Thoughts on My Dad

Posted on by
Reply

Kiddo’s I will not post much on my dad as he was not a good generator of happy times, and the times I remember, maybe should not be shared here.. But here is one group of thoughts on why the distance between me and him was there….

I was thinking a lot recently about my dad. Not a lot to think about but in many ways it is. Why he was the way he was; abusive and an alcoholic; just very solitary and so very distant.

I was listening to talk shows on the radio the week of Fathers Day and heard a few people talk about their dads and why they were the way they were. I heard one person tell that his dad was a WW2 veteran of the pacific war and the resultant battle with alcohol was most likely due to the fact of what he had been through during that war. I know by reading and watching documentaries on that war that it was horrible to say the least and it cost a lot of families in many ways with post war problems.

I was born a few years following the war and I never really gave it much thought why my dad was so distant to me. The facts were; he liked my older brother a lot more than me cause to him I always seemed to appear as the baby of the family. I was nine years behind my brother and I guess that made me seem to be the baby. I didn’t like hunting as my older brother did so the distance between my dad and me was always wide.

It was the drinking I hated the most, all the way up to the year he died, when he drank, he became loud and abusive to anyone who was around him if he felt the need to. Most of the time it was verbal abusiveness, but there were a few moments of pure hell I have branded in my soul where the abusive fits went physical against my mom, and me, but the ones concerning me were quickly erased in my memory as walking nightmares that I chalked it all up to his anger at my existence and the perceived threat I was to him.

So why the drinking? Maybe it was the war. Maybe he had issues far beyond anything my pathetic self could imagine. He never spoke of the war at all, except once when I was 11 or 12. I had been sneaking around in a hope chest, not looking for anything special when I stumbled upon a large envelope of black and white photographs. They had been taken at Quatta Canal, in the south Pacific, in fact it was one of the bloodiest battles of the war and he been there, a sailor in the Navy. What did he do? Did he fight? Did he kill? Was he shot at? He never told me, and I expect he never wanted to tell me for whatever reason. But these pictures I saw were of two main groups of images, one were numerous photos of naked women, and the other were photos of dead Japanese soldiers, horrible images of death; hey made me ill looking at them, but I was interested in the naked women images, and some how he found out I had seen them, as I did ask my mom about the images of the dead soldiers. After threatening to beat my ass if I ever looked at his war photos again, that one solitary moment of war talk was all we ever had in the 40 years of my life that he lived.

Now that I am as old as I am, I wished we had talked more back then about a lot of things, the war being one of them but, he was a hard man to talk to when he was drinking, and there just wasn’t much time he wasn’t drinking.

Did he drink because of the war, as so many had done because of the horrors they all had to go through? Did the war cause him to be so anti social; so much so he had no life outside the home except for work and the bottle?

I just hate it that I didn’t get a chance to find out what horror was eating away at him, or maybe I did, but I just didn’t take advantage of the chances before me to communicate and instead built my own walls around me as he did, like father, like son, except for the drinking…

Remembering 9/11

Posted on by
Reply

Remembering……

As a kid growing up, I watched way too much news on TV and listened to way too much news casts on the radio. Strange kid to be sure but, I was one who always knew of current events, and what they meant to me generally and to some extent the world as a whole. I took what I heard to heart a lot of times…..I remember the first time I was really scared of something outside of my close confined little world I lived in. I watched the news tell of a president who stood up to evil, and demanded that our country would be allowed to live in our half of the world at peace without the evils missiles being just under a hundred miles off our southern border. For two or three days, I can’t remember exact phrases, but, these two heads of state butted words and threats of real time annihilation, and destruction of our tiny world because one wanted to invade, and one wanted to keep us safe. We were close to a war that we may not have survived from, in fact not many may have survived this war at all. I was a seventh grade student at Elmore Park, and I realized how scary this all was when we had to do drills of getting under our desks in case of a nuclear attack. Looking back now I wondered why they wanted us to get under our desks, perhaps everywhere a charred piece of wood was located, a charred body would be close by?….Yes I remember the missiles of October, 1962

The very next year that president was assassinated, and it didn’t really matter that he probably saved my butt and most everyone else’s, his life was as fragile as anyone’s…I remember the day he was shot…I was in the eighth grade..1963.

In the years that followed, I have lived moments I will never forget…moments in history, some personal, some not. I remember my moms death when i was 15. I remember fighting a war that not too many people supported, and it seemed we were fighting it just to make the politicians look good. But we fought it. We fought it because our country, no matter how imperfect, is the best there is, anywhere, now, yesterday, or tomorrow.

But in all my many years of moments that affected me, none did like the morning of 9/11/2001. We were working on modifications to a chemical adhesive plant in Memphis near the air port, National Starch and Chemical. I only gave the name cause a good friend of mine, and yours perhaps, Mark Ward, put in a Automatic Security Gate for the plant while we were there doing the modifications to the plant. But we were inside working on the offices when we heard about what was happening and watched a monitor in horror as the second plane struck the second tower. I felt weak, lost for any emotions that could identify what was going on inside my head. And as the towers came crashing down and you knew there were thousands of souls screaming out for a few seconds, the feeling of being laid back with no worries at all flushed right out of my body never to totally return again.

In a matter of just hours, the usually busy skies around the airport, were deathly and somewhat scary in their own empty silence. It was so quiet. It was never quiet down there before, and it was almost like God had stopped the noise for a brief time to let us hear our own hearts beating. The most honest feelings you will ever have, good or bad, come from your own heartbeats.

I knew all the things in my past that had happened, all the fears, all the deaths, all the special, “moments”; were placed well in the back of my minds storage, and that day would be branded forever as the day I witnessed our world change, again…forever…..

Yep..I remember…I will never forget it, nor will I ever let others around me who were not here, or did not see it, or feel it, or fear from it; I only hope they wont forget either. It was the beginning of a new war for our freedom, and survival. It will last a long time.

We should all remember..and never forget what the price of our freedom is worth, and will be demanded from us, to keep this from happening again, or at the very least, be ready the next time its tried!!!!

God Bless America!!!!

Don’t Lose Your Family Ties

Posted on by
Reply

Make sure you do all you can to *not* lose your ties with your family. I have, and it’s something that will go to the grave with me as a mistake I made in my life. Of course I didn’t have to take after my dad as an anti social idiot, but I did.

I never really had a good relationship with my my wife’s family, but since most of them have known me since i was eight, than they totally understand how much of a loser I am viewed as by them.

I was angry when i was *let go* at my last construction job, and the anger made me sever the tie, what little it was to my only other family I had.

In a way I wish I had some of it to do over again, but also in a way I think I may have screwed up even more if I did.

But back to this entry. Keep your family close. Don’t lose sight of the fact they are your family, and no matter what, if allowed to, they will stand by you in a time of need.

Its a lonely world out there if you detach them from your life.

Very lonely……

The Optimists Club’s Junior Citizenship Award

Posted on by
Reply

When you get older, you tend to remember things that happen to you more easily. I guess its partially because you *want* to remember them to bring back memories, good, and and some bad.

I was in the eighth grade at Elmore Park School. I played on the baseball team, and the basketball team; height wasn’t a requirement back then!!!

The school only went to the eight grade so basically I was a senior getting ready for high school. I had been an average student, A’s B’s & C’s and in some eyes I May have been perceived as a teachers pet, but only to a few teachers. But at 13 I thought myself to be an ok student.

So near the end of the year the school always awarded a junior citizenship award. It was an annual award and it focused on one students determination, spirit, dedication, and other things and this teachers pet was awarded the Junior Citizenship Award of 1964 at Elmore Park School in Bartlett.

It was a surprise to me as I really didn’t seek it, I was just being me and it seemed for that, I got the award. I was proud, and felt very good for a total of about 1 hour following the awards assembly at the school. It was only after about an hour that I went back to class and faced the terror of my so called friends and fellow students, some of them were quite good friends. The remarks they made to me were horrendous:

“Why did they give YOU that award?”

“Model Citizen??, every other word out of your mouth is a bad word, always telling bad jokes too, if they only knew you like we do you’d never got that award”

“You have peeing contest in the bathroom, do you think the award givers know that?”

“What about the time you wore your jock strap on the outside of your basketball uniform during practice???”

“…….and tell us all who was the person who brought the playboy to school last month???”


All I remembered for the next few days was how bad all that made me feel. I had really not done anything that most any other 8th grade boy could have done at one time or another. But it was the fact they had made me feel so bad that stuck with me for so long. And it didn’t matter if they were jealous or not, what hurt was, they were supposed to be my friends, some of them my best friends, and fellow students. Forty years later I still can remember the feeling quite easily.

Back in 1964, they called my mom to be there when I got that award. I was surprised by that, and honored by that as well. My alcoholic dad could have cared less but my mom told me that day how proud she was, and those words were a great help in easing the pain caused by my friends making fun of my getting the award. But I will never forget the feeling of my peers saying I didn’t deserve it.

Be careful what you say to others when they get a trophy or awards. Your actions can hurt a lot, or even your non actions can hurt. It doesn’t take much to pat someone on the back and say job well done or I am proud of you. It takes far less effort to snicker and walk away and make them feel bad.

I guess for some, the easy way out is to hide their anger with accusations and threats.

Sad huh? Thank God for loving moms and dads…….

One of These Days

Posted on by
Reply

I feel like crying, so why not add to the feeling the best way I can, by writing about my inabilities to make things happen in a timely manner or even happen at all.

I was such a chicken shit when I became a parent.  I went from being a single, lonely, hate-filled occasional drug user, to a completely responsible parent in less than a few months. I had to create a new world for myself, and for my new family. I *thought* I was ready, but I don’t think anyone would be really ready to change as fast as I had to.

I would boast that I was doing the best I could, but any parent as he or she gets older always looks back and says, I know I could have done better. God only knows how true that really is.

Money was tight, as my managing skills were the lowest form known to mankind. But I spent, and spent on trying to build a world for my new family that they had not had before. I am not sure if it was ever built the way I wanted, nor am I sure of they were dissatisfied or happy.

There was emotion, affection and the routine closeness through the good and bad times. But I don’t think I ever felt I was doing enough. I caught myself saying a most hated phrase when one of my kids asked for something we couldn’t afford; we will get it, or we will do it, “One of These Days”. Many times I knew deep inside those *Days* may not ever come to be,  but it allowed some form of distant hope to be present around us all.

And one day my son had one of his closest friends over and they wanted to go camping or somewhere and I let slip those magical words and went on feeling lousy about  the fact we didn’t have the money, or the wherewithal to accomplish whatever it was the  boys wanted to do, and I overheard them talking that to this day haunts my guts each time I think about it. My sons friend said, “why does your dad always say that?, he is always saying, ‘one of these days’ ”

I know the hurt stems from my childhood. In the years I played baseball, or basketball, or performed at the fair, or played music, he never came; and I didn’t care because if he was around any place but the house, he usually made a fool of us all with the drinking or fighting due to the drinking.  I never felt comfortable or safe around him, but thats another story.  I often wonder if he was just living in his own pain, too  empty to utter the words to me….”One of These Days”, not getting my hopes up cause he knew we would never have special things.

Was I wrong? Was I hiding behind those few words that seem to reflect my failures? Or was I misusing them to instill some kind of false hope for my family?

I guess maybe I’ll find out the answer, or not; One of These Days!

I’m sorry. I truly am!

Time to cry……

Misery

Posted on by
Reply

We had a family reunion at our grandmothers house. I may have been four, but just barely. What I remember about this reunion was, the group picture we took of all the family together. I still have this photo somewhere and its amazing I was ever that young. But there I was sitting with all the other grand kids on the front step of this huge porch in my white shirt and white short little boy pants and the look I had on my face  showed a miserable little kid on the outside. But the reason for that look I’ll never forget. Something was hurting me. Something bad. And i know I should have said something but who was I going to say it too? I mean we are talking about 50 people in that one picture that was very hard to get all those 50 people together at once, and little old me didn’t want to rock the boat and I think I may have said there was a problem to some one but was told to just wait it out and let this picture get taken.

I was in mortal pain now. They were trying hard to get us kids to all sit down on the bottom concrete step and there I was the first kid on the left looking like someone had shot him. I was wishing that would have happened for sure just to put me out of my misery.

At 4 years old the very last thing you have on your mind is anything to do with between your legs. I mean you know its there, and you know what’s its there for but to acknowledge it in any way at 4 years old was taboo, or unheard of right? But friends, mine was hurting bad.  At least if I need to go use the bathroom Id know what the pain was but I didn’t. There was just a hurt I couldn’t explain and never had before and it was centered on my, groin area. So I sat there with a sheer look of horror waiting on the photographer, wishing either he or I would die and this pain would be over with.

The picture was taken and I started crying and my ever loving Mom ask me what was wrong and I told her she needed to take me to the bathroom immediately, and I am sure she thought I was soiling my clothes and to the bathroom we went. At 4 years old I was not very tall so I stood on the toilet as my mom removed my pants and underwear to reveal the source of the pain. I can remember looking down fearing the worse only to see this rather large ant stuck to the end of my; area. I am not sure if it was having a feast or not but all I know was mom the ever present doctor/saviour removed the ant before I had the chance to pass out. It was over and I didn’t want anyone to know what happened.

I could just hear all the relatives going: “little Danny had an ant stuck to his….”. Its amazing I cant remember anything else about that day but from then on I didn’t want anything stuck to my…..

Prissy

Posted on by
Reply

About losing!

When I was maybe 6, we had moved into our new house and I had a pet finally. She was a collie, big a beautiful, and she was mine. Her name was Prissy. We had other dogs too. My dad and brother liked to hunt and of course they had beagles, and they were ok but Prissy and me were special. She was as big as me and was my shadow and I hers.

I remember one day specifically she was doing her thing outside running and playing and she was somewhere barking her head off. I found her on one side of the house and I approached her telling her to shut up and get away from whatever she was barking at. I took it immediately as she was barking at a frog, as she had this thing about barking at frogs and chasing them as they hopped away.

I can picture it vividly as I type this, I walked up behind her telling her to shut up and she pushes me back with her large butt. She did this a few moire times and still kept barking until my dad came out to she what was going on.

It wasn’t a frog it was a snake. I don’t know what kind nor did I care. What she had done was protect me from the snake. I will never forget that day as one I learned a lot about the devotion and love an animal can share with its master. My dad killed the snake and all was happy again.

I remember the day she died. It was a night. I was in the kitchen when mom told me she had died. I was hurt and sort of in shock. This wasn’t real. She was my best friend. My dad told me she had been poisoned. I remember remembering that night the day she had kept me from the snake. I was going to miss her.

I never questioned the reason or the cause of her death. But thinking back on it, why would anyone poison my pet? Had something else happened to her they didn’t tell me? I was just 6 years old. What did I need to know anyway?

Mom Pt1

Posted on by
Reply

Mom.

What can I say? You would have liked her. She was a good mother, she had to be strong, she hid so much to make others feel everything was ok.

She always helped me on science projects. She always helped me on everything. And when I had to get braces and was told not to play clarinet anymore she bought me my first guitar. That’s must have been hell for her. But she knew how much I loved music and little did I know she was never going to see me play or perform in public.

I didn’t know she was as sick as she really was. I should have put it all together though. Her many doctor trips, times she spent in the hospital, and me not even knowing what was wrong. Her lifestyle though is what killed her. She came from a family deeply rooted in heart disease and back in the 60′s you have heart failure and you’re dead/ No Defibs, no open-heart, no nothing. So that day in January when I got to sleep in cause we got snowed out at school, she asked me if I wanted to go with her to the hospital to see my aunt. I was too lazy, at 15 all I wanted to do was to sleep in.

I never saw her alive again. Even the fact she had the heart attack while IN a hospital, couldn’t save her. Her death certificate said she dies of ventricular fibrillation. Now a days that is fixed by the defib paddles in every ambulance. In 1966, they weren’t invented yet.

Part of me died that day as well. The part of me that cared. I lost the will to be good in school, and to be happy. And it was going to show for the remainder of my three years in school.

Had I not wanted her to see me play in public so bad I think I would have stopped playing the guitar too, but in a way maybe her death kept me focused enough to do at least something I loved doing, and that was music back then. Without the music I am not sure what would have happened to me. I self destructed as far as school went anyway.

I ended up being chained down so to speak at my brothers house just so someone would make sure Id finish high school. I just didn’t care any more. How I graduated Ill never really fully understand.

Within a few months after her death we played in a talent show at the high school. We came in second and won a trip to the youth talent contest at the mid-south fair. I felt she was watching and would have been proud of me, no, I know she was proud of me.

Death is so, final.

President of the Science Club

Posted on by
Reply

I was dealing with a lot of things. It was early in the 8th grade at Elmore Park Elementary. Puberty had hit hard but we wont get into that right now but I started to gain real interest in things and began to sort out possibly what I may like to do with my life?

One of the things I really was into was science. I had had the various pay things, chemistry sets, electrical sets, but chemistry was really an interest. I watched a lot fo Mr Wizard on TV.

So I felt at 14, I was an expert.

And when the school got a grant in the science dept and somehow, we were shipped a mobile science lab that could be moved from class to class, who do you think volunteered to help un-crate it, sort it out and set it up?

Mr Science Himself!!!

There were three things that took up most my day full of dreaming and doing, one was playing my guitar, two was thinking about girls and why I had this insatiable thirst for that kind of knowledge, and three, was being the next Mr Wizard.

I was in science heaven. All the toys I had seen in those weekly TV shows, were now at my finger tips. Test-tubes, beakers, flasks, wait there was a real name for flasks, Erlenmeyer Flask!!

The Elernmeyer I was in a kind of dream state while I unpacked all these dream pieces of equipment thinking to myself, how did I deserve such treatment and what science god was over looking my pathetically pubescent life. But you know what? I didn’t care. I had these new powerfully elegant things to play with at my leisure as I unpacked and sorted out our new science lab.

Of course, having did all the hard work I got to shine in the sun when my science teacher Mr Brooks ask me if I wanted to take it around to the 6th, 7th and 8th grades to show it off and tell them how lucky we all were to have such a fine addition to the science dept.

Its sad that I can not remember her name but she was one of my first attracted-to females and she was in the 6th grade at the time, yes I was two years older but look, I was a junior Mr Wizard, so I not only had the chance to see her smile at me, I could demonstrate how hot a Bunsen burner really got, not only to her but her whole class at the same time and do it all completely surrounded by total innocence. I was a master at diversion.

And so I became to be known not only as a ass kissing science teachers pet, but also as an expert on every minute piece of the mobile science lab of the 6th through 8th grades at my school.

For a short while I was actually looked up to, and even in some small way, admired by some of the most nasty individuals I had learned to hate through the last few years of my pubescent life.

And then it happened. Mr Brooks, whose ass I did kiss periodically if I thought i was losing my high standing ground, came up with the brilliant idea to carry this whole process to the next level, Why not have a Science Club? A meeting once every two weeks on Saturday’s to talk about, and to actually *do* science experiments with all the neat toys; actually all *my* neat toys, he meant to say. I was the Kid Wizard, wasn’t *I* supposed to decide on what happened to all those toys?

Sure it was, and so fate dealt me the hand I needed, *Power*. Power beyond all expectations. A position of power. My first ever position of power in my life….

I was chosen to be the President of The Science Club.

I had braces that looked like a network of transmissions lines going into a power plant, I was stumbling daily over my own two clumsy feet from having to deal with puberty ravaging my sanity and balance, and here I was, the first ever President of the Science Club!

The power was awesome. I felt like I had something others wanted, instead of the other way around. It was good and it was headed for the ultimate high, our first ever science club meeting.

The first meeting was to be a closer look at the mobile lab and its toys; (a good president delegates for the common good) and to possibly have time for one real time experiment on using the labs potential for an actual demonstration.

I was not really prepared for this but as young Mr Wizard, I knew I could come up with something that would send them all home in awe as to what they had just witnessed.

I had seen Mr Wizard do an experiment of the distillation process. It seemed easy enough, and I knew I had all the materials needed. It wasn’t to practical in a hurried up setup but it looked impressive and as your president, looks were everything right?

So I proceeded to set it up with help and explained as best as I could pull the BS out of my mind how this was going to work.

You were going to heat up the liquid in the large beaker to almost a boiling point and watch as the steam it produced was distilled into a purified liquid which collected in another beaker.

All eyes were glued to the beaker as it heated up. The sides of the beaker sweated with as much wetness as my underarms were, and I only hoped the masses present would not feel as uneasy as I was feeling. The temperature continued to rise, the distillation tube was starting to sweat too and droplets of the distilled water started to form. I had ohhhhhs and ahhhhhs coming from around the mobile lab table, this was the pinnacle of my short lived presidency, I was truly *the* kid wizard, the presidential kid wizard. And then in slow motion, like a dream you really want to not wake up from it happened…..

The larger beaker being heated to almost the boiling point exploded, and the experiment was over, and so was my presidency, and so was my future as kid wizard, and in less than a split second I went from a science god to, well I went back to my self rather quickly.

I had heated a glass object, that was probably not supposed to be heated. Had I done it too quickly? Whatever the problem was it really did not matter anymore. I was completely humiliated, and following the massive clean up of broken glass and water soaked materials, that was the last day I was a member of the science club.

Funny thing tho, I don’t even remember what happened to the science club or the mobile lab after that day. I Went back to being myself again, confused with my ever changing body, struggling with what I was going to become now that science was not to be my goal in life, and wishing I had not been born.

But I had my music, and I had my dreams. The broken beaker could not take those from me.

About God Pt-II

Posted on by

All of us needs to be told we are loved, we are cared for, and we will be taken care of when bad things happen. It is the way life should be structured. To me, it is God’s way.

Ok, having said that, all we have to do is look around us and in short time, we will see that my vision of “God’s Way” just ain’t happening to everyone. And I know you will ask yourself time and time again, why. It is simply two rules that are applied here. “We” are not perfect, and I hate to say this but “God” is not perfect.

Now before you condemn me to fire and brimstone let me try and explain. If God was perfect, and he was an all powerful entity, capable of all things good, then why do bad things happen? They happen because people are not all good, and as a member of mankind, we will look at ourselves many times over and ask the ever present question, how come I didn’t do something to prevent this from happening. Let me clue you in on something, you missed the golden opportunity because simply you are limited, not perfect, i.e., *normal* Does that make you bad? Nope, it makes you a being that can learn from mistakes, especially if you want top make things better the next time around.

But Danny, you said God was not perfect, how can you say that? I can say it when I read about hunger and starvation, floods, disasters, plane crashes, and hatred. Some of these things are preventable, but too often most are not. Could God have prevented a plane crash? If you answer yes, then why didn’t he? Could God have prevented the earthquake that caused the tsunami that killed so many innocent people?, If you answered yes, then why did he allow that to happen?

Its simple; in his device wisdom, and his power to influence our existence and survival, he simply is restrained by the same things we are. He has limitations. He has to have, or we would all be one with each other and their world and others perhaps would never be able to exist. There would be no competition, no striving to be the best, we would all be the same.

The power of God. I like to refer it to, “God’s Power”. The way I believe it is this; At birth, which to me is the ultimate miracle of mankind’s ability to create miracles, but at birth, each of us is give two gifts. These gifts are placed in our soul in the only real spiritual moment in time we will ever experience on our own, the gifts: are compassion, and hatred, good, or evil. And those two gifts are branded in our very souls at birth. They are as equal as two raindrops, or two tears. They are the building blocks of our life. They are the only building blocks that allows each of us to grow, and become whatever we want. We cant do it alone, we have to be taught, we have to be instructed, and we have to be allowed to develop and be charged if we develop incorrectly, or praised if we move forward in the right direction.

Good & Evil.

So God has no control over the plane crash that kills men women and kids of all races, and religious beliefs. In one instant they are removed from this earth by fate?, no by the limitations that life also gives us along the roads we travel down. But the fact God had no control of the crash, his power steps up so prevalent following the crash. God’s true power is in the compassion of others at such a horrible time in their life. Loved one lost, hope shattered, careers vanished. And usually at this time, people step up and share, and support, and show us all what the true meaning of God’s power really is. Compassion.

God’s power is alive so much around us, in the teachers that teach us all, in the parents that love and protect their kids and in the wisdom of those who have seen the edge of hell, and was able to return to help guide many others away from that same destination.

And all of this comes from just a single moment in time at birth, when something or maybe, someone, gives us those two qualities, good and evil. Perhaps the power of God is so richly displayed at no other time than at birth.

Hold the new baby in your arms and I bet you will feel it too. But do this, NEVER forget that feeling, and God’s power wil never be out of reach for you.