My Past: 50 Years In Review: Chapter 1

So how am I gonna start this…

I’ve chopped up my little memoir into pieces for the next 5 days in honor of the big 50^th birthday coming up.

I’m gonna change a little, add a little.

I wrote this over 2 or 3 years ago and I have re-read it and reflected upon it, deciding that it’s not…quite…right.

I guess you could say, or not, since you weren’t here with me during my life, that all people have their own struggles and until recently; very recently that is, I was not aware there were other beings on this earth and never really paid them any attention.

Just minor actors on the stage of my life, and not one of them could hit their mark or remember their cues.

…hacks

Please, don’t get me wrong; I love life….

I just wish it would love me back sometimes; well, during the bad days or especially on Mondays….

First things first…

I love my parents very much, in some ways, older ways; much more.

I don’t know them anymore….and it breaks my heart to no end.

We don’t talk to each other…

I can’t remember what my Dad’s voice sounds like, or my mom’s….

I never thought it’d all turn out this way.

Life sux sometimes….

Well, anywho, my Dads been dead since 2001….So he has a good reason to not call.

I still think about calling him on the weekends, but then I remember…..he’s not here, anymore.

I can’t picture my dad as ash or dust.

He drops into my dreams now and again….

It’s always good to see him.

I don’t know where my mom is.

I know she is alive., that’s it.

Maybe we’re afraid to hear each others voice….

How sad is that…?

You’ll see this is a prevalent “thing” with most of my family, direct relations or extended kin.

It’s understood, albeit in a quiet manner, that we all love each other and are “thought” of daily.

Evidently we don’t need constant contact, and generally ignore each other…at least that’s my end of the stick.

I hate this fact.

I wish that we could be having family reunions, know all the names of the 4^th cousins twice removed and be all up in each other’s business but knowing that whenever one of us got thrown in jail or needed a kidney transplant, all we had to do was call….

The older you get, the more you realize that this is bogus; the whole “We’re related, but not relative to one another….

You need family always… it’s all we have…some of us.

Hmmph…hindsight….

The ones of you that have close family….

Cherish them….

Some poor souls don’t have a loving, nurturing family.

I have my wife, Sheila and my step-daughter Lacy.

My little circle.

The “step-daughter” moniker is only a technical designation for Lacy, whom I will officially pronounce, for evermore, as occupying “daughter” status.

Congratulations, Lacy; you’ve made the big time!

When you get a cell phone after your 25 year grounding is completed, I will make you speed dial # 4 on my phone.

I’m so forgiving and loving it makes me sick!

Despite the fact that Lacy is almost 15 years old now and is the only true threat to my sobriety, I love her dookie licking butt!

I wish I had 6 more just like her…

Oops….there goes the alarm for my medication…..

I thought I was feeling overly magnanimous and delusional there for a second.

Anywho…Back to my past (Get it?)

I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi on September 5th, 1964 on Keesler AFB.

I don’t remember much about it though, I was still young…

I don’t even know how long I was in Mississippi with my parents.

My mom never told me and I don’t remember asking.

My dad was an USAF airman that was working with the early radar systems and my mom was just a little Cajun girl.

She was born in Sulphur, Louisiana on October 10th, 1947.; so that means, she was almost 17 when I was hatched.

My dad always told me they found me by the railroad tracks eating spiders…

I don’t think that’s true about the tracks, I hate spiders….

I’m actually starting to hope he wasn’t lying and that I’m not a genetic descendant of this bunch.

Not much difference between them and spiders, now that I think on it.

But, I look just like a lot of them, not the spiders.

I am much more handsome than most, but the similarities can’t be denied.

Unique….are we.

My dad was born in Edison, Georgia, on May 1, 1942, so he was…what…22 when I was born?

Close enough…..

One thing my dad’s younger siblings and assorted cousins mentioned (when pressed) was that his dad (Pawpaw) was extremely hard on him.

He beat him with boards or fishing poles, practically anything he could grab at the time but, of course, others beg to differ on the severity of these punishments.

Just can’t keep shit straight, can we, when it comes to family skeletons?

It was a different time then; people didn’t get involved in parental discipline of their children; especially in the deep dark south.

It just wasn’t done…

Probably these days, with cell phone cameras and YouTube, my Pawpaw would be doing 5 to 10 at the state work farm for child abuse.

My dad, the younger, was skinny with a square head.

Good looking dude nonetheless, but in his adulthood he stood 6’2” and might have weighed 150lbs in a heavy sweater.

He was the secretary of his FFA group that went to the Kansas City Convention and the 1959 Florida State horseshoe champ.

He played his best horseshoes when he was drunk.

He was an intense competitor (he didn’t care if you were 3 years old or not), and he was a terrible loser.

Terrible….Loser.

Hmmm…it’s hard to use the term “loser” and my Dad in the same sentence.

Let’s just say he didn’t like to have the “lesser points” in a contest or game.

This made it all the sweeter to beat him…

I honestly can’t remember ever doing it or seeing it done…but, I’m sure someone had the pleasure at least once or twice.

The joy of their victory would have been short-lived though. The whole, dodging pool cues, flying horseshoes and verbal onslaughts would have taught them to not to have airs of a celebratory kind.

When my Dad was deep in his cups and drinking liquor, that’s where “BC” lived;

In a dark place.

You didn’t beat BC…at anything, or at least, admit to it….

Not if it killed him….

Granny (his mama), always said she thought, that dad was never the same after he got “those shots” while in Air Force basic training.

I think he went through the training in San Antonio, Texas.

He wanted to go to college for Journalism, but ended up as a pipefitter/welder.

The paths we choose or have chosen for us by fate…. C’est la vie!

I hate fate….absolutely no direction.

My Dad smoked 3 packs a day, drank LOTS of coffee, and was EXTREMELY high strung.

Drinking made him mean…like I said, BC lived in a dark place.

Now that I’m older I realize that my Dad was only a man, a human.

I know he had demons, that he was tortured somehow; but we never had the type of relationship where he could or would share with me, the monsters that crept in his mind.

Lord…I wish I knew then what I know now. Maybe I could have gotten him to talk about it, to help me understand or help him fight through his darkness.

We could have traveled together….

He was, early in my life, (until I fled ‘home’ at 16)…in my opinion and recall, abusive.

Both, mentally and physically…to me, at least.

My siblings Dad was different from mine…but the same guy.

Know what I mean?

He was holier than thou, manipulative, insulting, and had a God complex.

He was extremely intelligent and knew it.

BC did not suffer fools.

He had no use for others he considered “culls”.

He had little patience with anyone over the age of 16… no one more than me.

When you ask my uncle and others, that were in “the know”… ask him/them how I was treated as a kid…his/their faces get very dark; with very few kind things to say about his/their beloved older brother/nephew/cousin.

Dear old dad…

Another thing that baffles some people, not directly related to the family, is that little children adored him.

Little kids worshiped the tall, skinny crazy man…weird.

So did I… Even through all his crazy times, and mine.

For all the bad times, he was still my dad.

He did play pitch with me, took me fishing occasionally, and I remember going hunting with him twice.

We chased stray chickens at the Cagle’s poultry processing plant…

Now that was fun!