William
Jess Higgs
(March 21, 1909–October 15, 1977)
by
Robert Higgs
by Robert Higgs
I’m not
old. If you think I am, just ask my wife, and she’ll straighten
you out pretty quickly. Nevertheless, there is no denying that my
father was born exactly one hundred years ago, just seventeen days
after William Howard Taft became president of the United States.
Looking back now, most of us have trouble imagining the world of
1909, and as I ponder my direct link to it, I have a strange feeling,
of a time long, long ago, and yet not so long. Although my father
died in 1977, many other Americans born in 1909 – more than
79,000 of them
– are still alive today.
William Jess
Higgs (always known as Jess) does not appear on anybody’s list
of great men. Good thing, too, given the truth of Lord Acton’s
declaration that “great men are almost always bad men.”
(A statement whose truth, by the way, hinges on the assumption that
Acton’s reference to “great men” pertains to men
who occupy positions of great governmental power. Who can dispute
that William Shakespeare or J. S. Bach was a great man?) Jess never
cast a shadow in the halls of power, nor did he wish to do so. When
I was growing up and got old enough to think I knew something about
politics and to express opinions about politicians, he used to infuriate
me by simply saying, “They’re all crooks.” I’d
think, What does he know about it? Fifty years later, I am inclined
to think that he knew practically everything he needed to know about
politicians.
Born in the
backwoods of Muskogee County, Oklahoma, unable to attend school
after a brief attendance at grade school, thrust at a tender age
into the position of the family farm’s chief worker by the
death of his father and later by the death of his stepfather, Jess
lived in the world of work. And he was very good at working: when
I was growing up, I never knew him to miss a day of work. I always
supposed that he was happiest when he was at work. He was reputed
to be an excellent farmer, among many other things.
 The
range of things he knew how to do – to grow, to build, to repair
– never ceased to amaze me. I used to look over his shoulder
as he worked on an automobile or tractor engine and marvel that
whenever he needed a wrench, he simply reached into the tool box
and took out the one that fit every time. (To this day, I try one,
discover it’s too big; try another; discover it’s too
small; and pray for an eventual convergence on the right one.) Even
after I had earned my Ph.D., he used to look at me with a gleam
in his eye and say, “The trouble with you is that you don’t
know nothin’.” And I knew he was right.
I didn’t
need any commandment to honor my father and mother. It never occurred
to me to do otherwise, in view of the examples they set. My father
belonged to a generation in which a father generally did not play
the role of pal to his kids. Although I never doubted that he loved
me, he occupied a different, somewhat elevated stratum. So, as I
matured, I automatically came to respect him, at the same time that
I loved him. I appreciated that his own understanding of his chief
duty in life was to support his family, which he invariably did,
even during the Great Depression, when finding work was a difficult
task. He was not the kind of man to go on the dole. Indeed, I doubt
that he ever gave any thought to that possibility, even when people
all around him were eagerly accepting some sort of relief.
 Although
he had a wonderful, practical-joking sense of humor and loved to
tell cock-and-bull stories at the dinner table, waiting for my mom
to finally catch on that he was pulling her leg, Jess was a taciturn
man. Yet hardly a standoffish man. Everybody loved him, especially
the children. He obviously preferred the kids to the grownups, if
given a choice. Everyone who worked for him, when he became a foreman
and then the assistant superintendent on the big ranch in the San
Joaquin Valley of California where I grew up between 1954 and 1961,
was extremely loyal to him and spoke highly of him: “Jess”
they’d say, “is a good man to work for.” He expected
every man to do what he was hired to do, but he posed no threat
to jerk anyone around just because he was in a position to do so.
Although he had been reared in a racially bigoted environment and
some of his idioms would not pass muster with today’s guardians
of political correctness, he treated everyone the same, regardless
of race.
It’s natural
for a man to compare himself to his father. I’ve done so a
million times, and not once did I measure up. After he died, so
many people came to his funeral that the chapel overflowed, and
some had to stand outside the doors during the service. I remember
thinking, “When I die, I’ll be lucky if a dozen people
show up.” To say that he had a greater, more fundamental effect
than anyone else in making me the kind of man I became would be
an understatement. I don’t know for sure that they aren’t
making men like him anymore, but if they are, I’m not encountering
them. Maybe the years that followed closely after 1909 produced
a different kind of men, or maybe there was something in the water
he drew from the family well on that backwoods farm in Muskogee
County.
This first
appeared in The Beacon.
March
23, 2009
Robert
Higgs [send him mail] is
senior fellow in political economy at the Independent
Institute and editor of The
Independent Review. He
is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. His
most recent book is Neither
Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government.
He is also the author of Depression,
War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence
of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against
Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society.
Copyright
© 2009 Robert Higgs
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