Things we learned from our Sonoma County dads

Virtually all surveys conclude that women do more housework than men. Recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that women spend 2.57 hours on household chores each day compared to 2.11 hours for men. What they leave out of the equation are the many unsung and unpleasant things that dads do - a lot of them outside in the heat or cold.

A Gallup Poll of more than 500 married couples found that while women do more dishes, grocery shopping, laundry, housecleaning and childcare, dads do more yard work and car repairs and money management, by a wide margin.

They also do a lot of icky things in service to their families. They shimmy under the house in the dank, critter-infested crawlspace to check out pipes and ducts. They do really disgusting things like removing dead animals, setting rat traps, fixing overflown toilets. They teeter on ladders to clean the gutters, hang the Christmas lights, trim tree branches and rescue cats from the roof.

Dads spring out of bed in the middle of the night with flashlights and baseball bats to investigate strange noises. They push lawnmowers and rototillers in summer heat. They brave lashing rainstorms to check the circuit breakers when the lights go out. And they find themselves under cars, putting chains on in the snow, hauling heavy furniture, digging holes and trenches, fixing the car, assembling IKEA furniture and struggling to repair stuff they may know nothing about.

Not all dads can do everything. They're not Supermen. But when things go wrong around the house, many of them step up and do their best. They also are teachers, passing down life skills and showing us how to do things, from basic carpentry to changing a tire so we're prepared to take care of ourselves.

Keeping in mind that all dads are different, we asked readers to share the practical do-it-yourself skills they learned from their fathers.

Loving, patient mentor

“My Dad always insisted hard work was good for the body and soul and never hurt anyone,” said Chris Check, 59. The Rohnert Park man's stepdad, Stephen Wheeler, had many talents and passed those skills down to the sons he raised as his own. At the same time he imparted a willingness to take on a tough task and knock it down. As a mentor, Check said, he was always loving and patient.

Wheeler variously owned a Volkswagen repair shop and taught his sons how to work on cars, owned a small restaurant and taught them how to make donuts, and became a certified scuba diving instructor, also teaching his boys to dive. In mid-life, he got his general contractor's license, founded a construction company and taught them how to build.

“My two brothers and I are able to do all these things and build a house from the ground up because our dad took the time to teach us. One brother is a general contractor and roofing contractor, the other is a licensed electrician, and I am a general contractor,” said Check, who now works in property management. Wheeler is 75 and lives in Corte Madera during the late stages of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, which slowly robs the body of muscle control. But the legacy of his patient lessons lives on.

“My dad has inspired so many people in his life to go after their dreams,” Check said, “and has helped many people financially to achieve them.”

Mr. Fix-It

Yvonee Darling-Atkins became proficient in basic home repairs thanks to her “versatile Mr. Fix-It dad,” who is now 90.

When she was 8, Ike Darling schooled her in how to trim a weeping willow tree so it was even on the bottom. He also taught her to rake up the trimmings and load them into a pickup for transport to the dump.

At 11, she got a lesson in sheep shearing, including tying the fleece and tossing it into a burlap sack, which she jumped on to compress the fleece.

When she got older, he taught her how to handle a stick-shift on a truck. As a professional truck driver, he proved to be a strict teacher, she said.

“Most of all, he taught me safety and respect while driving. Along with driving, I was taught to change a tire and the oil and always to watch the gauges on the dash,” Darling-Atkins said.

On the home front, her father taught her how to change the inside mechanisms of faucets and shower heads, and how to clean a drain and keep it clean.

“I've learned how to use a chain saw to cut wood and stack wood. I've been taught how to load a truck and tie the load down for safety, and I was taught the names of tools and their use

“It's actually helped my husband out quite a bit, because he has a hard time with a screwdriver,” said Darling-Atkins, a self-employed investment broker who now lives in Forestville.

Amazing practical skills

Susan Joice said her father, Don Joice, had “amazing practical skills to fix, repair, build and invent things,” and even designed and built a home for her in Santa Barbara.

The elder Joice was an industrial engineer who worked out of the Architect's and Engineer's Office at UC Santa Barbara, helping to design buildings and structural systems for the new campus as it was under construction in the 1950s. Among other things, he designed a clever wharf-like set of stairs down a cliff front from dorms to the beach and a special filter to clean the sea water that washed up on shore to use in aquariums in the Marine lab.

Joice now lives along the Russian River in Guerneville, and said her dad helped her with ideas for improvements to the place.

“He said the best way to replace a rotten fence post would be to pour a cement pier with a metal pole sticking up out of the middle. Then drill a hole in the bottom of the new wooden post and set it onto the metal pole. That way the post would not touch the dirt and would be less likely to rot again,” she said, passing along one of his smart bits of wisdom.

Joice also remembers a bird feeder he made out of an old gallon wine jug. He built a small wooden shelf and attached it to the back deck wall. Then he filled the jug with bird seed and placed it upside down so that the mouth, positioned a little above the shelf, spilled seed out onto the shelf. He attached the jug to the wall above the shelf with a flexible, stretchy, metal spring cord.

“As the birds landed on the shelf to eat, more seed would spill out onto the shelf when they used up what was there,” Joice said. “When the jug was empty, it could be removed and refilled with more seed.”

Her dad died in 1997 at 83, spending his later years as a fine artist.

A do-it-yourselfer

Debbie Byrne, a Santa Rosa real estate broker, said her dad Warren was not a handyman by nature. But she admired his tenacity in trying, often out of necessity. He raised eight kids on a teacher's salary, so he was forced to be a do-it-yourselfer.

She recalls that “with the help of a very patient contractor,” he did much of the work himself on a basic three-bedroom addition to a home at the edge of Napa where she grew up.

“I remember lots of trips to Montgomery Wards and lots of requests for Band-Aids when he was outside working on stuff,” said Byrne, 62. “We as a family also built a dough-boy swimming pool.”

She said her dad, who passed away in 2010 just shy of his 86th birthday, also taught the kids how to change a tire.

“First he would change it, and then we girls would have to change it while he was watching. We, of course, thought he was being over protective, and thankfully we never had to put our knowledge to the test.

“I look back now and smile at the thought of three teenage girls grappling with tire irons, with a concerned and watchful father hovering nearby.”

3 important lessons

Laura Lano-Bucklin said three really important lessons from her father have served her well. He would be 94 if he were still alive.

One was to always negotiate when buying a car because the salesperson is on commission and wants to make the sale, so is usually motivated to negotiate.

The second is to get at least three estimates when hiring anyone to do work on your house.

“Businessmen and businesswomen are competitive and will often offer to beat another's price for your business,” she said.

The third is, when you get angry, to re-direct that energy to something positive, like doing your job twice as good, advice applicable to any task.

She recalls a story her dad related from his days in the Navy during World War II. Once when he was disciplined and forced to run the track twice for punishment, he decided to go around four times instead. When he reported back to the officer he said, “SIR! Duty doubly accomplished, SIR!”

The officer was so impressed he came out “smelling like a rose,” she said, turning a negative into a positive.

First set of tools

Jim Christmann remembers getting his first set of tools from his father on his sixth birthday, two months after he had been caught sitting on the floor of the garage, surrounded by an explosion of gears and springs and bleeding from a cut.

His dad, Roy, cleaned up the wound, drove him to the variety store, bought a new clock and returned him to the scene of the crime, holding the new clock in his hand.

“‘That is yours. This is mine. Don't take it from my nightstand,' he said, first pointing to the mess on the floor and then to the new clock.”

Christmann said he used those tools throughout childhood to fix broken toys and make things from odd parts.

“He helped me build my own workbench in the garage, in part a failed attempt to protect his own,” said Christmann, an emeritus professor of biology from Sonoma State University.

When Christmann was in high school, his dad, a painting contractor and painting store owner, tried to surprise him by building him a rowboat, not knowing that what his son really wanted was a motor boat for water skiing. Three years later, however, Christmann summoned the skills he learned from his father to build his own 14-foot ski boat using a saber saw and Yankee screwdriver.

He later sold the boat he called “Blisters” to buy his fiancé Barbara an engagement ring before entering a Ph.D program at John's Hopkins University.

Christmann last saw his father in September 1969 as he drove away to attend grad school in Baltimore. Unbeknownst to him, his dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer but withheld the information, fearing it would dissuade his son from pursuing his doctorate.

“I was surprised by how emotional he was at that goodbye,” Christmann remembers. He got the news in November that his father had died at 69.

“Much has been destroyed, repaired and built since then,” said Christmann, who credits his later study of the inner workers of cells to that early curiosity that his father helped nurture in a constructive way. He's done all the landscaping, built three decks and two major additions as well as a kitchen remodel at his home of 30 years. Often he enlisted his own sons to help.

“I've tried to continue my father's example with my children,” Christmann said. “Both boys got tools at an early age in a partially successful attempt to protect mine. Each got an old car the summer before their 16th birthday, which together we rebuilt completely. As adults, tools continue to be common gifts. My greatest joys include working with one son on his hobby car and the other son on remodels and improvements to his home.”

Said Christmann, “My father's unspoken permission to satisfy my need to explore and figure out the inner workings of all things has been crucial ever since that summer 64 years ago.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.