Hubert’s ancestry was partly German, and sometimes we have a stereotypical view of Germans as holding their feelings inside. For the most part Hubert fit that stereotype. Lorene says he never hugged them, never showed emotion but in spite of that she knew absolutely that he loved her.
| His children were pretty much afraid of him. He had a "short fuse" and expected them to behave, and certainly to obey the first time they were told. There are still many mysteries about raising children and we often don’t know the "right" way to handle every situation, but one can’t argue with the fact that Hubert and Maud raised eleven children under very difficult circumstances and they all turned out to be good, stable adults of whom any parent would be proud. Maybe his discipline was harsh by today’s standards, but he also managed to communicate to them that he loved and cared about them. |  |
He was very interested in the school system and served on the Board of Education for many years. Maybe because he had so little chance to go to school it seemed especially precious to him. His formal education was brief, but it served him well. He was the Justice of Peace for the community and had some law books which he consulted as needed. I guess nobody told him that a person with two years of school shouldn’t be able to read and understand law books! He could look at a stack of lumber and make a mental calculation of the number of board feet it contained that would be quite close to the actual measurement. (A board foot is the equivalent of a board that is one inch thick, a foot wide, and a foot long.)