I remember my father being funny, good-looking, serious, and faulty. I remember the time he bought Daisy BB Guns for my brother Rob and I. He proceeded to take us to a small creek off of state road 103 to teach us how to use them: pointing them in a safe direction, how to load them and fire them, and how to aim properly. After he showed us this, he threw an old soda can into the creek, let it drift a little then fired his own BB gun, hitting the can. Afterwards he threw more cans into the creek, gave us each a handful of BBs and told us to “blast the hell out of ‘em boys!” We did that for hours with the sun shining on our little faces, the bubbling of the creek a soundtrack to a summer day, and the small tink-tink sound of BBs when Rob and I would hit a can - immediately followed by my Dad’s cheers as if we were Marine sharpshooters like he was.
I remember my father as a fisherman –a pro amateur with rod and reel, baiting a hook seamlessly, and casting a perfect line into lakes that seemed daunting. I remember how he taught Rob and I to bait the hooks – our hands slipping over the worms, and baiting ourselves , while his own fishing pole bounced all over from a fish taking the hook and running like mad. Rob and I would scream aloud with excitement as he would calmly finish baiting our hooks while the pole went crazy. “I’ll get ‘er in a few, just calm down,” he would order. Soon he would have our line casted, with Rob and I staring in amazement as he would yank his fishing pole with a quick jerk and begin to reel his catch in.
He always seemed to catch more fish than we did though. I guess it’s because Rob and I would always want to yank our own lines out of the water after a few minutes of casting. Daddy used to get so mad at us at times – “dammit boys! Leave the poles in the water! You won’t catch a thing if they can’t at least smell the damn worms!” We chose to reel our lines in any way as we figured that we needed the practice, we explained. “Uh-huh” he would reply as he clacked his tongue and rolled his big brown eyes towards heaven.
I remember my father catching me drunk for the first time. I tried to hide the red-eyes and walked as straight as I could. It didn’t work. As I came in through the door, smelling like 2 six packs of Coors, I strolled right past him as he nodded to me and told me goodnight. Thinking I was free and clear of the cop in the recliner, I took to bed as quick as I could with my head swimming faster than Mark Spitz. After about 6 hours of sleep, 6am to be precise, I felt a foot in my side and my mattress tumbled over. “Jesus H.! What the hell Dad!?”, I exclaimed, still reeling and reeking from the previous night. “Get up boy! We got work to do shit-bag!”, he retorted with a deep gravelly voice. “Drop your cock and grab your socks son! Move!” he ordered. Of course I moved at a snail’s pace as I got on some shorts and a t-shirt. I went out to the living room and looked at my smiling father. He pointed to a bucket and long-brush at his feet. “See that boy? YOU are gonna wash the outside of this here house and then we can go fix some wiring under the house! Thought I didn’t notice ya stumble in last night huh?!” I moaned and groaned as I began my task, still feeling very hung-over. Smoking a cigarette on the porch, gazing at me and smiling at me every time I looked at him, I scrubbed the house in the hot Florida sun. Suddenly, I decided I had enough of this task, and I broke the scrub brush. SNAP! The sound was music to my ears as I turned to my father and held up the brush. Thinking I had out-smarted the old man I dumped the water out of the bucket and sauntered up the porch. My father, without saying a word, met me with a tooth-brush. “Here ya go son!” , he said, placing a small tooth-brush in my hand. “Get to scrubbin’ Leroy!”, he exclaimed, as he sipped cool iced-tea. Needless to say I didn’t drink again until I was 18 years old, but I did scrub the hell out of that house and had a nice sun-tan that summer.
I remember Daddy, when he had no patience. Fishing and shooting aside, he always felt he needed “it” now. It didn’t matter what the “it” was, he just wanted it NOW. The fact that something took time did not matter, nor did personal plans. If it didn’t fit into his wanting something, then he disregarded those who were unable to help. This always aggravated me and a hell of a lot of other people too. And of course saying “No” didn’t work either. There was no easy way to tame my father and his seemingly endless selfishness that was a part of his makeup. It just came with the package.
I remember my father, when he was younger, being unaffectionate to me and my brother. My sister was the only one who received the affections a child craves. It wasn’t until later years that my father learned how to hug me, how to tell me he loved me, and to teach me that men do in fact, cry. It wasn’t until my father had gone through therapy that he began to open up to his children. It wasn’t until his first heart attack that he realized that time is short. And it wasn’t until he was 56 years old that he held me tighter than a grizzly bear, telling me life is ok and that things work out in the end. For 33 years of my life I knew my father but I didn’t know him. The last 2 years of his life, Daddy was more of a father to me than he ever had been.
In the end my father taught me how to love a wife, to care for his children through sage-like advice and his own mistakes, how to provide for a family and how to handle the hardest of tasks. In the end my father was a complex man that many people who knew him, did not completely know him. A lot of times Daddy pushed people away and was pushed away, and many of us never saw the whole person that my father was. And to that end it was our disadvantage.
At the end of my father’s life, as he was passing away with my sister next to him, he kept asking “Am I home yet? Am I Home yet?” . I truly think Daddy is home.
After Dad passed, as my sister and I went through some of his notes from Bible study, we came across a journal of sorts. In it, we found this:
“I feel as all I do is take from God..and I don’t seem to have a task for God. What is my job for God? What is my ministry?”
