As a kid, I watched Dad greet fellow drivers on a country road with “The One Finger Wave”. One day as a young teen driver, I decided to try it myself. Dad promptly rebuked me, rumbling, “You’re not ready” (subtitle at bottom of screen: “Don’t try it again, kid”). I needed to learn the lessons that defined manhood in rural Colorado before I had the right to raise a single finger off the steering wheel.

The greeting practice of raising the index finger of a hand holding the steering wheel of a car can be found in many regions of the US and it certainly held special meaning in Eastern Colorado. Women never used it, not children, youth, strangers from outside the area, escaped clowns from a traveling circus or even the church pastor of 25 years. Only adult farmers practiced the slow raising of the index finger, being careful to not appear too eager or raise the finger too high in passing. Be cool. Make it almost an afterthought. But this sign was more than a greeting. It embodied the more important characteristics of how you acted and treated your fellow men. Using it identified you in that area of farmers and ranchers as a man and not a boy. There was no rule book to learning the rules of manhood. It was all hands on.

While there may be many more rules that I have overlooked, and I’m sure there are other guidelines, best practices, and highly suggested axioms, here are a few of “The Rules of Manhood” that I learned:

Rule 1: A Man’s Business is His Business

Living on a farm in the country meant living 20mi from the closest store or gas station and probably 2mi or more from the closest neighbor. It meant isolation and finding the solutions to challenges on your own. There was incredible beauty, like having the night sky so black at night that you easily saw the Milky Way’s river of stars gleaming in the night or saw the absolutely undisturbed beauty of a sunrise that was unbroken by noise or the interruption of another. There was also nobody but yourself to free a truck bogged down to its axles from the mud after days of rain, dig out your house that was covered by a snow drift from a blizzard or to even know if a tragic misjudgment had resulted in serious injury. Each person’s challenges were different and each person had to endure and solve them on their own. In the isolation of being the master of your own fate, you make choices, risk consequences, and live situations that are uniquely yours. And nobody dares to second guess the other person. Judge, lest not ye be judged.

Once as a 16 year old boy, my father left me driving a Case 4890 tractor pulling 40ft wide tilling equipment to continue plowing a field. Like many kids my age, I knew exactly how to drive a 14 ton tractor that gave me a vantage point 15ft off the ground and when to begin the slow turn of tractor and equipment to begin a new, crisp line of work. But I didn’t count on the soft soil on a steep embankment to begin slipping at the most susceptible apex of my turn.

Unable to simply stop and abandon the turn, I adjusted my direction, braced my foot against the cabin wall to counteract the leaning of the tractor and stay in my chair. Slowly, the double tractor wheels grabbed new soil and stopped slipping. I had avoided damaged machinery and possible tragedy if the tractor had tumbled down the embankment. Later my father noticed the tracks left by the close call and asked, “Got a little slip near the edge”? I answered, “Yeah, a little”. I came very close to dying that day, crushed to pulp, and Dad knew it. But the rest was left unsaid between us.

Rule 2: Have a Firm Handshake

It’s become a cliché and parodied, but the handshake is still a time-honored litmus test of greeting for some. In older times, it was a way for men to be in close proximity with safety. If you were shaking hands, then that hand was not reaching for a sword, dagger, gun or to serve divorce papers. A weak handshake, with the worst of the worst being the clammy “limp wrist” clasp, was a sign of weakness. But a firm grasp is not enough. It must be matched with a straightforward meeting of the eyes as well. You were equals and needed to show it. And farmers knew if you were one of them, just by your handshake.

Wear old oil-soaked boots, a ventilated trucker cap with “International Harvester” on it or even take up chewing tobacco if you like. If you did not have a rough, calloused, larger-than-life puffy or thin, wiry, and chiseled hand from hard work, then a strong and firm grasp might gain you some initial respect.

Give a weak handshake and your own personal character and respectability was immediately in question. Later in life, I learned that giving a direct eye-to-eye gaze in an inner-city setting with an overly pumped up ego alpha male might be just the thing to invite confrontation; limp handshakes in farm country might do the same.

Rule 3: If You Can’t Do It Yourself, Maybe You Shouldn’t Even Start Out

Most farmers where I grew up never asked for help. Ever. Just 100 years prior, homesteaders had pioneered the area. The occasional farmhouse built from sod or a forgotten horse-drawn wagon in the back corner of an active farm yard was a remnant of their presence. Those predecessors were tough and independent and were maybe somehow still around and watching you, measuring if you belonged. Whether livestock needed rounding up after a bold escape through a broken fence or attempting to shovel out from a blizzard, you never went to the closest neighbor two miles or more away to ask for help; you did things yourself.

When driving down a dusty country road, Dad might stop to help a fellow farmer who had pulled over to change a flat tire, adjust the load on a trailer or for any number of other reasons to stop and fix something. The two men would talk about the weather, latest crop or another farmer’s activities. The subtext was whether the farmer stopped along the side of the road would break the smalltalk and ask for help from the one who had paused. Asking for help was not just admitting weakness, but accepting an extension of credit for returning a vague favor some time in the future. Farmers value their freedom and hate owing debts. I never saw anybody admit to needing help.

Rule 4: Run it Like You Own It

To a farmer and rancher in the remote rural area where I was a kid, the money planned or spent for operating expenses came from the family’s life savings.

A wrong move by a farmer resulted in fiscal disaster. Grim farm liquidation sales were a fact of life, followed by the hope of getting an “off farm” job (Translation: A demeaning job as a gas station clerk at the local Quickie Mart) where jobs were scarce.

During the annual wheat harvest, farmers would sit down at a kitchen table, dusty from the day’s work, and calculate the value of the wheat they harvested.

The next day, only a few hours of sleep away, would bring more harvest with money for the following year or a thunderstorm or accidental fire that would wipe out their financial futures in minutes. Once after the end of a month-long harvest, I watched my Dad plan on a napkin at the local diner the entire next year’s budget based on the recent harvest income. On a 3×6 napkin he mapped out our family’s money and future. It showed me that your actions can have profound consequences.

Dad’s Rule: BE What You Believe

This rule is the hardest to follow. Dad taught me to help those in need, and if necessary, defend those who can’t for themselves. I was shown to not let wrongs simply go by unchallenged because eventually a moral person won’t know what he actually stands for. Dad demonstrated that people should be taken on their word, but more importantly by their actions. Standing for your views and moral beliefs can be a lonely road and at times filled with criticism. But a person’s beliefs define them, determine their actions, and ultimately what person they are.

Did I Ever Try the Wave After My Reprimand?

I didn’t try The One Finger Wave again until I was in my 40s, having been away from that Eastern Colorado rural community for some years. Since being a young driver with Dad, I had gone through more than a few of life’s trials. Driving down a dusty and solitary country road in dress clothes and a clean and shiny rental car, I could not have felt or probably looked more out of place. As I approached another vehicle on the road, I hesitated, and then gave the greeting. A farmer in a beat up pickup truck driving the other way returned it. Wherever I was from, whoever I was or whatever profession I practiced now, I was recognized by another man as one of the club. I belonged and the greeting proved it.

~ Mason