A family sprawled out on the dock one recent Sunday at McGregor Lake, eyeing the water below.

The father dangled a fishing line baited with a hot dog into the water and retracted a crayfish, which the child quickly put into a plastic bucket. The mom sat nearby, helping remove the critter from the line.

One by one, another crawdad was plopped into the bucket, twitching and scratching. The child giggled with each new find.

I paddled past them in my kayak, setting crayfish traps in the deeper water. I was amazed at the simple, gentle interaction of this family. There were no electronic “binkies,” as I call them, to distract and occupy the child, just a sunny day, some willing crawdads and good dose of laughter. The family spent about four hours there on that dock. It made me think about Cathy Gaiser and some of the children she works with in Bigfork.

Gaiser is director of ACES, a youth after-school and summer camp program in Bigfork that serves low-income families. The program is in a basement of a simple residence behind the Bigfork fire hall where about 20 kids a day take part in crafts, sports, or organized activities. They even recently produced their own newspaper, the “By Golly News.”

They get breakfast and lunch — something they might not otherwise have, if it weren’t for ACES, which stands for Arts, Community, Education, Sports.

The children that ACES serves occupy a place generally under the radar in Bigfork, a town with extreme wealth … and extreme poverty, if you care to look closely.

Gaiser tells of one family that benefits from the program.

The mother would drop off her daughter each day in downtown Bigfork, and after working in Kalispell would pick her up at the end of the day. The child would wander the town unaccompanied by an adult, fending for herself. That was until the child began attending ACES.  

I was recently at a fundraiser where no one batted an eye to drop $800 on an auction item — a toy. Meanwhile families in Bigfork are struggling just to get by. Now, Gaiser is able to find money to run her programs; in fact she was awarded about $950,000 from the state to run the ACES program at several rural schools in the Flathead Valley for three years. After that runs out, she’s eligible to receive about 60 percent of that grant. The rest will be up to her and organizations like Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork, or the Bigfork Masons to help out, as they’ve done generously.

With stories like the ones you hear from Gaiser, it’s not hard to get people to write checks. But this isn’t about money and poverty, though.

The point I want to make is about men being present in children’s lives.

At some point in the last 30 years men have lost their ability or desire to be with their children. While women have risen in the economic and social ranks, many men have been left scratching their boots in the dirt along the curb, wondering where their place is in today’s society.

I don’t advocate a return to 1950s “Leave it to Beaver” family values. What I would like to see is parenting that honors the male’s role in children’s lives. The male in modern American culture is often represented as a buffoon, like Phil on the TV show “Modern Family” — not exactly a beacon of a paternal role model.

A new definition of American father is not about male vs. female, mother vs. father, or custodial parent vs. non custodial parent. I believe this redefinition has to be about men vs. themselves.  How do we honestly want to be regarded not only by contemporary society, but by the generation we leave behind? Are we to be the generation of ghosts who abdicated our place at the head of the family because it was accepted to do so? Surely, some of us might not have gotten the tools to have healthy families after being raised, ourselves, by the “Greatest Generation” who didn’t exactly espouse communication — not to mention doing the laundry and dishes — to us growing up.

Gaiser talked to me recently about some of the kids she works with. Some are from single-parent families, like the mom working a low-paying job at the grocery store just to be able to afford a small apartment in Bigfork.

Gaiser also told me of a suggestion she got when she asked the kids what kind of holiday they would create, if they had the chance.

An extra Father’s Day was their response.

It’s enough to break your heart.

I’m glad to know there are men in our community who are getting the job done; men like Dan Paine, Stewart Rhodes and Brian Sugden, who recently took a dozen adolescent males on a 60-mile trek through the Bob Marshall Wilderness with the Bigfork Boy Scout troop. Paine told me how he watched these young boys literally turn into men during those six days.

As Gaiser explained, she’s familiar with being around angry young men who have no way to express themselves to a male.

It’s not just single moms left to raise their young boys and girls who are missing men in their lives. I’ve seen how couples struggle also, with the male opting to give the kid an iPhone instead of a fishing pole. My nephew was in town recently from Texas, and I took him fishing on the Swan River. He hooked a lake trout and had it to shore before he lost it. The kid was incredulous. He’d never caught a fish before, and at age 16. Shame on men who give their kids an iPhone instead of a fishing pole, or even better, their attention.

We’re good at writing checks, or buying the next gadget but not being present in a child’s life. The days of saying “Go ask your mother” need to be gone. Men need to begin saying, “Let me see how I can help.”

Gaiser is considering starting a mentoring program this fall for males in our community to lend their knowledge, patience and guidance to young folk. I hope she’s able to get it off the ground.

But this isn’t rocket science. And you don’t have to spend a week in the wilderness, like Sugden, Paine and Stewart did, although that’s a wonderful idea.

Dangling a hot dog to catch crawdads might just be a good place to start.

— Reese is the editor of the Bigfork Eagle