was usually housework (I told you I was the smallest!) Mom was a one-room country schoolteacher. Like so many others in that terrible time, Dad did not have a job. He did work, when the opportunity arose, for area farmers in their fields. The pay? One dollar a day! During winter months there was hardly any work for Dad, so he kept things together at home. Dad would often have supper ready when Mother got home from school. Guess who got to do the dishes, finish homework by the light of a kerosene lamp, and then time for bed.

We always had a garden. I remember Dad would lay it out and plant the seeds. Then it was our job to keep it hoed and weeded, all by hand. It was a never-ending job. When we finished hoeing the last row, the first row needed hoeing again! We had lots of vegetables to eat, and Mother was ingenious in finding a variety of ways to prepare them. For instance, we had tomato soup, stewed tomatoes, sliced tomatoes, tomatoes and gravy, fried green tomatoes, tomato relish, and we canned all the tomatoes that were left. Nothing was ever wasted.

We couldn’t have lived without a cow. She provided milk, cream, cottage cheese, butter, and buttermilk. I especially remember churning butter. After milking (by hand, naturally), the milk would be strained through a muslin cloth to remove impurities, and then set out to cool. When the cream rose to the top, we would skim it off. This heavy, rich cream was the product we used to make butter. We didn’t have a churn such as you might find today in antique shops. We used fruit jars. Mother would prepare a jar about half full with cream, wrapped in a towel, so that our hands would not warm it too quickly. We would bounce it up and down on our knee. After some time (it seemed like hours to me), the texture of the cream began to change. It became watery, and yellow flecks began to appear. As they grew, they would ball up, and we had butter! We would pour off the liquid, and that was the sweetest buttermilk you ever tasted!

We found many ways to help. We would go along the railroad track near our house, and pick up coal that had fallen from the overloaded cars when the trains rumbled past. We picked strawberries on shares (we got a share of the strawberries we picked). Dandelions were always plentiful, and the leaves tasted like spinach when they were cooked. We liked to fish, and sometimes we would bring fish home for supper (Be sure to feel for the bones).

Corn was husked by manpower in those days. When the farmhands would finish shuckin’ the corn, we would go into the fields, with the farmer’s permission, and pick up the ears of corn that they had missed. This helped to feed our chickens and our cow, and we burned the corncobs in our heating stove.

I can only imagine the frustration my parents felt trying to raise a family in those times. We did without so much. But, in teaching us to do without, they taught us the important things. They taught us to work. They taught us self-discipline. They taught us to be independent. They taught us concern for others. They taught us to love. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for any other.

My parents were very resilient people. Mother graduated from West Lebanon, Indiana High School in 1918, went to summer school six weeks, and began to teach school that fall. Her classrooms were one-room country schools, all eight grades, and all subjects. She was the janitor, usually going in before daylight to build up the fire so the school was warm when the kids arrived, and cleaning after the last child had gone home. She was the tutor, staying after school to help students who were slow in certain subjects. She was the disciplinarian, giving punishment where punishment was due, without fear or favor (she was the only teacher who ever paddled me!). In those days, parents always supported the teacher. She was even the first baseman on our softball team!

Dad was my best friend when I was a little youngster. My brothers were in school, so Dad and I were together a lot. We cooked together, we cleaned together, and we worked together. Dad said I was lots of help (I was five years old)! Everything was a great adventure when I did it with Dad. Dad’s cooking was legendary; country cooking…corn bread and beans…potato soup…fried potatoes and gravy. Dad could take whatever we had, throw it into the pot, and it came out delicious. As I look back, I can understand how frustrated he must have been, but Dad never complained. I thought we were rich.

I went to one-room schools, such as my mother taught, until I was in the sixth grade. Let me introduce you to LeNeve School, a typical country school, where I started as a first grader in 1935. It was a small brick building, less than thirty feet wide and possibly, forty feet long. As you entered the front of the building, you stepped into the rear of the classroom, with the teacher’s desk facing you from the far end. There were windows on the left and blackboards on the right side and at the far end behind the teacher. The desks, facing the teacher, were constructed so that the front of each desk formed the back of the desk in front of it with a fold down seat. These were firmly attached to two long, narrow boards, so that each row of desks was a continuous unit. There were five rows of desks, with smaller desks on the right for first and second graders, and larger desks along the windows on the left for seventh and eighth graders. At the front, next to the teacher’s desk, was a circle of chairs. These were for the class in session. A heating stove was at the back of the room near the entryway. In the winter, it was usually covered with wet mittens and scarves from the aftermath of snowball fights, snowmen, and chasing girls (trying to dump snow down their backs).

I vividly remember one incident that occurred during my first year at LeNeve. My brother Myron was very protective, and he was concerned that I do well, so he said, If you don’t know the answer, look over at me, and I’ll help you. Well, the opportunity soon arose. I was asked a question I couldn’t answer, so, from my first grade desk at the right side of the room, I looked to Myron, a fifth grader in the middle row, for help. I must tell you, six year olds are not very furtive, so of course, I was immediately found out. Old Miss Campbell (she must have been at least twenty two), from her place of authority at the front, very forcefully asked, Myron, were you helping Bobby? No answer. —Answer me! — Still no answer. Come up here!—This time, she got a one word answer, —No!—At this she firmly stated, I’ll come back there and get you! and she immediately started to do so. Now Myron was a big, strong kid, and he took hold of both sides of the desk and hung on, as she got him by the arm and pulled…and pulled…and pulled. The entire row, being fastened together, began to rock violently. Books fell on the floor, pencils were scattered, and kids were hanging on for dear life. I can’t remember the outcome, or Myron’s punishment for it, but I’m sure it involved a paddle that she kept close by. I can remember how terrified I was. I considered myself to be at fault.

I really liked school. I was a little embarrassed to admit that. No one should really like school, others told me, but I did. I seemed to be ahead of the others in the first and second grades, probably because, in previous years, I had heard Mother going over the same lessons at home. Mother was my teacher in the second grade at LeNeve, and she knew how to stimulate young minds. However, much of my stimulation came from older classes. Often my work would be done, and I remember being totally involved in the classes in progress for the higher grades at the front of the classroom. I have read recently of modern schools where classes intermingle, grades visit other grades, and ideas are exchanged. I understand it is called an open concept. That sounds very much like our old country school.

As I mentioned, Myron was my protector. Sometimes, however, his leadership was my undoing. When I was in the fourth grade at Burr Oak School, Old Mrs. Williams was our teacher (remember Old Miss Campbell? Same lady - she had gotten married). We lived a mile east of the school on the next road. If we went around by the road it was about two miles but by crossing the fields, we cut the distance in half, so naturally, we came through the fields. Myron had a friend, Leon Randolph, who went to our school. His mother had died and his father moved out of our school district, but Leon wanted to finish the year at Burr Oak School. His father would leave him at our house each morning on his way to work, and he would walk to school with us. On this particularly beautiful spring morning, we started for school as usual, but on the way Myron and Leon decided it would be a great day to play hooky (that’s skipping school to city kids), so when we got down to the little creek that ran through the field, we turned and followed it under cover of the scrubby trees that grew along it’s banks. We spent the day in the woods, watching squirrels and rabbits, wading in