Seventy Years...

My Dad, Schofield Barracks ca. 1941

Apples And Trees

My mother once told me the difference between faith and knowledge was that she had knowledge I was hers, Pop had faith that I was his.

Nothing like a little boost in your faith, huh? I'm 17 years older than he was when that picture was taken. Still...

Mama San

Happy birthday Ma! I love and miss you. I promise I'll try to make it home for a visit soon.

I've written a lot about my mom over the last few years. She's pretty damn special.

I really don't know what else to say.

So, I leave you with what I've said in the past, here and here and here.

The Call

Seventeen years ago today I was at work early in the morning, stocking shelves in the grocery store. It was maybe 6am. We were (as stockers do) talking shit and telling bad jokes.

The manager paged me that I had a phone call. I said, and I quote, "Who the fuck is calling me at work this time of the morning?" I'll never forget saying those words.

It was my oldest sister. I don't remember how she addressed me. She usually says "Hey, Hon" though. What I do remember was that she said "Daddy's gone." Just like that. Daddy's gone.

I don't know if I said it out loud, but I know I thought it... I thought "Gone where?"

You see, to me my father was immortal. In the back of my head I knew he was in his 70's, but he was bigger than I was. I was a bad ass in those days, but he was stronger than I was. I had no doubt he was tougher than I was. He shot better than I did. He drove better than I did. He told a better story than I did. Plus, my mother loved him.

I mumbled something about being home as soon as I could and hung up. I told my boss what had happened, walked to the end of the isle the guys were on and waved, then I drove to my apartment.

I packed as quickly as I could, called my friend Margi to feed my fish and hit the highway home.

Home was an hour away from where I lived. I remember turning off the radio... Something I never did. I live by my music. I didn't cry. Not then. Not that weekend. Maybe not that year. I cried later. Much later, when I realized he was gone and I'd never be as good as he was.

I vaguely remember talking to the funeral director, Mr. Garrett, with my siblings. Mr Garrett looked sort of like he had been around the dead so long some of it had rubbed off on him. He sat behind a huge mahogany desk wearing a light blue seersucker suit and gave us (the bereaved) some pricing. I remember almost none of that.

The only thing I remember insisting upon was that they bury him with shoes on. I felt and still feel very strongly about that. (When I die, I hope someone remembers that. I don't want to be stuck walking through eternity barefoot.) Ma picked the suit... I insisted on shoes.

We put my dad in the ground the next day. It was fast I know, but we had to. My mother's birthday is the 23rd. My grandmother died on August 21st in 1976. That funeral was on Ma's birthday. My brothers and sisters were determined not to do the same with her husband.

I refused to view the body. The man in the box wasn't my father. My father was somewhere carrying a hoe or a hammer or a shotgun. My father was somewhere in the sunshine doing something to raise a sweat. In my mind he still is.

The Dog Father

I've posted about my father a couple of times. This Father's Day I'll tell you what comes to mind when I think of my Pop.

Winston cigarettes. The red and white pack that was always present in his shirt pocket. No lighter, there was always a matchbook tucked inside the celophane. He quit smoking after Ma found out she had cancer, but I still remember. None of his kids smoke except me, and that's just the occaisional cigar.

The big blue and white Chevy Scottsdale pickup truck. The truck before that was a blue and white Chevy too. The blue vinyl interior that smelled of dirt and rust and sweat and nicotine. The two gun rack in the back window, and the white cross-bed toolbox behind the cab.

Pumpkins. Most years we would plant an acre or so of pumpkins and sell them in the yard before Halloween. He always did most of the work, but let me keep all the money. Watching him in the yard was how I learned to sell, he was a master. The year he passed away I had moved away from home and he still did the pumpkin thing. After he died I loaded all those pumpkins up in the big trailer, hooked up to the old blue truck, hauled them an hour away to Greenville and sold 'em to the local grocery stores there. I haven't grown nor carved a pumpkin since.

That's pretty much it. There are a lot of little memories: Change and keys on the end of the table, yelling out the window at the dogs to keep quiet, a 6oz Coke and M&M's at the country store, but those are the big things that I really associate with him... I guess I always will.

Happy Father's Day Pop. I miss you.

We all do.

Remember The Men

Respect the sacrifice.

My father, Saipan ca. 1944

(click the pic)

UPDATE:

My brother tells about this picture in comments.

Happy Birthday Ma!

This is my mother (on the right) and one of her friends when they were teenagers (I think). Ma didn't grow up with a lot, but she never remembers being without (she says). Grandpa lost most everything in durring the depression, and died pretty young. Grandma lived with her old maid sister, my mother and her 4 sisters and little brother.

She grew up in Murfreesboro, NC and Mapleton, a township of Murfreesboro. She and my Aunt Frances took me to see the falling down old house where they lived in Mapleton when I was little. All I really remember about the trip was we got stuck, pulled out by a tractor and I spilled my bubble stuff in the dirt.

She worked for a while and as a book keeper in Virginia, taking the train back and forth home for the weekend and later for the phone company in Ahoskie.

After Pop came home from the war his father made him go see her in the hospital (appendix? I don't remember), and soon after they started dating.

I suppose that you could say the rest is history...

Decoration Day

34th Combat Engineers ca. 1941

My father's unit

Pray for our troops every day, not just today.

Happy Mother's Day

...to all the mothers out there... (Not you 'Neck) Especially my own.

Ma, I got you a present from here, but I forgot to send it. I'll try to drop it in the mail tomorrow. I love you. make sure my oldest brother spends lots of money on you. Remember, he still wants to be the favorite.

Where I Come From

Happy birthday Pop. Happy Mother's Day early Ma.

Mama Tried

I came along late in life for my mother. She had a married daughter (with a child of her own) and a son in the Air Force already out of the house, a teenager and a six year old. I came screaming into the world about three days before her 45th birthday. That's gotta be rough on anyone. A lot of people have said that having a child to chase at that age kept her young. I wonder that I didn't make her really old really quickly.
Actually Ma had been an acting mother for a lot longer than our family. Her father died when she was young, and she helped raise and take care her siblings. She told them stories, and took care of them. Even after she was married, she and Pop helped them out.
On top of everything else she was a teacher and motherfigure to a lot of other children.
I can't even pretend that I was a perfect child... I was lazy about schoolwork. I procrastinated, I still do. I would look for the easy way out. I still do. I am a thinker, but I never seem to think things all the way through. Ma has bailed me out of multiple jams, more than I care to think about.
I don't know if she ever had to do the same for my brothers and sisters... Don't care, truth be told. Everybody needs a helping hand sometimes. I just know what she did for me. I never seem to learn. I also know how lucky I've been to have what I have.
Happy Birthday, Ma. It's not enough to pay you back. It's never enough. It'll never be enough. Just know I love you, and I know how much you tried. I promise I'll keep trying too.

Father Time

My Father was born May 9th, 1919. Raised on a farm in Menola, NC (don't look for it on a map, it's a small area in the middle of Ahoskie, Woodland and Murfreesboro), he was next to the youngest of 10 kids. He spent 4 years in the south pacific as a combat engineer during WWII. He came back married my Ma and had 5 kids himself (well, not himself... that would be wierd). Ma used to tell me the difference between faith and knowledge was that she knew I was hers, Pop had faith I was his... But, all you have to do is look at pictures of him and me at the same ages and you can tell. He taught me gun safety, and how to shoot, hunt and fish. Oddly enough I don't think I ever played catch with Pops. He taught me how to swing a hammer and a hoe, but not a bat. He taught me how to light a fire, split wood, drive a truck, drive a tractor, plant a garden, pick vegetables... Well, in essence, how to work. I hate to work. I am actually fairly lazy. You'ld never know by the way I work 60-80 hours every week, but I am. Pops always found something for me to do. He was always in the middle of some project or another, and I got roped in more than I care to think about. I am a consumate jack-of-all-trades because of that. All of my siblings are, every one. Build stuff, fix stuff, break stuff way beyond repair rather than admit we can't fix it...
He knew everybody. Everywhere we went someone knew "Mr. Bud". I couldn't get away with a damn thing as a kid. I always got ratted out by someone who knew my Pop. Well, thats not strictly true. I did avoid a night in lock-up once because his cousin was the magistrate on duty. (ignore that Ma) But it was damn hard to do bad stuff and not get punished.
He was respected throughout our community. He was always asked for help and advice. He was steadfast and reliable, always there when he was needed. He always had a story or a joke (something else we all inherited).
I was just twenty-two when he died. I was still pretty dumb back then. I wish I could talk to him now... Let him know that I finally grew up... Some. The older I get, the wiser my Father was. I wish I was too.

Veteran

Here is a picture of a young eastern North Carolina farmboy. His 10th grade picture, 16 years old. Six years later he would be present at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Just a young Army grunt, he would drive an AV fuel truck through a military base full of exploding bombs, dying men, crashing planes and sinking ships trying to get our fighters off the ground to combat the enemy.
He would fight island to island through the jungles and swamps of the South Pacific theater for the next four years. As a combat engineer he would build landing strips and roads within rifle and mortar range of the enemy. His friends would be killed and wounded. He would learn to fight to survive. He would do things no young country boy should have to.
He (several times) told me he was only scared once... "That was when they bombed Pearl Harbor, I got over it as soon as I got home in '45"
He came home, he got married, he had five kids... Good kids. He farmed, he had a civil service job, he hunted and fished, gardened and led a good life. If you had asked him, I'm sure he would have denied being a hero. He did what was necessary, what was asked of him. He was only one of thousands, millions of Americans who did what they had to do... He was my father.

Mother Mary

Happy Birthday Ma!

My Mother was born before the Depression, and married my dad after he came back from the South Pacific and WWII. She raised five pretty good kids of her own, and God only knows how many of other peoples. My house was where everyone ended up. Some of my earliest memories were of an overflowing dinner table. My youngest brother's friends, my youngest sister's friends, my friends... and my oldest brother and sister had already moved out before I was born.
A voracious reader, and a plethora of knowledge, I got my love of books from her. She was a Sunday School teacher for a lot of years, so she taught and is loved by several generations of our small community.
She turned 45 on the day she brought me home from the hospital, a time when most moms were getting done raising kids she had me. She already had one grandson and added a wild child of her own.
I have to say I was probably pretty rough on her, not being much for looking before leaping and I am by far the family leader in scrapes, scars, bruises, and general mayhem.


So, Happy Birthday Ma, I hope it's a good one. Thank you for taking me to see Star Wars in the theater. Thank you for letting me do what I had to do without too many I told you sos. Thanks for letting me come home whenever my world fell apart... even when it was my fault. Thank you for being understanding, even when you didn't understand. Thank you for remembering all my good traits without going on too much about all my bad ones. Thank you and Happy Birthday. I love and miss you.