my mom used a vast assortment of things, but for my dad, the hand was more than enough to strike fear! One thing about him, though, is that he was very private about administering the whippings. If we were on vacation visiting family or something like that, he would always wait 'til we got back home. One summer when I was 10 or so and my older brother was 13, we drove from Crossville, TN to Kileen, TX where my sister and her husband were stationed. We were there for 3 or 4 days, and that's the summer my dad introduced his infamous "lick list." He would keep a running talley (complete with the 5 lines and then a line through them & so on) of whippings ("licks") he was gonna give us when we got back home. During the visit, we would occasionally notice our dad take out his wallet, remove the list and make a mark on it. My brother and I would look at each other and cringe! This was a case where the anticipation of getting back home was far worse than the actual punishment - completely ruined the entire vacation for us. We tried several times to talk our dad into just going ahead and giving us our licks to get them over with, but he refused. I remember very clearly by the time we got back to TN, my brother had 32 licks coming, and I had 12. I took mine first so that I could revel in hearing my brother get his. Ahh, those quaint days of childhood. :jpshakehead: