Tuesday, August 18, 2009

All I ever wanted for Christmas

First off, I need to say that I did not grow up in any kind of poverty. If fact it was just the opposite. My Father was an Iron Worker. Even a little more rare, he was a college educated Iron Worker, and he was
always in great demand, as the construction industry was booming. It was the years of building the Interstate Road System, The Alaskan Pipeline, and any number of other huge projects being built in the
post Korean War boom.


My Father worked on the first Nuclear Power Plant in the country in Portsmouth Ohio. This is where he met my Mother. He was a young handsome Iron Worker, with a pocket full of money and a love for fast
cars, motorcycles and the good times, and she was a young woman born in Scott's Hollow Kentucky, who had decided that she needed to get out of the "last house in the last hollar" and had moved to Portsmouth, and was working in a beauty shop there.


Somewhere there are some pictures of them out riding horses. He was so handsome, with a wide smile, a straight back, and broad shoulders. You could tell as he sat atop the horse that this was a man whose body was strong, and quick.


My Mom..........well my Mom was beautiful.

It must have been 1950 or so, and I guess Mom was one to be on the cutting edge of fashion, because she had on one of the sweaters that seem to be associated with the time, and she was as they say .... BUILT. There were other pictures of them laughing, and always smiling.


In later years when I would see those pictures the thing that seemed so very out of place were their smiles. I don't recall the smiles when I was growing up. Oh they would smile individually, but the smiles 
between them as a couple must have stopped by the time my memory began. Still....looking at the pictures....I'm sure that there was a time when they must have been in love, or lust, or something.


Dad had a drinking problem. Later I would come to understand that Dad had always been.....different, even as a teenager, he had always been in trouble as a kid, and by all accounts, had "never been the same since he came back from the war". That would be World War Two. Dad had already ruined one short marriage before he married my Mom. It seemed he drank too much.


As the year went by Dads drinking too much would come to dominate all of our lives and just about anyone he ever came in contact with. As I was growing up, I always got what I wanted for Christmas. One year I got the John Deere pedal tractor I wanted. Back then those pedal car type toys were made of steel, and if you were not careful, you could drive half way thru a sheetrock wall if you built up enough 
speed. I got a nice tricycle one year, and there was also the year that I got the "Cisco Kid" Cowboy outfit. It came with a Cowboy Hat, a vest, some chaps, and a holster with two of the shiniest chrome pistols I have ever seen. This set up the critical decision of whether one should wear his pistols in the regular way with the pistol grips facing rearward, or if you should wear them facing forward, so you would have to cross your arms when you drew your guns in a shootout. I opted for the latter because it was "neat". I later embarrassed myself showing the outfit off to the relatives at my Aunt Sammy's house. Seems nobody had informed me that you were supposed to wear PANTS under your chaps!!!!!!!!
Now it's going to bother me which TV Cowboy wore his guns backwards like that?


I even had a BB Gun. I don't recall if it was a Red Rider or not, and I never "shot my eye out" but I can tell you a used to buy my BB's in bulk. I really was not sure that "shooting an eye out" would be all that bad. At the time there was a show on TV called "Have Gun Will Travel" and the guys name was Paladin, and he was a gun for hire. "Have Gun, Will Travel. Wire Paladin San Francisco" was how his card read. I can't recall if he always had one but sometimes he would wear a patch over one eye, as kind of a disguise. I really kind of always wanted an eye patch. Besides, when I was a kid we ALL knew someone who had shot an eye out, or poked an eye out, or something. It was always entertaining if you had a buddy who could do glass eye tricks when things got slow or you wanted to impress a girl.
When I was 8 years old my parents decided to get a divorce. They could not settle on the house that my Dad had spent 3 years building himself, so it was put up for sale, and me and my Mom moved in with my 
Aunt Ethel, Uncle Dick, and my 2 cousins Kenny, and Brucy. Mom didn't want me to have to switch schools in mid year, and we didn't know where we were going to live yet so every morning she would 
drive me back out to the country where our house was so I could catch the bus to school. I guess she could have just as well driven me to school, but back then EVERYBODY rode the bus to school unless you missed the bus, in which case you arrived about the same time as the bus anyhow, but with a few tear stains, and a very sore ass.


I couldn't go in the house because it was locked, because it was up for sale, and there had been such a nasty fight about it, nobody but the Realtor was allowed to go inside it. Now the house Dad built was a nice ranch style, though I don't know if we called them ranch style back then. I think we just called them a 
one story house. The house had a nice 2 1/2 car garage and was connected with a "breezeway" to the house. This breezeway was made of block and this really ugly mustard colored stucco just like the rest of the house, and had a sliding glad window facing the road, but no doors. Just two doorways, one front, and one back, which were kind of staggered so there could be a "breeze" blowing thru. It was winter, and along with the breeze, in the winter a little snow would blow in and pile into a snow drift inside the breezeway. Still, it offered good shelter while I waited for the School Bus to arrive.


When the Driver would toot the air horn twice, I would run down the driveway to get on the bus. After I got on the bus it was my job to ride in the seat right behind the Bus Driver, and when we would pull in front of a stop, I would reach up and pull the cord that blew the air horns so the other kids knew to run down their driveway to get on the bus. That was my job. I don't remember how I got the job, I just know I did it till the last day I rode that bus, and I have had air horns on several of my vans and pick-up trucks over the years, and even today I love to blow the air horns on the big trucks I drive. It's funny where things get started.
So it was Christmas time, and my Parents were locked in a bitter divorce, Mom had been a stay at home Mother, and "now things were going to be different, and we were not going to have much money".


That year all I had asked for was a new 26" Western Flyer bicycle. I had out grown my red 24" Western Flyer bike which was in pretty tough shape from several years of riding the trails in the woods behind the 
house, being dunked in pond where we would see who could go the farthest out before going under, and jumping the ramps that seemed to get progressively taller and taller, until someone drew blood. Besides, Punky McMannis down the road had a 26" bike and he was shorter than me so I was sure it was time for me to move up. Punky's Dad owned his own dump truck, and according to Punky they were rich, and that was why he had one of those Shwinns that has the special rear hub where if your rocked your pedals back just a little it would switch into "2nd" gear....and just ride off, leaving me "in  the dust".

Punky was the guy who taught me how to put playing cards clipped with a clothes pin in my spokes, so it sounded like we had engines. If we were out of cards, we would save our cereal boxes, cut them up into 
rectangles about the size of a playing card, and clip them in. The cardboard from the cereal boxes just never had that crisp sound that a nice fresh "Ace" from a deck of Bicycle Playing Cards had. Later Cousin Kenny and Brucy would show me how to use a balloon tied to each fender bracket and rubbing against the spokes, which made this deep rich sound that we were sure made us go faster. The balloons didn't last as long as the cards but they sounded so good, and when they would wear out they would explode, and we would lock up the rear wheel making a long curving skid mark, yelling "shit...I had a blowout". We could say "shit" out loud when nobody was around, because we were tough guys.


So I had this incredible yearning for this new bike. It was this beautiful two-tone metallic blue trimmed in white, and it had whitewall tires. I was pretty sure I wouldn't get it "because we were getting divorced" 
but that didn't keep me from wanting it badly. At that time Dad would come and get me on every other weekend, and I actually had not seen him in a while because he had missed a couple of weekends.
Mom said it might be because he was working on a job out of town, but I heard her tell Aunt Ethel it was because he was too drunk when he came to get me and she would not let him take me.


More and more I focused on my desire to have that new blue and white 26" Western Flyer, and got lost in how life would be when I was riding down the road on it all shiny, with balloons in both tires. I would add blue and white steamers to the handlebar ends, as well as one of those horns that when you squeezed the black rubber bulb would make oonka-oonka sound. Not the one with the straight horn... that one was pretty high pitched, and was for girls. I would have the one with the horn tube that had a curl in it and a much larger horn opening and a deeper sound...it went honka-honka. It was more for guys than that other one. And a light... it would have a light! It would have that big chrome light.... the one that you had to open up and put in two flashlight batteries. Later I was sure I would get the turn signal set for the rear. It took those little skinny batteries. I wasn't sure where I was going to get them though. Oh... and mud flaps!!!!!! I ALWAYS had mud flaps, with little red reflector in the middle. They didn't come with the reflector, but Dad would let me use his drill, and I would drill a hole with the electric drill, and bolt on the reflector. I guess most folks don't teach their six year-olds to use power tools like they did back then.


So it was the last day of school before Christmas vacation. Mom had driven me to the "old house" so I could catch the bus, I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the "blue bike" was a lost cause.
It was snowing, and was "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey". I learned that from Punky. He said he heard it from the men down where his Dad hung out with his dump truck. I think that's also where we found out just how cold it had to be to be “colder that a Witches tit, on Halloween". All pretty manly stuff, when you are eight. So me and Mom pulled up in front of "the old house" and the driveway was deep in snow because nobody lived there anymore to shovel it out. Two deep tire ruts were running up the driveway, and there sitting right in front of the 2 1/2 cars garage that Dad had built with his 
own hands was a bright red 1960 Chevy Apache pick-up truck. Dad's trucks were always red... bright red, and he always took them to the local Sign Painter and had "Fred" painted on the door just below the window, in letters about 2'' tall. It was always a nice script letter, white with a black drop shadow for accent. It had those little "  “ marks on each end. I wasn't sure what those were for. I don't think we 
learned about the " “ marks yet in school.

Mom said she was afraid she would get stuck in the snow in the drive so she just dropped me off and left. I knew it was because Mom just didn't want to see my Dad. I didn't like the idea of "us being divorced" but Mom had not had a black eye in a while, or covered up any bruises, and now it was Christmas time, and Mom always had some bruises at Christmas when Dad was around. It must have been some kind of a Christmas tradition or something because later in life, my wife would end up with some of her own bruises around the Holidays.


I was ecstatic to see Dad's truck in the driveway, as I had not seen him in a while. I ran up thru the deep snow in the driveway, my book bag in one hand, and my lunch box in the other. As I rounded the corner of the door opening onto the breezeway THERE IT WAS!!!!!!!! There sitting on it's kick stand in the middle of the breezeway, was a shiny new metallic blue with white trim, 26" Western Flyer bicycle! It already had the big chrome headlight AND the blue and white steamers hanging from the ends of the hand grips.
It seemed as though the sun was shining in the breezeway window, and I can't tell you how beautiful that metallic blue bike, with all the chrome, was there with the snow drifted behind it in the breezeway. Then when my eyes focused on the background I saw him. It was my Dad. He was lying down on the cold cement of the breezeway. He had passed out drunk, and the snow had drifted, nearly covering him up.
His tan colored work boots were sticking out. He always wore those tan boots that laced up, and had the kind of cream colored soles. He climbed steel for a living, very high steel, and he said the soles gripped the steel better than leather. His head was not covered with snow, and he still had his hat on. He always wore a ball cap, unless it was something really dress-up, and I learned that the cap sort of acted like a gauge. The more to the side the bill of his has turned.....the drunker he was. It was very reliable. There he was passed out cold in the snow drift, with his hat very much to the side, and this sickening feeling came over me that maybe this time he wasn't just drunk, because he really looked like maybe he was dead in that snow drift.


I remember that all of a sudden.....that's what folks say where I come from in place of suddenly.....so all of a sudden, here I am with the bike of my dreams....and I realized that what I wanted, all I really wanted, all I had ever really, really wanted was for my Dad to be sober, to be sober on Christmas. I wanted him to be sober at school functions, and I didn't want Mom to have any bruises, and I wanted for us to be back in the house that MY dad built with his own two bare hands. I wanted to be inside the 2 1/2 car garage that my Dad built, standing around the pot bellied, wood stove, having Dad teach me how to operate another power tool, or maybe listening to Dad and one of his Iron Worker buddies tell stories. I was sure they had much better stories that the guys that Punky's Dad hung out with down at the dump truck place, and I wanted it all back.


Dad finally came to.....and was kind of pissed because I was crying, and how he had gone to all the trouble to get me this bike and all I could do was cry.......and how I should be grateful, and happy.
That blue metallic bike became what was to be a long list of "escape machines" I would have over the years. I still love bicycles to this day, and love to just ride around and look at how other people live.
I still love just about anything painted blue metallic, and drive a 45 year-old pick-up truck with my name painted on it, though it' a little larger than "Fred" because now I am the Sign Painter, painting stuff 
on other peoples’ doors.


I guess there is just about nothing better than hanging out with my Son OR my Daughter, out in my garage. A few months back we started teaching the Grandkids a little something about power tools, and 
tomorrow when they all come over to my ranch style (one story) house with a "breezeway" we are going to fire up the chainsaw, and cut some firewood. I think a kid should know about chainsaws and drills, and 
loud circular saws, before all they can think of is "gasoline and perfume". They will all be here for Christmas... the two kids, my Son-In-Law, the Grandkids, my X Wife and her Husband (my Husband-In-Law) and if she gets any bruises it's gonna have to be from falling off the chair at Christmas dinner. There will be a few others as well, and some will come and go. My Younger Brother will be here too. He never even got to know our Dad. He never even got the good part from Dad that I was able to get before "he got really bad". Yep tomorrow, and for the last few years we have all gathered up here at my house, and eaten far too much. These days I always get what I always really wanted for Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Did I mention it's been cold enough to freeze the..............well it's been cold.

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"It is better to have people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".