A5 DAD IN VIGNETTES

DAD IN VIGNETTES

During the summer between first and second grade we had moved into the new house. I was fishing in the pond behind our pasture. A water mocassin had surfaced in the center of the pond and remained motionless for a few moments. The snake was glaring in my direction and then it shimmered toward me. My breath jittered in disbelief before I could accept what was happening. I grabbed my fishing pole and began running through the field. Dad was doing something with the fence and I knew where I was going. I was screaming and crying because snakes have always scared the living shit out of me. I knew that if I reached Dad then I would be all right. I was a small kid and I had never jumped so high as I did into his arms. The snake stopped and was gone. 

It is years later and we are in the midst of a cold winter. We are having breakfast and my Dad tells my brother and I that if we see anyone walking, that we should stop and pick them up. If anyone is walking on a day like this, they are walking because they have no choice. 

I am in third grade. I am dreaming about werewolves and a wolf is howling in the dream. I begin to wake-up and I still hear the wolves howl. I peep through the blinds and see our neighbor, Mrs. Wilson. She is running across the lot. She is screaming “Roy killed himself! Roy killed himself!” Her husband blew his brains out at the breakfast table. Later on, Mrs. Wilson moves and Dad buys the place. A family that is quite poor now stays there. It is obvious that Dad did not do this for the money. 

I am sixteen years old. I have this friend who has had a troubled time. He steals some of Dad’s tools. I ask Dad what we wants to do about it. Dad tells me that he is not going to do anything. He said to let him have the tools and do not bring it up to him. I am glad that I listened.

About a year later, Mum wakes me up for school. She is standing at the door and she tells me that my friend is dead. He had a car wreck in Longview. About six months later, I stop what I am doing and begin to cry about my friend. I keep thinking about Dad and the tools. A few years later, I am working at Kroger’s and an elderly couple comes through my line. They tell me that I remind them of their grandson. I ask them what is his name. My friend’s name came off of their lips. I let them leave and go to the back and sit down. I clench my teeth and breathe. I can not stop the damn tears and I think about him, Dad, and those damn tools. 

I am in second grade. We are at the See’s house. They are a big family and one day they will move to Australia. In about an hour, Renee will show me a comic book. It will be the first time that I see the Justice Society of America. They came from my Dad’s boyhood. I am so fascinated by them. This began my lifelong obsession with my Dad’s era. Right now, we are playing baseball. Dad is at bat and he hits the ball. It is a good hit. Renee says that she bets that Dad could a ball all the way up to Heaven. In my mind, I agree. A lot of kids looked up to my Dad, particularly his own. 

I am in McDonald’s and it is midnight. It is right now. I have been writing about my Dad. I stop. I sit there and cry. 

My brother and I are in our teens. Teenagers are a grandparent’s revenge on their own kids. We have obviously held that vendetta intact. We must have been arguing the day before. We are eating breakfast. Dad is eating cereal. He stops and looks at us. He says that you boys do not think that I love you, but I do. He slowly goes back to the cereal. I linger for a moment, then slip off into my room and cry. 

Pick a year. I bring a girlfriend home. Pick a girlfriend. “That is your Dad? Damn!” Pretty cool, huh.

Dad is going to visit someone in the nursing home. Pick a year. Pick anyone. 

Growing up it was always: “Your Turner’s grandson” or “Your Bobby’s son.” I understand decorum and pedigree. 

Mum is pregnant with my sister. She is in the hospital. The day is coming. Dad lets my brother and I drive the car on the lot. My brother and I are idiots. We drive in circles. Dad does not care. He then takes us for a ride. He shows us places that he used to go. He tells us stories about his childhood. My brother and I are in rapt silence. We drink in and we do not want the moment to end. 

My Dad is always messing with the cows. It seems like everybody has cows. For Dad, messing with the cows is like a zen moment. I always keep expecting to hear ooommmmm. I hear mooooh instead. 

My brother is somehow always passing off his chores with the cows to me. I always complained about doing his work too. I was just bitching to bitch. It was always peaceful feeding them and such. I miss those damn cows. I always like doing stuff that my Dad did. 

It must have been around the summer of seventy-seven. I know that because it was a good year for pop radio. “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty was my new fave. Dad had me spraying cactus. There was a lot of it. I had a vehicle near me with the doors open. The radio was always on. “Baker Street” would come on and I would stop and look up. Wiping the sweat off, I stand in the sun and smile. Then I would get back to it. I bitched about the cactus too. By the same token, I combed that pasture with a fine tooth comb. I wanted to do a good job. I wanted him to be proud of me. 

I usually work multiple jobs. It is around two thousand and four. This was my waiting job in the Heights. I just finished working and a girl and I have been hanging out on the patio. Spring was beauty that year. I was quiet because I was tired. I began talking. I had became lost in a fugue of spinning tales. I finally stopped talking, I took a breath and was quiet again. She sat there staring all quiet within forever. She reached over and hugged me and that was another forever which was not unpleasant. Then she said that it was nice to hear someone talk about how much they love their parents. Later on it struck me, I would have never dreamt that talking about the parents would be a great pick-up line. 

I am shameless enough to try it again. I had discovered something. 

You could always see the little boy in Dad whenever he found an animal. He is kind, gentle, and protective of them. He would tell you things about whatever kind of animal they were. All the strays seemed to carry the name ‘Little Feller.’

My brother and I are children. You could look in the newspaper and see that a nature film was coming to the Texas Theater. We never seemed to miss the nature films. My love/hate relationship with the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, The History Channel, and so forth must have stemmed from this. I will turn the tube on catch myself lost in learning about bears, snakes, hyenas, pick it. 

My brother and I are still those same children. We are still at the same theater. Dad has been into the ‘Trinity’ westerns. It is the first time that I have ever seen a fart on the big screen. Apparently, that is a first for a lot of people. The ‘Trinity’ westerns were quite popular in those days. The classics always work. Farting and other potty jokes are still funny at any age. Some relative would hand Dad their baby at whatever endeavor that got us all together. Small children must wait for someone else so that they can do number two. You could always see Dad’s nose twitch. When he handed the kid back, he would quote a line from the ‘Trinity’ westerns. All small children that had full diapers were christened as ‘Little Windy.’

The name of my friends never mattered. In time, Dad would rename them. Eventually, everyone else knew them by that name. He was strangely accurate and funny about your new name. 

We all practically lived at Mamaw and Pampaw’s. Pick a relative and they would agree. It always seemed to be summer there. I have been at the same kitchen table for a million times asking Mamaw to tell a million more stories about Dad when he was a little boy. It never mattered if some of these were reruns. I always remember her telling me about how big Billy Earl was. He was really tall and Dad was short. They were best friends. They played army and the machine guns went ‘Acka, acka, acka.’

Billy Earl became another legend added to the fold. I expected Paul Bunyan when I first met him. I was really young then. Paul Bunyan seemed about right.

Years later, Billy Earl died. They had the funeral in Pearland and Brother Allen preached that good-bye. It did not matter what it took. I made sure that I was there. Dad’s friends understood why I came. He was one of Dad’s friends from childhood. You try to make all of the golden moments. I just wanted to be there for him. 

Dad would go to the farm to go running. I would go too. Dad would lift weights. I picked that up as well. Dad has done these things for as long as I can remember. I still do those things too. 

It is the late eighties. My second love and I are living in Houston. I work with a man who reminds me of my Dad. It is uncanny. He has my Dad’s mannerisms, he has his kindness. Kids and animals like him too. I work with that guy as much as I can. I just want to be there. I miss him and Mum. 

It is the mid to late nineties. Dad and I are at Mamaw and Pampaw’s house. They are dead now. I do not think a day goes by in which I do not think of them. I ask Dad something about the house. He said that it is people that make the home. That was so obvious and I totally missed it. That statement engraved itself in my head at that moment. 

The Bat has always been my guy. In the nineties, Starman tied him for the favorite comic book. James Robinson not only brought back the character from the hallowed forties, he retired him and passed the mantle on to his second son. It gave a marvelous history of comics, it was an homage to all that was right about comic books and legacy itself. It was purely golden. 

Wednesdays are the day when new comic books arrive. I have done this all of my life. I am doing the usual perusal when a fan boy begins a conversation with the clerk/fan boy. They are talking about Starman. Fan boy claims that he is the biggest Starman fan. I am about to speak up until he begins the list of Starman stuff that he owns. That was a long list. He is right, he is the biggest Starman fan. Then he says things that I have always thought. Starman is about fathers and sons. It will bring you closer to your father. He is so dead on. He hit every point. He went on to own a comic shop of his own. 

So much is about fathers and sons. Ted Knight was the original Starman. He passed the mantle on to his eldest son. That son died. Jack then picked it up. Jack was not Ted’s first choice. Jack grew into it. Ted and him became tight. Jack did not wear the spandex. I got the action figure because his uniform was how I dressed casual during the nineties. If life delivered the obvious, it would lose its mystery and we would never learn lessons. I liked Jack because he was passed over. Do you get why I dig it?

It is the mid-nineties. I am hanging with my painter and director friends. All are older and there is one named George Jones. He is about ten years older. We have the same birthday and George is the classic Southern gentleman. He is Uncle George. I am quite good at adoption. I love his paintings, they are pastoral. He has Mint Juleps at a designated hour. All must partake. We while the eve talking about fathers and sons. We had forgotten the girls a long time ago. They have been watching and listening the whole time. They remark that we really do seem related. The joke became real. 

You can never escape those that you love, even if you want too. It is the holiday season of last year. I so want to hear from anyone. There is Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have never missed those holidays with the family. The first miss hits like spades. Not only the lonely, but the extreme poverty. I would have never dreamt that I would have discovered the cruel blades of life from my family. Distantly in the back ambient, I hear the pedestals topple in their crashing. Still I want to glue them back together and it all be the same. 

It has really begun to get to me. I desperately crave having a conversation with someone that I have known for over a year. The gut is cut when you know that if you died at that moment, you would not want a funeral because one unattended is waste of time and a last insult. Some preacher that has never known you would proclaim some generic passage and all of the worth in your life came down to this fill in the blank form. A final insult for your departure. Cheapened in life and your death has borne the same.

nonAtomas 5

Atoma is a Greek word that means ‘indivisible’. The English word ‘atom’ comes from ‘atoma’. The notion of family is a foundation for society. A family’s strength resides in the glue that holds them together. Love has its wisdom, abiding loyalties, and love is indivisible. Love is glue, atoma. Non- atoma families make breaking worlds. This has been The League of Dread.

DAD IN VIGNETTES + nonAtomas 5 + LEAGUE OF DREAD

EL-POOH!