Let’s get back to the basics

We live in a place where we enjoy – on most days – the gift of living in a small town. For me, this means we still are privy to the basics. Some call these basics “smalltown values” – values like hard work, loyalty, sharing, helping our neighbors, honesty and respect.

My granddaddy, a Dallas businessman, never asked his clients to sign a contract. Back in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, a man’s word was his bond. If someone said they’d do something, you knew they would deliver. If they bought groceries on credit, the grocer knew his credit customers would pay their bills.

Makes you wonder how we arrived at the point where some professions require you to pay the bill in full, up front, doesn’t it?

Reminds me of a story the late Amarillo oilman T. Boone Pickens liked to tell. It was from his boyhood in Holdenville, Oklahoma. He was nine or 10 years old and already had begun his first business, a neighborhood paper route. In fact, he had acquired two adjacent routes to expand his profitability.

So, let’s set the scene: The Pickens’ extended family, like many families of that time, lived close together. T. Boone’s house was at the end of a dead-end street. His grandmother and his aunt, a school teacher, lived across the street.

The story goes something like this:

One day while delivering papers, Pickens found a wallet that had fallen into some deep grass. It contained no money but the owner’s name was in it, and it was one of his customers who lived a couple of blocks away.

When he got there, he knocked on the door and turned the wallet over to the owner, Mr. Jenkins, who was very appreciative. Mr. Jenkins gave him a dollar, calling it a reward for finding his wallet.

When Pickens got home, the three women in his life – his mom, grandmother and aunt – were all out on the porch, talking. The excited young Pickens told them of his windfall and how he had earned it.

“So, when I got through telling the story, my grandmother said, ‘Sonny, take the dollar back,’” Pickens remembered. “‘We’re not going to get rewarded for being honest.’”

Clutching the dollar bill in his hand, the boy pleaded his case, but the women’s faces became even grimmer. “I really was a mouthy little guy, so this whole process took some time,” Pickens said. “I hung in there, pled and pled. Finally, I got on my bike and took the dollar back to Mr. Jenkins.”

In the interim, a thunderstorm had rolled in, and it started to rain before Pickens got back to Mr. Jenkins’ house. When he returned the dollar, Mr. Jenkins couldn’t understand why.

“I finally said that that’s the way it had to be because my grandmother and aunt and mother said so,” Pickens said.

“By now, it’s pouring down rain. And I get back to Burgess Street, which is a drainage street for this town, and the water is up to my waist. I push my bike across and got back home, and they’re still there on the porch.

“I came in and thought I’d get some sympathy because I’d almost drowned, crossing Burgess Street, which somehow didn’t excite anybody. I still remember how stoic they were. And finally, my aunt said, ‘If you had gone back when we first told you to, you could have been back before it rained.’

“And that was all the sympathy I got. I went in and dried off.

“Boone considered Holdenville the place where his values were formed,” said Steve Taylor, retired Chief Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court when he eulogized his friend in September 2019. “Ethics, his word and promises – they meant something to him.”

Good story, right? It definitely gave me something to think about when I first heard it.

The three women in T. Boone’s life sound tough, at first, but they make a good point. So, I wonder, are we guilty of raising our new generations with the expectation of a reward for honesty? Do our kids expect a reward for completing a school project or taking out the garbage without being asked?

If you don’t have an answer, go back and read T. Boone’s story. You may be surprised.