sparing the rod

I've contemplated recording some, for me at least, formative family stories; recountings that seemed to define a quality of my family's, or that made me pause and think.  Here's a doozy for you, and I even have a contemporary equivalent to boot:

I was playing a card game with my inlaws the other night. This may seem archaic, but I was never, ever allowed to play with face cards growing up. I didn't learn what to do with a Joker, Queen, King or Ace until well after I moved out.  Like much of my family's history, the rule about not playing with face cards began somewhere in the not-so-recorded annals of Mormon history. I'm not sure exactly what General Authority spoke out against them (maybe a reader could enlighten me?), but my great-grandfather on my mom's side felt that playing with them lead to gambling and other forms of licentiousness. My grandfather and mom passed the tradition down, referring to obscure GA commentary on the subject of face cards.  So we played our games with Rook cards and I never really knew the difference. It was a deprivation without much fanfare or consequence.

I mentioned to my inlaws my former ignorance of the use of face cards, and told them a story my maternal grandfather tells with a glint of pride in his eye:

My grandfather grew up in Bicknell, Utah during the Great Depression.  My great-grandfather owned a cattle ranch and hired hands to do work for him.  One day, with my grandfather in tow, my great-grandfather checked on some of his hands who were staying in a tent out with the cattle. He walked into the tent unannounced and found them playing with face cards.  Apparently my great-grandfather had warned them at the outset to never play with face cards while they worked for him, or they would be dismissed. After all, my grandfather adds, my great-grandfather had quite a few children, and boys old enough to get caught up in a gambling habit. 

True to his word, my great-grandfather told the men they were fired. One of the men, my grandfather remembers, started crying, saying that he had a wife and children he was supporting with his work at the ranch. "I told you!" my grandfather remembers my great-grandfather saying. Both men were dismissed.

In Jordan this summer, I met a formidable Austrian who worked for a security company. His was the business of hiring and managing local Jordanians to do guardwork.  One man, he said, after a warning, fell asleep again on the job and my Austrian friend caught him in the act a second time. The man begged to keep his position, referencing his wife and many children as well. "What will I tell my children?" the Jordanian man asked. "Tell them they have a sh***y father who isn't willing to provide for them", my friend responded.  Interestingly, the Austrian had a glint of pride similar to my grandfather's when he told this particular story.

In response to my grandfather's story, my father-in-law responded, using choice words, that maybe my great-grandfather should've pulled the rod out of his butt instead of forcing other people to live the way he did. Derrick's grandma and I responded with an "but aren't people always the product of their time?" argument. 

You could argue that both sets of men getting the "pink slip" had been warned.  I can understand that argument.  The part that makes me most uncomfortable with both stories is the apparent pride and righteous indignation accompanying the utter lack of mercy. Justice or mercy? Spare the rod, spoil the child? or aren't we all beggars? What do you think?

Do any of you have stories in your family that have made you ponder your family's (and your own) rightness?