My father was born at the turn of the last century. He graduated eighth grade – and yes, he actually graduated. Originally, ‘high school’ was advanced education for those planning to go on to college. Most people didn’t go to high school after they graduated from what we now call middle school.

He was 62 when I was born. At that time he worked for one of the state’s largest farmers – who held property around the state. If something somewhere broke and they couldn’t fix it, my father was flown in by helicopter to get the equipment back up and running. Helicopter rides aren’t cheap now – in the mid-Sixties you can bet no one would have paid to fly some guy who only made it through eighth grade anywhere – unless he really knew what he was doing.

My favorite memory of my father happened while he was fixing our Bel Air when I was six or seven. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know how the engine made the wheels move – so I asked him. Daddy got out from under the hood, knelt down in the driveway and proceeded to explain how a drive train worked, sketching diagrams in the dirt. I have never forgotten how cars get their power as a result.

There were questions he would send me to Momma for – the penchant for the education system to experiment with ‘modern’ methods of teaching is over a century old and my father was one of its victims. So anything involving spelling, he sent me to Momma. Science and Momma sent me to Daddy. Daddy wasn’t taught phonetics so while he could read he couldn’t easily spell – and new words were a pain. I sometimes wonder if that was why he married Momma – she was a human dictionary and a spelling computer before electronic computers were a thing.

We watched the news every night. Five-thirty for the national news on NBC and six for the local news on WSFA. Now, we really only had five stations – and three of them were news. But watching the news wasn’t an after thought – it was what we did. Every single day, we would spend an hour watching the news.

Hard as it may be for the under thirty crowd to believe, there were other things to do. It was actually one of the few times in a day when Daddy wasn’t fixing something or doing something. He might help Momma in the kitchen – but they would both be in front of the TV within minutes of the five-thirty news coming on.

Sunday mornings were the best – Momma and Daddy would split the gigantic Sunday paper between them and toss me the funny papers. Daddy had been out of bed just long enough to go to the curb and grab the paper. We would spend the early part of the morning in their bed, reading the paper. Well, except for the sports page – it wasn’t of interest to Daddy.

I can’t remember Daddy ever watching the commentary shows on Sunday. In those days, the news was just news – commentaries were at the very end as opinion pieces if they were on the show at all. The commentary shows came on Sunday – that was true well into the late Eighties. There were no prime time commentators – and I can’t imagine my father bothering to listen to them if there had been. Daddy had already seen the news and didn’t need anyone to tell him what was in the news – let alone how to interpret it.

When I was old enough, my parents took me to the main library in downtown Montgomery to get a library card. We had bookcases full of encyclopedias and books at home – and still my parents already knew their way around that library. They weren’t often interested in checking books out – but if they had a question, they knew exactly how to look up the answer.

I was not given the option to not know. If I asked a question that Daddy didn’t know the answer to – and it wasn’t about spelling – he sent me to the encyclopedia. Momma usually sent me to Daddy first – physical science wasn’t her thing – but she, too, expected me to go FIND the answers.

By sixth grade our outdated encyclopedias weren’t enough for the reports I was having to write. We’d moved to Elmore County by then and I remember Daddy driving me to the Tallassee Library to do my research (planetary science – got an A!).

Sometimes it was knowing who to call – like the time Momma called her boss to find out whether or not she and Daddy were legally married after I stumbled onto an old law book in a library (they were – her boss was an attorney and thought it was funny!). Sometimes it was knowing who to write – Mr. Lumpkin at WSFA was so gracious in writing back to my little twit self. Sometimes it was just hunting through every possible source until you figured it out – but no matter what, there was no ‘not knowing’ if an answer could be found.

Sometimes it was easy – just grab the encyclopedia. Sometimes, it was hard – which way does Venus rotate (opposite of Earth’s rotational direction – told you I got an A) was NOT in three different encyclopedias at home. Sometimes it was confusing – Young People’s Encyclopedia didn’t say the same thing as Funk and Wagnall’s. But there was no ‘not knowing’.

When a bug chewed its way out of Momma’s piano, Daddy caught it and my parents took it to Auburn University – where that Spotted Ivory Beetle is probably still on display. It came from Madagascar where the mahogany the piano was made of was grown. My parents donated the beetle to the university – they just wanted to know what it was. Well, Momma did want to know if she could expect more surprises – they told her no. The egg it had hatched from had been laid decades earlier and there weren’t likely to be more.

Like I said, no ‘not knowing’ in our house. Which is why I really, truly do not get why on Earth anyone needs a ‘fact checker’ in this day and age. We had to drive sometimes thirty minutes or more to get to the library – Auburn is an hour and half away one way! But I haven’t needed to go to the library since 2003 – I had a computer and an internet connection. Today I carry more computing power in my pocket than the Apollo spacecraft had – what CAN’T I look up?

A supervisor of mine once told me about his grandfather. They had watched a presidential address and the commentators were starting to talk about it. His grandfather got up and turned off the TV (yes, there was life before remotes), stating he had just listened to the man speak and didn’t need to be told what the man had said. That story stuck with me – I can vividly imagine my Daddy saying the same thing.

It’s easier, not harder, today. If you don’t know who to listen to – FIND OUT! You don’t even have to leave your armchair – grab that phone and do a tiny bit of research. What we should NEVER do is let someone else decide for us who we should listen to – and what is and is not true.

If you don’t know, find out! My father, born in 1904, with an eighth grade education and a trip to the library could find any answer he wanted – you have a super computer in your pocket, what’s your excuse? Some college kid who is majoring in Gender Studies using ‘approved’ sources shouldn’t be an arbiter of truth.

Fact checking should always be DIY.