Columnists
Ode to a great friend
Recently I lost a great friend and, dare I say, a mentor: Gord Parks. Yeah, I know I’m not the only one who enjoyed his company and thoughts he had gathered through his many years in our County community. That’s what happens when you break the traditional barrier of our life on earth.
I didn’t have just a passing acquaintance with Gord. I was married to his daughter, the late Marlene (taken too soon). We divorced, and many of our ‘couple friends’ abandoned me, as if I was carrying a ‘divorce virus’ which would infect their relationships, so close friends vanished and, as well as now being alone, I was pretty much completely alone.
But not with Gord and Rita. Sure, they could have done the same thing, and thrown me into the trash barrel of disappointments. But they didn’t. Nor did the rest of the Parks family. They continued to treat me as family. I’m not sure you know how important this was to me.
Of all the friends I lost, it was important to keep the family I knew, and be treated as family, always.
This shows to me the kind of integrity the Parks family has. And that doesn’t come naturally. It’s bred in, and passed down. It’s the essence of what solid County families do.
TALKING TO GORD
Gord was a thinker, a reader, and an explorer, as well as a damn fine farmer. We had some wild conversations—the kind I really like—in which there’s nothing at stake; no ‘my argument beats your argument, because I’m right and you’re wrong’. It was more ‘think about this’ and ‘what about this?’
My conversations with him were actual conversations. Nothing to be gained or lost; just exploring the topic at hand. I live for that.
There’s no changing the mind of someone who walks in the room with his mind made up. No point in even talking. Your adversary clearly waits for you to stop talking, so they can have the floor, and set you straight. I’ve had many such ‘conversations’—which were just lectures in disguise—and I have no use for that.
Gord and I had useful talks, in which his experiences and mine bounced off each other like we were both listening, picking out questions which led to further talk and further insights into the topic at hand. And I think we both always walked away feeling good.
GORD WAS SOMETHING OF A MENTOR
Long ago, when I first started a business, I would often turn to Gord for advice. Starting a business is hard, and starting a brand new business, launching a magazine which had never been tried before in the County, I needed all the help I could get.
I’d like to tell you two stories about Gord:
Gord took me golfing at the Picton Club. At the time, I golfed about twice a year so, by golf standards I was about minus 100 below par. To account for lost balls, I packed about 100 golf balls, which I bought from the ‘recovery bin’, because I was also really cheap. (One ball I hit was so old it actually broke into two pieces in the air. I hoped this would be extra points, but no.)
So Gord and I set off. In typical fashion, I was shanking balls left and right. I looked at Gord, and he said nothing. Round about the third hole, after sending another discount ball into the wilderness, I turned to Gord and said, “What am I doing wrong?”
And he said this: “You’re standing too far ahead of the ball; you’re not following through on your swing; and you’re snapping your head up to see where the ball is going.”
I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?!”
He said, “Only a fool gives advice when advice is not asked for.” All I had to do was ask. Got it.
Ironically, I ignored that, and now offer unsolicited advice through my Times columns, which makes me a fool, but I’m okay with that.
BUSINESS ADVICE
This will require a bit of set-up, but bear with me. I was ranting to Gord about a client, who ran a seasonal business, and vacationed down south somewhere. When he came back, he was in a panic to get his summer County business up and running. Fast. Now. He needed promo printing as a rush job. I got him a proof of his rack card the next day, and he said, “Go.”
Then he took the proof to his wife and, suddenly, there were a whole pile of changes, including the ‘blue’ was not ‘blue enough’. As a rush job, this was already at the printer, and I had to do a callback on the job.
This hurt me because sending a rush job, and then a ‘stop press’ is totally unprofessional in the trade. So the rush job wasn’t actually a rush job. Lesson I should have learned.
Next year, same deal, same rush job, same rush to press, except this time the client had a cocktail party that night, and a dozen people suddenly had input: Type to big, too small, blue should be more purple…
So I was throwing my angst to Gord, and exhorting my pain and frustration, and he said this:
“So he does this all the time?”
“Yeah, he drives me crazy!”
So, if he does this all the time, and you expect a different result each time? I’m not sure he’s got the problem.”
A light went on, and my client’s ‘rush job’ got a fourday hold on each job, in case he had a party, and screwed me up. Turns out, his rush should not be mine.
THE LESSON IN THIS
When I started County Magazine I was young and foolish —too dumb to know what I was getting into. I worked hard, sometimes late into the night. Sometimes all night.
I was somewhat smart, somewhat skilled, full of piss and vinegar—things I hope I’ve expanded over the years. I was driven with the passion of what I wanted to do. Though these things are important in a business, Gord gave me the missing key, the thing I was missing: Wisdom. The ability to stop. Pause. Take yourself out of yourself, and look at your problem from a different perspective.
LESSON 2
Funny thing is, Gord’s lessons were my parents’ lessons. This the cool thing about farming folks, and the sons and daughters of farming folk: They do what they do because it needs to be done. They don’t shout their accomplishments from the rooftops; they don’t hold press conferences. Their work is their reward. Hard to find that in any other job.
When I started in business, it was all about me. Look what I can do! Like my mom is going to put up my latest drawing on the fridge as if I were a budding Renoir. Thanks to my parents, and many conversations with Gord, and that damned farming background, later in business I learned to lose my ego.
If you’re going to do something, do it for your client. Make it the best project you can do. I remember the day I realized I had booted my ego out the door when an ad client wrote some crazy scribbles on a paper, which I did not understand. He said, “What are you? Stupid?”
And it did not hurt. With full-blown ego, I could have had a fiery confrontation. But no. I just said, “Explain it to me again.” It went nowhere from there, but I learned something important from that. You can’t help everybody. You can only try. And you need to know what you do is important, and useful and, like farming, will never be recognized for what you do.
All those conversations with Gord, that back and forth, that agree and disagree—sometimes taking sides just for the fun of it. Not just memories, and not just for me. That’s a legacy.
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