Mike picked up the five-foot 2 x 4 and held it at the ready.
“Dad, I’m tellin ya, it’s over. If you come at me again, I’m gonna knock you out with this 2 x 4.” Dad heard him clearly, steadied himself, then said, “Give it your best shot, boy,” as he blitzed Mike.
Whh-ooo-pp! The 2 x 4 went across Dad’s head.
Out cold, Dad lay in a heap on the ground.
“Damnit, Dad?!” Mike said in shock, wondering if he’d killed him.
Mike, crying now, knelt down over Dad and yelled, “Damnit, Dad! I told you not to come at me again!”
Dad lay there, unmoving.
For four and a half minutes Mike knelt over his fallen pop, weeping.
“I didn’t wanna do it, Dad, but you made me.”
Dad then came to and slowly got to his feet.
“I’m sorry, Dad!” Mike shouted, “I’m sorry!”
My dad stood straight and wiped the gravel from his eyes. Mike, crying tears of shock and fear, readied himself for the risk of another round. Dad, eyes now clear, focused in on the young man who had just knocked him out cold, his first son.
The fight was over. Tears ran down my dad’s face as well. But these were tears of pride and joy. Dad stepped toward Mike with open arms and took him into a loving bear hug, declaring into Mike’s ear, “That’s my boy, son, that’s my boy.”
From that day on Mike was an equal to Dad and Dad treated him as such. Dad never challenged Mike again, physically, morally, or philosophically. They were best of friends.
You see, rites of passage were a big deal to my dad, and if you were man enough to take him on, then you had to prove it. And Mike just did.
* * *
Second in line to the privilege of my dad’s methods of turning his boys into men was Pat. Over the past forty years, while Rooster has been chasing a career in the oil business in West Texas and I’ve been chasing one in Hollywood, Pat has been the fiercely loyal heartist of the family, the one who’s always stayed closest to Mom. Growing up, he looked after me, took up for me, let me hang out with his friends, introduced me to rock ’n’ roll, taught me how to golf, how to drive, how to ask a girl out on a date, and bought me my first beer.
Pat was my hero. His was Evel Knievel.
Pat’s night with Dad came on a Friday in the early spring of 1969, eight months before I was magically born. Dad was out at Fred Smither’s hunting camp with some friends a couple hours’ drive from home. Their night’s entertainment had segued into who could piss over whose head the highest. Each man, from shortest to tallest would stand on the barn wall, put a mark over his head, and the rest of them would see if they could flat-foot piss over the mark. Dad won when he was the only man who could piss six feet, four inches high, the mark he’d just put over his own head. The prize? Bragging rights.
But Dad wasn’t the tallest man in the barn that night; at six foot, seven inches tall, Fred Smither was. And even though Dad had already won the contest, he had to see if he could piss over Fred’s head. Fred stood up, marked the wall.
“C’mon, Big Jim! You can do it!” his buddies cheered. Pop chugged another beer, leaned back, and let it fly.
Nope, six four was as high as he could piss.
“I knew it, knew you couldn’t piss over my head, Big Jim, hell, nobody can do that!” Fred Smither declared.
To which Dad quickly replied, “My boy can.”
“Shit, Jim, ain’t no way your boy or anyone else can piss over my head,” Fred sneered.
“Like hell he can’t; whadda you wanna bet?”
“Whadda you wanna bet?”
Dad eyed a used Honda XR-80 dirt bike leaning against a hay bale in the corner of the barn. You see, Pat had been asking for a dirt bike for Christmas all year long but Dad knew he couldn’t afford to buy one, used or not.
“I’ll bet you that little dirt bike over there my boy can piss over your head, Fred.”
The gang all cracked up at the proposition. Fred looked at the dirt bike then back to Dad and said, “Deal, and if he don’t, you owe me $200.”
“I ain’t got $200 to lose, Fred, but if my boy can’t piss over your head, then you can keep my truck,” Dad said.
“Deal,” Fred replied.
“Deal. I’ll be back with my boy by sunrise, don’t y’all go to bed on me.”
And with that, Dad hopped into his beat-up pickup truck and drove 112 miles back to our house in Uvalde to pick up Pat.
“Wake up, little buddy, wake up,” Dad said as he quietly shook Pat from his slumber. “Put a coat and some shoes on, we’re goin somewhere.”
Eight-year-old Pat got out of bed, put on a pair of tennis shoes and a coat over his tighty-whities, then headed for the bathroom.
“No, no, no, son, I need you to hold it,” Dad said as he rushed Pat out the door.
Dad drove Pat the 112 miles back to Fred Smither’s hunting camp and made him drink two beers on the way. When they finally got to the camp at 4:40 in the morning, Pat’s bladder was full of potential.
“Dad, I really gotta go bad.”
“I know, I know, son, just hold it a few more minutes.”
Dad and Pat, in his tennis shoes, coat, and tighty-whities, walked into the barn. The boys had quieted down but were still awake. Fred Smither, too.
“Boys, this is my son Pat, and he’s about to piss over Fred’s head!”
They all broke out in laughter again. Game on.
Fred sauntered over to the pissing wall, stood up tall, and chalked a fresh line above his head, all six foot seven of his height.
“What’s goin on, Daddy?” Pat asked.
“You see that mark on the wall Mr. Fred just left?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can piss over it?”
“Hell yeah,” Pat replied, then dropped his tighty-whities below his knees, put both hands on his pecker, aimed it at the mark, and let it fly.
Pat cleared Fred Smither’s six-seven mark by two feet.
“That’s my boy!! I told y’all my boy could piss over Fred’s head!”
Dad hustled over to the corner of the barn, grabbed the Honda XR-80, and rolled it over to Pat.
“Merry Christmas, son!”
Then they loaded it in the back of Dad’s truck, hopped in, and drove 112 miles back home just in time for breakfast.
* * *
Fourteen years later, Pat became the number one golfer on the Mississippi Delta State “Statesmen” golf team. A scratch golfer known as the “Texas Stallion,” Pat had just won “low medalist” at the SEC tournament on the Arkansas Razorbacks’ home course. The coach called a team meeting on the bus ride home. “Tomorrow morning, my house, eight a.m. sharp.”
The next morning Coach gathered the team around him in his living room and said, “I have a concern that some players on our team were smoking marijuana in the city park of Little Rock yesterday before the tournament. Now, what we need to do is find out who it was that brought the marijuana from Delta State to Little Rock, and who was smoking it.”
He was staring at Pat.
Pat, raised by my dad to know that telling the truth would save your ass, stepped forward.
“Coach, it was me. I brought the weed, and I smoked it.”
Pat stood there, alone. None of the other teammates moved or said a word even though three of them had passed the doobie with him the other morning in Little Rock.
“Nobody else?” Coach asked.
Nothing.
“I’ll let you know what my decision is tomorrow,” Coach said. “You’re dismissed.”
The next morning, Coach showed up at Pat’s dorm room.
“I’m telling your father and you’re suspended from playing golf next semester.”
Pat caught his breath. “Come on, Coach, I told you the truth…and I’m the best go
lfer on the team.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Coach said. “You broke a team rule about drugs. You’re suspended. And I’m going to tell your father.”
“Look here, Coach,” Pat said. “You can suspend me, but you can’t tell my dad. You don’t understand, a DWI you could call him about. But marijuana? He’ll kill me.” Pat had gotten busted with weed a couple times in his late teens, and after being on the receiving end of Dad’s brand of discipline and disdain for Mary Jane before, he was going to make sure there wasn’t a third.
“Well, that’ll be between you and him.” Coach didn’t budge.
Pat inhaled deeply, “Okay, Coach, let’s go for a ride.”
They got in Pat’s ’81 Z28 and headed out for a drive across the Delta. After about ten minutes of silence Pat finally spoke up: “Let me make this real clear, Coach. You can suspend me, but if you call my dad…I’ll kill you.”
Pat got suspended.
My dad never found out.
Create structure so you can have freedom.
Create your weather so you can blow in the wind.
Map your direction so you can swerve in the lanes.
Clean up so you can get dirty.
Choreograph, then dance.
Learn to read and write before you start making up words.
Check if the pool has water in it before you dive in.
Learn to sail before you fly.
Initiation before inaugurations.
Earn your Saturdays.
We need discipline, guidelines, context, and responsibility early in any new endeavor. It’s the time to sacrifice. To learn, to observe, to take heed.
If and when we get knowledge of the space, the craft, the people, and the plan, then we can let our freak flag fly, and create.
Creativity needs borders.
Individuality needs resistance.
The earth needs gravity.
Without them there is no form.
No art.
Only chaos.
* * *
As I said, I was an unplanned surprise—an accident as my mom still calls me—and my dad has always half jokingly told her, “That ain’t my boy, Katy, that’s your boy.” Dad was on the road a lot when I was growing up, working to take care of the family, so I spent most of my time with Mom. It was true. I was a momma’s boy. When I did get to spend time with Dad, I relished every moment.
I wanted and needed his approval, and on occasion he gave it to me. Other times, he’d rearrange my considerations in extremely colorful ways.
* * *
As a kid, my favorite TV show was The Incredible Hulk starring Lou Ferrigno.
I marveled at his muscles and would pose in front of the TV with my shirt off, arms bent, fists high, doing my best bulging body-builder biceps impersonation.
One night Dad saw me. “What are you doin, son?” he asked.
“One day I’m gonna have muscles like that, Dad,” I said, motioning to the TV screen. “Big baseball-size biceps!”
Dad chuckled, then took off his shirt, matched my pose in front of the tube, and said, “Yeah, big biceps make the girls scream and they sure look good, but that ol’ boy on the TV, he’s so muscle-bound he can’t even reach around to wipe his own ass…the biceps? They're just for show.” He then slowly lowered both his arms in front of him, straightened them out with his fists to the floor, then he twisted his arms to the inside, and flexed a pair of massive triceps muscles.
“Now the tri-cep, son,” he said, this time pointing his nose back and forth toward the bulging muscles on the back of his upper arms, “that’s the work muscle, that’s the muscle that puts food on the table and the roof over your head. The tri-ceps? They're for dough.” My dad would take the stockroom over the showroom any day.
* * *
It was the summer of 1979 when Dad moved Mom, me, and Pat from Uvalde, Texas (pop. 12,000), to the fastest-growing oil boom East Texas city in the nation, Longview (pop. 76,000). Where Uvalde taught me to deal, Longview taught me to dream.
Like everyone else, we moved for the money. Dad was still a pipe salesman, and Longview was the place to make it rich in the drilling business. Soon after arriving in town, Pat went away to a golf camp, and Mom went on an “extended vacation” at a beach house in Navarre Beach, Florida. Rooster, already a multimillionaire in his midtwenties, had moved to Midland, Texas, so it was just Dad and me living in a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of town.
My dad could hurt with his hands, but he could also heal with them. Painkillers were no match for his hands on my mom’s head when she had migraines. Whether it was a broken arm or a broken heart, Dad’s hands and his hugs could heal, especially when in service of an underdog or someone who couldn’t help themselves.
The other inhabitant of that double-wide trailer Dad and I were living in that summer was a pet cockatiel named Lucky. Dad loved that bird and that bird loved Dad. He’d open her cage each morning and let her fly around the trailer, she’d roost on his shoulder while he walked around, and perch on his forearm while he petted her. He talked to Lucky. Lucky talked to him.
We only put Lucky back in her cage at night to sleep. The rest of the time, Lucky was loose in the trailer morning until night. The only rule was, you had to “watch it” when you exited or entered the door so Lucky didn’t get out.
One late afternoon, after a July day of exploring the countryside on foot, I got back to the trailer at the same time Dad got home from work.
When we got inside, Lucky wasn’t there to greet Dad like she always did. We looked all over. No Lucky. Shit, I thought, did I accidentally let her out this morning when I left? Did anyone else come over today while we were gone?
Seconds later, I heard Dad in the back of the trailer, “Oh god, oh god, noooo, Lucky.”
I ran to the back and found Dad on his knees leaning over the toilet. There, floating in circles in the bottom of it, was Lucky. Tears dripping off his cheeks, Dad reached with both hands into the bottom of the bowl and gently cradled Lucky out. “Oh, no Lucky, noooo,” he groaned through sobs. Lucky was dead. Soaking wet. Motionless. She must have accidentally fallen into the toilet and gotten stuck beneath the seat’s edge trying to get out.
Dad, still weeping, brought Lucky’s soggy and lifeless body closer to his face where he examined her hanging head. Then, he opened his mouth wide and slowly put Lucky into it until the bottom half of her wings and her tailfeathers were all that was outside it. He started to give Lucky mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Only breathing through his nose so to keep constant airflow into her lungs, he made sure his breath was measured, enough, he hoped, to revive her, but not so much to burst her tiny lungs. On his knees, over a toilet, cradling the bottom half of a cockatiel named Lucky with the top half of the same bird in his mouth, he breathed into her with the perfect amount of pressure. One exhale…Two exhales…Three exhales. His tears soaking the already saturated bird. Four exhales…Five…A feather quivered…Six exhales…Seven…A wingtip fluttered. Eight…Dad lightly loosened his grip and released some pressure from his lips. Nine…Another wing tried to flap. He opened his mouth slightly wider. Ten…And that’s when we heard, coming from inside my father’s mouth, a small chirp. Now, with tears of pain turning to tears of joy, Dad gently removed Lucky’s torso and head from his mouth. Lucky twitched some toilet water and saliva off her head. Now face-to-face, they looked into each other’s eyes. She was dead. Now she was alive. Lucky lived another eight years.
God’s lucky.
The Goddess of luck is fortune,
fortune is the Sister of fate,
fate is the Divine Order,
and the Divine Order is God.
So, as far as I can tell,
if you believe in luck,
you believe in God.
* * *
That same summer, wh
ile Dad was at work every day, I explored the endless acres of the Piney Woods, barefoot and shirtless, wearing a shammy roped around my waist, with my Daisy BB gun in hand. Coming from Uvalde, I’d never seen trees like this. Towering pines shooting straight up into the sky, thousands of them. I was in awe of one in particular, a white pine among the ponderosa, six feet wide at its base, its peak trespassing the airspace.
One late afternoon while chasing down a squirrel with my Daisy a half mile from home, I came across a fence, about ten feet tall. It was strangled with vines and overgrowth and a few faded No Trespassing signs. I crouched, pulled back some foliage, and peeked through. On the other side was a lumberyard. Men in hard hats, a couple of forklifts in action, and mountainous stacks of 2 x 4’s, 4 x 4’s, and plywood. Perfect, I thought. For a tree house.
And I knew just the tree. I stayed there until they shut down the forklifts, packed up, and closed down for the day. It was about 6:00 p.m. I ran home with a plan. A plan I couldn’t tell Dad. A plan for the next three months of my summer.
The next morning after breakfast, Dad went to work at 6:30 like he always did. As soon as he left, I went to our toolbox and found what I was looking for, a pair of wire cutters. I put on my shammy, grabbed my Daisy, left my shoes in the closet, and ran to scope out my mark.
How was I gonna do this? There were people working at the lumberyard all day, so I’d have to come at night, I plotted. What if I got caught by someone at the lumberyard? What if I got caught sneaking out at night by Dad? And what if he then found out I was stealing lumber from a lumberyard half a mile from home? I was nervous. I was excited.
That night after dinner and watching The Incredible Hulk like I always did, Dad and I said our good nights. I lay in bed, wondering how long I should wait before I opened the double-wide bedroom window to sneak out. I could hear Dad still moving around on his end of the trailer so I waited until the slightest creaks had been silent for at least an hour before I made my move. Slowly, quietly, I got out of bed. I wrapped on my shammy skirt, left my shoes in the closet, grabbed my Daisy, a small flashlight, and the wire cutters. I tossed them all carefully out the window onto the lawn below, then snuck myself out the window and headed to my secret stash.
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