Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys

For Teddy

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in his splendors, heard the text that nature renders?

(You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things—

Then listen to the Wild—it’s calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through,

They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching,

But can’t you hear the Wild?—It’s calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us,

Let us journey to a lonely land I know,

There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling…let us go.

From “The Call of the Wild,” by Robert Service

There was a time not so very long ago when boys were taught to be men. Efforts were made in those just-forgotten days to ensure that certain skills were learned and that there was a clear understanding of what being a man was all about. It was straightforward, unquestioned and it worked.

Men used to live by the skills of their hands. They made new things and fixed old. They maintained their houses, trucks and snow machines. They knew how to grow food and how to hunt and fish. They dressed like men, talked like men, walked and worked and played like men.

Their jobs had names that are becoming as unfamiliar to us as callused hands and ingrained dirt. They were fitters, turners and carpenters; blacksmiths and wheelwrights; plowmen and woodsmen; masons and glaziers; tailors and cobblers; riveters and welders. They walked the line. Out of the ground beneath their feet they mined coal and copper, tin and lead, gold and silver. They built bridges and railways, ships and trains, and when they ran out of room in their own back yards they shipped out and did it all over again all over the world.

If you learned the lore of manhood and managed to pass your Manliness Finals there were all sorts of manly futures to be looked forward to:

Steam-engine driver

Engineer

Miner

Inventor

Cowboy

Explorer

Sheriff

Astronaut

All of these good, old-fashioned, manly jobs and dozens more besides were there for the taking, provided you’d done your manly homework.

Part of the education of boys came from reading tales of brave and selfless deeds, or hearing from fathers and uncles and grandfathers about how other men had lived their lives, met their challenges, reached their goals, lived their lives and faced their deaths.

It was simple, honest stuff about standing up straight with your shoulders back and eyes to the front like a soldier. It was about making light of physical hardship and keeping going until the job was done. Being a man was about comradeship and standing by your friends whatever the circumstances. It meant understanding that sometimes it was better to die a hero than live a coward.

Once upon a time, being an old-fashioned manly man had a lot to do with simple, old-fashioned values. It was about caring whether the streets were clear of refuse; that the walls of our homes and businesses—and of our neighbors’ homes and businesses—were free of graffiti and other needless damage; it was about keeping the yard tidy and the woodwork and railings freshly painted; it was about firm handshakes, stiff upper lips and never, ever crying in public. It meant looking out for friends and neighbors; coming together to lend a hand when it was needed—without needing to
be asked. Sometimes it was as simple as making sure to always have a clean handkerchief in case a lady needed to wipe her nose. It was about keeping on swinging the bat, no matter the score; it was about cheering on the underdog. And when there was nothing else for it, it was about “fix bayonets, boys, and die like good soldiers do.”

It definitely wasn’t about wanting to be noticed. It was about doing the right thing because manly behavior was its own reward.
Middlemarch,
written by George Eliot in 1871, ends with these lines:

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

 

Hidden lives and unvisited tombs: that’s a big lesson to learn as well. A manly man doesn’t expect recognition—he does what he does because it’s the right thing to do. And that’s enough.

The men and boys of the 29th Infantry Division who fought their way onto the beach at Omaha on July 6, 1944, didn’t go in search of medals or glory; instead they were citizen soldiers from a democracy determined to see good prevail for its own sake. Their victory began and ended with their clear-eyed willingness to step off their landing crafts and face whatever might be waiting for them…

…when a handful of men chose to stay behind at the Alamo, and give their lives for the greater good of all Texans, they knew they wouldn’t be taking part in any victory parades. Not for them the glory of being carried shoulder high through the streets of their hometowns, basking in the warm glow of a grateful nation. They readied themselves to fight and die because it was right, as they saw it…

…when John Paul Jones, father of the United States Navy, cared not in the least whether his actions would cost him his life. He set
himself on a path and he followed it, unblinking, to the bitter end. He turned and faced every foe and stared down every challenge because he cared more about his honor and his dignity than his life…

…when the Wild cried out—but only to those with ears to hear. Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who left behind all the comforts of home to seek his fortune beyond the Hindu Kush in the middle years of the 19th century, made and followed his own rules. Finding his old world too small to give space to his dreams, he turned his back on all he had known and let adventure take him where it would. Here then was a man who would be king…

Nowadays we’re in danger of forgetting—or just plain discarding—the value and importance of men like these. Somehow that whole way of being has been ridiculed, eroded and discouraged. Being an old-fashioned man in the time-honored way is becoming outdated, outmoded and forgotten.

Manly men—of the sort who traveled to these shores and carved out a nation from the wilderness—have been hunted to near-extinction. They’re all but gone now, along with all the other wild creatures that once roamed the quiet places of the land—the bear, the boar, the wolf. There’s always talk of bringing back the Wild—reintroducing the beasts we’ve lost. No one talks about bringing back the sort of men who once roamed the world, who lived defiant lives and damn the consequences.

But the urge to be a man like men once were is a primal thing and lives still in the unformed hearts of boys.

Some of what’s required to get back on track is to know once more what manhood is about, to hear the old tales and to learn what men are for and what men can do. Whenever I hear these stories I imagine a scene I’ve only ever witnessed in the movies: it’s the one where a grand old gent, white of hair and stout of girth, is holding court after an ample dinner. With fat cigar clamped
between the teeth and the port within reach he is using salt and pepper shakers and assorted pieces of fruit to represent himself, his men and many foes on a hastily cleared tabletop that has become the field of some well remembered battle.

Boys will be boys, but boys want to be men. It’s what I always wanted to be when I grew up.

It’s hard knowing which stories to tell them. What’s encouraging for the future of
man
kind is that there are so many to choose from. All of them demonstrate the qualities you’d want in your heroes—selflessness, devotion to the brotherhood, stubborn resourcefulness and refusal to quit regardless of the circumstances.

And behind them all is one story that has always stood out for me. It’s the beginning and the end of what I’ve tried to understand about the making of manly men. It’s a story about one man, his team and their grand adventure, and it depicts the ways of manly men more completely than any other. It forms the backbone—the ramrod straight backbone—for all the rest.

It’s a long story and takes a while to tell. I may be some time.