Monthly Archives: September 2010

Sep21

Seriously Embarrassing Moments I

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Really shouldn't be playing FreeCell in church!

A great many people are surprised to learn that I am an ordained minister.  Strange as it may seem to those who know me, I, in fact, possess not one, but two ordinations.

In one of the churches Budge and I attended while courting, and for a long time after our marriage, I was an unpaid associate pastor and technical support. I knew more about computers and A/V technology than anyone else in the 200 member congregation so when tech issues came up, I was in charge of fixing them.

When I first started attending, we sang off the wall songs — literally. We had the lyrics printed on transparencies. During service, a praise team member would place a transparency on an overhead that projected the words onto a side wall of the choir loft. On a good day, the transparency would be the correct song AND in the correct orientation (i.e. not upside down or flipped so the words were mirror written.) In the name of progress, however, the church council decided to ditch the overhead and jump the digital divide by installing a first class media projector on the 50′ ceiling of the sanctuary and connecting this marvel to a computer in the back balcony.

Here my troubles began.

One of the duties of my ministry to the church was to run the PowerPoint presentation of songs that replaced the overhead sheets. I would flip back and forth between songs or between verse and chorus. I don’t know how many of you have ever attended a true Pentecostal service, but  if you go to a service and don’t know the words to the song, hymn, etc . . . don’t fret, you’ll know it just fine by the 17th time you sing it — while standing . . . and clapping.

The new system worked great during regular services. My conundrum came about the initial “First Sunday Night Singing” we used the new projector. Sunday Night Singing, for those who aren’t baptized in the Holy Ghost and Fire, is a once a month Sunday night service devoted to singing. We’d have solos, duets, the Ladies’ Ensemble and the Senior Men’s Quartet. You get the idea. I fixed up a set of slides in the order of the singers with the singer or group’s name. If I found out what they were singing, I’d put that underneath their names.

Because of that design trait, I almost got a double barrel blast of embarrassment because Dee and Kristie Gail were singing that first night. They are sisters from Harlan County Kentucky and universally known as “The Kentucky Sisters;” however, “The Kentucky Sisters” wouldn’t fit on the slide in the 125 point font I preferred so I decided to abbreviate it. As a result, I very nearly shot a slide onto the 15′ x 15′ screen in 8″ high letters that said, “The KY Sisters and ‘He Touched Me'”. It might have given Sister Molly Spell, the eldest member of the church, a heart attack . . . provided she knew what KY stood for besides Kentucky. At 92, I doubt it, but you never know. Anyway, I digress.

The singing was in full swing and I was changing slides every five to fifteen minutes depending on how much “the Spirit fell” during each song. During one of the longer stretches, I discovered the “FREEZE SCREEN” button on the projector remote control. To test it, I shot the projector and cued up the next slide and, sure enough, the monitor changed, but the screen didn’t! I thought I was in Fat City because, to be honest, it gets right boring alone in the balcony just pushing a button every now and again.

So, without another moment’s thought, I froze the screen and pulled up FreeCell — the King of Time Killer Card Games! I was on a roll that night. I’d won seven straight games and was immersed in game number 8 when I learned something about our particular model of Hitachi LCD projector — the “FREEZE SCREEN” function only lasts for 15 minutes at a time. After that, it releases and goes back to showing whatever is on the computer at the time. You haven’t lived until your FreeCell game suddenly appears behind the music pastor and his wife like Moses parting the Red Sea in DeMille’s “Ten Commandments”.

As one, the congregation turned towards the balcony. The shot only lasted MAYBE five seconds, but one can die a lifetime in five seconds. What’s worse, I could hear Sister Molly asking her granddaughter what was going on. Unfortunately, Sister Molly didn’t think her granddaughter had understood the aforementioned question and, being somewhat hard of hearing, she figured everyone else in the world shared her infirmity as well. So, with the church still silently stunned at the intrusion of the Devil’s handiwork into a worship service, and at the hands of the associate pastor no less, what did I hear loudly and clearly, along with most of the town of Fountain Inn a good twelve miles away?

“I SAID, ‘WAS THE YOUNG FELLER WINNIN’ OR NOT?!

The next Sunday, I noticed FreeCell had been deleted.

Love y’all!

Keep those feet clean 🙂

Sep17

They Shall Run and Not be Weary

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Requiescat In Pace, Mi Amo.

As years go, 1995 sucked rocks big time.

My great-grandfather died New Year’s Day. Two of my favorite cousins were killed in a huge car wreck in March. One of my wrestlers was killed in July and while I was on the way home from his visitation, Mama called and told me to go to the hospital where Granny Wham was recovering from a stroke. I broke every speed limit possible getting to Hillcrest thinking the whole time that Granny had died. She hadn’t . . . Papa Wham had. That was enough to send my world reeling, but the year wasn’t over yet.

On this day 15 years ago, my buddy lost her long brutal fight with cancer. She was just shy of turning 20. She was one of the very best friends I ever had and she’s the only woman, besides Mama, that Budge doesn’t mind me having a picture of on my desk. Budge knows what my buddy meant to me. Not many others do because I’ve never told that many people about her.

I met her when I was doing my student teaching in 1993. She was a senior which meant at that time, she was just over three years younger than me. I won’t say we had love at first sight, but we definitely had chemistry at first sight. The crutches made me curious.

She got around on crutches better than I could get around on two legs. Her left leg was gone. Once I got to know her, the story came out. She’d been a first rate cheerleader and volleyball player up until her freshman year of high school.  One day after practice, she had a cramp in her left leg behind her knee. When she sat down on the bleachers to rub it out, she found a knot. The knot didn’t go away in several days. She went to the doctor, the doctor did some tests, and the next thing you know, Jed’s a millionaire and she’s being diagnosed with acute lymphoma.

They took her leg with a saw; her health and hair followed with chemotherapy. None of it ever broke her spirit though. She just threw up and rocked on. That’s how she rolled, as the saying goes today. When I met her, she’d finally gotten a full head of hair back, even though it was short, and she was in full remission.

We started calling and hanging out together. She had a Corvette she drove with hand controls and in those days when I had more courage than sense, she was one of the few drivers who could put me in the floor with terror. She was utterly and finally fearless. She said cancer couldn’t kill her so she wasn’t going to worry about anything else.

I graduated in May; she in June. We met up at the beach and hung out some. She loved the beach. I was over 21 so I kept her hotel room supplied with party lubrication. Yeah, it was illegal. Sue me. We had a great week before I went back to find a teaching job and she went back to get ready for college.

She never made it to college though. She called me two weeks later. I went to see her at the hospital. The cancer was back. In her lungs this time. They took out the offending lung lobe, gave her more chemo and again pronounced her in remission after six months. I called her daily and went to see her every chance I could. One day while we were laughing and cutting up driving around the hills around her home blasting out Skynyrd, Hatchet, and Duane and Gregg,  I even asked her if she’d like to get hitched to a redneck like me. After all, it was obvious we were a perfect match.

I’ll never forget her reply. She reached up and cut the radio off, suddenly all business. She locked eyes with me and said, “I’d love to, but I’m going to die before long and you won’t be able to bear it if we were married. It’s going to be hard enough on you as it is.” I nodded. She turned up “Tuesday’s Gone” and we took off again.

Turns out, she was a prophetess. Less than three months later, I went back to the hospital to see her. It was in the right lung this time, but this time things were different. She wasn’t a minor anymore and she made her own decisions. To the abject horror of her mama, daddy, friends, and me, she announced she had no intention of leaving the world one piece at a time. She was done fighting. She was tired.

I kissed her on the cheek before I left her room that night. It was the last time I saw her alive. In the end, the big C sucked her dry. She weighed less than 50 pounds at the end. Her hospice nurse called me when it was over. My number had a heart around it in her contact book. I heard it was a closed casket funeral. She wanted everyone to remember her as she’d lived, not as she’d died. I went to see her mama and daddy but I didn’t make the funeral. No way I could. Hard to go to a funeral fifty miles away when you can’t get your eyes dry long enough to drive.

I only knew my buddy a little while in the grand scheme of things — barely two full years — but she taught me a hell of a lot in that short time about loving life and what it was to show real courage. On her tombstone is the picture of a soaring eagle and her favorite Bible verse:

“They who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.”

I lost a lot of love in 1995 and love, especially the kind of love I lost, can’t be replaced.

That’s why I love all y’all so much.

Keep those feet clean and remember to live like you were dying!

Sep11

A Bit of Comparative Theology

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Every year around this time, people come down on the terrorists who attacked America 9-11-01, but when it’s all said and done and the politicians stop making speeches and the religious leaders calm down a bit, everyone smiles, pats one another on the back and says, “Well, when you get right down to it, Islam and Christianity aren’t all that different. They are both ‘legitimate ways to God.'”

Sure. Poodles and Pit Bulls are both legitimate breeds of dogs to. The problem lies in the way people judge the merits of various religions — by the behavior of the average adherents.

Radical Fundamentalist Christian

Sitting in an average Southern Baptist church at 11:00 AM on a typical Sunday morning isn’t going to show anyone much in the way of incredible devotion to Christ. That’s pretty much the story at most Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and even Catholic services. These are the faithful Christians sittings in Grandma and Grandpa’s pew just like their mamas and daddies before them.

Most adherents of Islam are much the same way. The worshipers at afternoon prayers and Friday evening services at the vast majority of mosques are good, decent people who are worshiping Allah the way their daddies and mamas taught them growing up.

Radical Fundamentalist Muslim

Standing in the back of these mainstream, typical worship centers, a person would be tempted to wonder what all the fuss between Christians and Muslims is all about; however, NEVER judge the merits of a religion by the behavior of the typical and the mainstream. If you really want to know about the ins and outs of a faith, check out the lunatic fringe, the zealots, THE FUNDAMENTALISTS. This is where the differences between Christianity and Islam become wildly obvious.

In the simplest language possible, Christian Fundamentalists don’t fly fully loaded (fuel, cargo, and passengers) jumbo jets into some of a country’s most iconic buildings and kill three times the population of my hometown — Islamic Fundamentalists do. Yes, nuts like Eric Rudolph blow up abortion clinics and kill people, but the body count remains in the single digits. Some people will say death isn’t a “relative statistic.” Okay, ask 10,000 people in the world who Eric Rudolph is then ask the SAME 10,000 people anywhere in the world who Osama Bin Laden is. Compare numbers. Repeat ad nausem. I’ll bet the farm Binny will come out a long way ahead of Rudy.

Result of Radical Fundamentalist Christianity

Long before September 11th became a day of infamy, I once worked in a textile plant with an awesome Pakistani man named Javeid who was a devout, but not Fundamentalist, Muslim. He and I would have amicable debates about our beliefs. Even though he was harmless as a mouse himself, he’d grown up in the mean sections of Karachi. He knew Radical Islam up close and personal and he made a point with me that all these years later rings just as clearly as ever. He said, “Shannon, one day, Islam will conquer and destroy Christianity for one simple reason. Crazy Christians handle snakes and drink poison, but there aren’t many of them in the world. Crazy Muslims wear dynamite belts and carry AK-47s, and there are entire countries full of them.”

Result of Radical Islamic Fundamentalism

I don’t hate Muslims and I don’t turn a blind eye to the problems of Fundy Christians, but at the end of the day, I’d a lot rather have a member of the Tabernacle of Christ the King Church of God with Signs Following pissed off at me than be on the bad side of a member of a Wahhabi Mosque.

Something to think about while you wash you feet and remember the dead.

Love y’all.

Sep9

Always Right? Really?

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Were you BORN a jackass or did you have to take a class?

Recently, I was at Home Depot at the butt-crack of dawn so I wouldn’t have to deal with a lot of people. In and out in less than ten was the plan. All I needed was a small bag of mulch and soil to replenish Zelda’s habitat. I guess I didn’t come early enough.

This Cadillac driving old fart went in one door and I went in the other, but I ended up behind him in line. He had a folding ladder on a cart and LAST WEEK’S flyer in his hand. The young lady gave him the total at which point he flew into a rage, slammed the aforementioned flyer down on her counter, and began gesticulating wildly at a picture of a ladder similar to the one on his cart while screaming that the ladder was HALF that price!  I felt a familiar feeling creeping up my spine to the part of the brain that evolved when man had to kill big ol’ mammoths to survive. This guy was beginning to look awfully woolly to me.

The cashier tried to reason with the jerk by pointing out the flyer was for the TWO DAY sale that had ended days earlier and the ladder on his cart was NOT the ladder in the flyer anyway. Instead of acknowledging his mistake, Goober screams at her that he knows the flyer is outdated and the ladder isn’t the one advertised but he couldn’t come in during the sale because he was at the beach and now all the ladders in the flyer were gone  so he wanted the more expensive ladder TODAY  for the price in the flyer and he was the customer so he wanted it NOW.

I was just about to tap him on the shoulder and tell him people in Hell want ice water, and offer him a binkie so he’d leave and I could get my turtle’s mulch. Fortunately, a manager had heard the “debate” and asked the whining,  spray-tanned Baby Boomer to come  to the service desk. I paid for my $3.00 mulch, thanked the girl for being so incredibly patient with an obviously mentally deficient person and went on my way.

Driving home, the whole fiasco reminded me of an episode several years ago when I was on a date with Budge, at a eatery in Spartanburg. Our waitress was working the section alone because the other two girls called in “sick” and it was her FIRST night solo after a week of training. I told her to stay calm and not worry about us. Everything’d be alright.

The other patrons had some differences of opinion. One couple was on an early-in-the-relationship date and oblivious to time passing because they had so entranced each other. A family with two children in diapers got up and left without eating once the little ones began a full-scale meltdown. The three other tables didn’t say much.

That left one particular old fart who berated that poor waitress every chance he got. He sent his food back twice and his wife’s back once. His glass was never full enough. On and on and on for nearly two hours. Finally, he and his wife took their bill straight to the manager and began relating a tale of woe. I only caught snatches of the conversation, but the gist was the waitress was incompetent and an idiot to boot and he demanded a complementary meal or he’d “call corporate.”

The manager folded like a cheap lawn chair when a fat man sits in it, comes back to the section and starts apologizing and fussing over everyone and offering free desserts and all sorts of what not. Then she goes in the back where the waitress has just disappeared when the girl returned, she was trying hard to keep from bursting into tears. The manager reappeared and came over to our table and started her spiel about how sorry she was for the poor service, etc, etc.

I put my hand up and said, “Ma’am, sit down please. I need to explain something to you.” She looked funny at me but she complied and I told her what I’ve told several other jackasses in restaurants since then. I said,

“Ma’am, I’m sitting at a nice table with my beloved. In a little bit, that little girl is going to BRING food to me that’ll be hot, delicious, AND four times more than enough for one meal. We just sit her and wait. On the other hand, my daddy ate twenty year old C-Rations unheated and covered with flies and mosquitoes because it’s what he had in Vietnam. Right now, a gang of little boys and girls are scrounging a massive garbage dump outside Guatemala City for rotten fruit, moldy bread, and maybe a few bones with a scrap of green meat on them to eat. Finally, I could take you in my car not ten miles from here to a group under a bridge trying to fix a bit of stew that will be all they’ll eat tonight and most of tomorrow. I don’t want free dessert, I don’t want a complementary meal, and I surely don’t care what that ignorant jackass who just left said. That girl has worked like a galley slave doing the best she could and I guarantee that jerk didn’t even leave her a quarter for a tip. Thankfully, Mama and Granny raised me to be grateful and generous so I’ll make up for his lack of manners.”

You're not the King or Queen of England. Be nice to each other.

I had a lot more money then AND I’d just gotten my paycheck for the month so I laid a $100 bill on the table, told the waitress to keep the change, took Budge by the hand and walked our happy asses to the car.

I’m nothing special, but I do know one thing. Just because someone is serving you in some capacity, you do not have the right to make their life a little piece of Hell. Stick your thumb in your mouth, suck it up, be thankful for what you’ve got, and act like you’ve got some raising. We are all in this together. Some of us are just more blessed or just plain luckier than others.

Keep that in mind this weekend and make sure to keep those feet clean.

Love y’all.

Sep7

Say Hello to Ed the SpEd Kitty

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Ed is one lucky, and very special, cat!

Ed is a new member of our family of furry babies! When we lost Loki to a tumor, Dr. Melanie, our vet, asked me if I would consider adopting a special needs cat. Budge and I had already decided not to adopt any more kittens because kittens generally are easily adoptable, but older cats often don’t find good homes. With that in mind, I met Ed.

He began life as a contented farm cat living outside all the time. Back at the beginning of summer, he disappeared from his home for seven straight days. When he finally managed to drag — literally drag — himself home, he was in bad shape.

Exactly what happened is one of those unanswerable questions. He might have run into a dog, a particularly vicious cat, or some wild animal. Whatever had attacked him left a wound the size of a half-dollar in the left hand side of his neck. By the time he made it home, the wound had become infested with maggots, which actually might have saved him. Since many maggots only eat dead tissue, they kept the wound cleaner and freer of infection than it would have been otherwise. He was still in serious trouble, though.

His owner brought him to Cedar Lake Animal Hospital and told Dr. Melanie to euthanize him. Dr. Melanie is an awesome vet and something about Ed’s demeanor and the look in his eyes made her refuse to kill him. She told the owner Ed was savable and, even though he’d likely have some neurological damage, he’d likely recover. The owner was adamant that she wanted Ed “put down” because she said she, “DIDN’T WANT A RETARDED CAT.” Well, Dr. Melanie is a pretty imposing figure (she’s over 6′ tall and broad-shouldered) and she loves animals so she managed to “persuade” the owner to sign over Ed’s rights to the hospital.

She treated Ed immediately. The major wound was left open to heal from the inside out, which it did quite nicely after about a month. The first week, though, Dr. Melanie thought she might have made a mistake. Ed could scarcely stand up. When he tried to walk, he would wander in circles, and he drooled constantly. After doing all she could do for him, she turned him over to Mrs. Donita, a local lady who does an awesome job fostering injured animals and getting them up and going again. She spent a month working with Ed and he gradually stopped drooling and managed to get around, even if he did have a tendency to “pull to the left” a bit as a car alignment tech might say.

The Monday after Budge returned from her month in Hawaii, we went to get Ed. We brought him home and set him up in the spare bedroom with his own litter box, food, and water station. We wanted him to be able to acclimate to his new settings gradually. He was able to eat, groom, and use his litter box, so I was hopeful. I was really pulling for him anyway since I know what it feels like to be unwanted because of some differences.

Three weeks later, Ed is doing tremendously! His eyes once had markedly different sized pupils, but they have come closer and closer to normal since we took him. He can walk perfectly straight and even run when the mood hits him. He does have a tendency to fall over on his side when he shakes his head, but he pops right back up and keeps on. He’s started playing with the other cats and they have accepted him very well. I still feed him alone, however, because I have one little one who is a serious piggy and will gently move anyone out of the way to take over a food bowl. Also, Ed eats soft food instead of dry and feeding all my boys soft food would quickly deplete our meager budget. Finally, Ed’s a really messy eater. I don’t mind, but it helps keeping the mess confined to one room. He also maintains his own litter box in his room because he is VERY particular about his box.

He’s doing extremely well, but he does have some reminders of his ordeal. His meow and purr are extremely deep and rough because of the damage to his throat. He walks somewhat stiffly with his back legs and even though he can get DOWN from the bed, couch, table, ect, quite easily, he doesn’t yet have the coordination to jump UP to surfaces yet. Then there’s his head tilt. As you can tell in the picture, he has a more or less permanent tilt to his head. It’s always turned about thirty degrees to his left, giving him a somewhat eternally quizzical expression. I find it endearing.

Ed has been through A LOT. What he’s endured would have killed many lesser beings, but he’s still trucking and we are delighted and blessed to have him as part of the family. He’s a survivor and hopefully, he’ll just keep improving more and more each day! Whenever he’s lying on my chest or lap, he has that purr rumbling that Mrs. Donita said sounded like, “a hot rod ’57 Chevy sitting at a stoplight,” I think about all he’s been through and I’m so glad Dr. Melanie thought of us when she needed a permanent home for him. He’s our little special ed Ed.

Love you, and don’t forget those feet, y’all!

Sep4

Happy 6th Decade, Daddy!

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Daddy as a toddler.

As hard as it is for me to believe it, Daddy turns 60 years old today. I’m betting it’s as much a surprise to him as it is to me since I’ve heard him say on more than one occasion that if he’d known he was going to live this long, he’d have taken better care of himself! It’s a mite too late for that now, Daddy.

Country Music Hall of Fame member Waylon Jennings could very well have had Daddy in mind when Waylon sang the words to one of his most famous songs, “Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do sometimes don’t know how to take him. He ain’t wrong; he’s just different but his pride won’t let him do things to make you think he’s right.” A better summary of my father’s general attitude towards life doesn’t exist.

Daddy was born on Labor Day in 1950. Granny had lost my Aunt Judy to death in the hospital two years earlier without ever getting to bring her home. Since Daddy was so healthy and easily delivered, he quickly became the apple of Granny Wham’s eye and he maintained that position for 58 years until she passed away. Daddy was Granny Wham’s heart and pretty much the center of her world. That may seem a wonderful thing, but in many ways, being the center of anyone’s universe is a heavy burden to bear. Granny was so happy to have her bouncing baby boy that early on, she started smothering him with love and attention. It may seem ironic, but a person can be “loved to death” in some senses. That’s a story for another time, though.

Daddy was the typical All-American Baby Boomer boy. He played Termite League baseball for Fountain Inn, roughhoused with the abundance of cousins on Papa Wham’s side of the family, and generally seemed to have a bucolic and idyllic childhood. He and Papa Wham went rabbit hunting together on the few occasions Papa was able to tear himself away from the service station he ran on Main Street and slowly but surely, Daddy grew into a teenager.

Daddy at 18.

When Daddy was 15 and Mama was 13, they met at a local hangout called Curry’s Lake. I don’t know about love at first sight or any tripe like that . . . especially considering what came later . . . but they managed to hit it off well enough to start dating.

Now, as a teen, Daddy had a problem I would later inherit from him — he was a trouble magnet. Some people can fall into a vat of Limburger cheese on a hot July day and still emerge smelling like a sweet spring breeze. Daddy, and later I, had the opposite ability. We could fall into a vat of Chanel #5 and come out smelling like the north end of a south bound skunk. My daddy wasn’t a mean person. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. If he had any fault it was an undying loyalty to his handful of true friends. Loyalty like that, paired with our atrocious luck, can get a body into mischief. It did Daddy.

Something happened when Daddy was 17. The details depend entirely on whom one asks and I’ve asked enough to reach the point of saying “to Hell with it,” because no two stories match, but the outcome remains the same and if you get a hole in your foot, it doesn’t much matter if a nail or a knife caused it. You just know it hurts. To clear things up, Daddy enlisted in the US Army on his 18th birthday. Enlisting in the Army in 1969 meant one thing and one thing only — an all expenses paid “vacation” to the cesspool called Vietnam.

Before Daddy shipped out, however, he or Mama or both had decided that Daddy might get killed and they’d never see each other again, so someone came up with the bright idea for them, 18 and 16 years old respectively, to get married. Looking back, that turned out not such a good idea, but, as I’ve learned over the last many years, you can’t unbreak eggs. Daddy left his young bride and his family on the tarmac at Greenville Airport on Easter Sunday. I’ve been told that Papa Wham, a veteran of three years of awfully bloody fighting in WWII, told Daddy with tears streaming down his checks that  if Daddy said the word, Papa would put him on a plane to Canada and Daddy would be safe from what Papa seemed to sense coming. That’s another one of those unanswerables life tends to throw us now and again.

Daddy didn’t go to Canada. He went to Vietnam and spent 13 muddy, bloody months in the Central Highlands of the I-Corp region of that godforsaken hell hole driving an M48A3 Patton main battle tank or one of the M113 APC variations up and down the rutted pig-trails that passed for roads in Vietnam’s fourth world backwaters. He did his duty and he did it well. He also had to see a lot that 18-19 year old boys weren’t meant to see. Things no one this side of Hell is meant to see. He lost a lot of good friends. I know some of their names, but not many. Daddy seldom speaks of those 13 months. When I was smaller and starry-eyed with the “glory of battle” and tanks and airplanes, I’d ask Daddy questions. His face would get cloudy. I finally gained enough sense to stop asking by the time I was an early teen. Once he thought I was old enough, he told me some things that occurred. Then I knew why he’d never talked about it before.

Daddy returned from Vietnam a drastically changed man. He was home just long enough to see me born January 6, 1971 before he shipped out to West Germany to finish his enlistment. In its own way, Germany in the ’60s had just as much to offer in the way of pitfalls as Vietnam did, but the enemy was even subtler than the VC. In any event, Daddy came home for good in 1972. He and Mama bought a single-wide trailer and set it up on Granny Wham’s home place.

Daddy went to work at Laurens Glass Works. Back then, drinks, pickles, and anything else worth packaging came in GLASS bottles. Daddy made those bottles. To this day, if I see an old Coke or Pepsi bottle, I’ll snatch it up and turn it bottoms up looking for the “L” in the glass that signified that bottle had its birth down in Laurens. Daddy was blue-collar and dependable to perfection. He always paid his bills on time and kept a nice roof over my head. If he had a bit of money left, he’d buy a six-pack of Miller High Life for himself. If money was short, he didn’t. I was small, but the message I got from Daddy was always unsaid but crystal clear — a man takes care of his responsibilities before his pleasures. That’s how he lived his life.

Of course, somewhere along the way, things went south for Mama and Daddy. I could go into details, but this isn’t the time nor the place and in the grand scheme of things, what difference does it really make? Some of it was the ghosts of Vietnam some of it was other things. The long and the short of it is, it was a damn mess. I really think Daddy and Mama both tried to keep me in the dark so I wouldn’t worry, but that’s one of the disadvantages to being precocious. Anyhow, Mama and Daddy parted ways for good in the late 1970s. The divorce was final a little later on. I’ve always hated it happened, but in the end, it’s another one of those unanswerable questions of life.

Daddy started his next stage of life by marrying my stepmom, Teresa. He and she worked together at the glass plant and they seemed to have a lot in common. I didn’t see Daddy as much in those days. It was complicated. Still, I would spend some weekends with them and we always went to Santee-Cooper for a fishing vacation in the summer. I’d spend Christmas Eve with Mama and Daddy would pick me up on Christmas morning to go to Granny and Papa Wham’s house.

I grew up. Daddy and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things as I got older and since we are so much alike in more than just looks, neither one of us was going to give the other one the satisfaction of backing down. Things would have been a lot easier if I’d cared more about having a good relationship with my father and less about being right, but that’s one of those broken eggs it’s a waste of time to cry over. We aren’t as close as it would have been nice to be, but, especially since I married Budge, we don’t fuss much anymore — not that we’ve forgotten how, mind you — but things have changed. Lot of water. Lot of lost opportunities. Lot of missed communication. It’s still a bit of a mess, but it is what it is.

Daddy at 60.

When the Glass Plant shut down, it was a tremendous blow to Daddy. He’d put more than 20 years of his life into that place and now, at nearly 50, he had to start over again. He went to technical college. I helped him a little with some courses and he started a new career as a HVAC tech and then as a maintenance man. It wasn’t the same though and he never was as satisfied so he worked out an early retirement deal and got away from the stress those jobs put on him. I think it added ten or fifteen years to his life.

These days, Daddy takes it a little easier. He has to. Fortunately, after all these years of being haunted by the specters that came home with him from Vietnam, he’s gotten some help from some professionals. I know he hated every minute of it because saying Daddy is a VERY independent man is about like saying the Great Wall of China has a few bricks. It just doesn’t get the point across. He doesn’t travel far from home. He’s pretty well got a route worked out that he rides most days and sees to what he wants to see to. In his spare time, he raises goats.

Today, though, Daddy is 60. He’s carved out his own path in life and he’s managed to secure a pretty safe future for himself and Teresa as the get older. He got me grown, gone, and married and now he’s done the same for my little brother, Nick. Everyone might not care for the way he’s lived his life or the way he’s done things, but if you call him on it, he’ll happily tell you to go to hell. Trust me, I know this.

Of course, as either of us will gladly tell you, Nick nor I matter very much anymore. That’s because Mason Benjamin came along nearly a year ago. Daddy is now Papa and though he isn’t very comfortable around babies, we all know that in a couple of years, when Mason is old enough to toddle around after Papa, Teresa and Mrs. Miller will have a hard time on their hands getting hold of the little one for any great length of time. I know what the little fellow is in for. Daddy’s got a lot of lessons to teach him. He taught them to me and then to Nick.

My daddy is a very special man. He’s not huggy, touchy feely by any means, but he is honest, hardworking, and loyal to those who have proven their loyalty to him. I wouldn’t say he is easy either to get to know or to understand. He likes it that way. It keeps people guessing. I once told Teresa I didn’t think Daddy liked me very much. She said, “Your daddy loves you dearly; he just isn’t great at showing it.” Again, it is what it is.

I’m glad I have Daddy as my father. If you ever meet him, call him Frankie. Never make the mistake of referring to him as “Mr. Wham.” He’ll tell you the same thing I or Nick would and that’s Mr. Wham is buried next to the only Mrs. Wham near the front of Beulah Baptist Church Cemetery. He ain’t wrong . . . he’s just different. Seeing as how I took so much of that from him myself. It’s a little easier now to appreciate.

If you read this, I love you, Daddy, and hope you have a great birthday!

And I hope the rest of you have a great day as well.

Love y’all, and don’t forget to wash your feet.

Sep1

Coo coo ca choo, Mr. Brady!

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Mr. Brady circa 1989. He taught me Algebra II and Calculus. Finest math teacher ever.

Fate, if you believe in it, is an odd and capricious thing.

If Larry Brady had been able to fold proper paper airplanes, I would never have learned calculus in high school, so I would have been forced to take it in college — most likely with a thickly accented professor — and failed it miserably thereby not finishing my degree and likely dooming myself to a life of more misery and failure than I already have endured.

I guess one could safely say I owe a lot to Mr. Brady.

Budge and I were talking about math last night. Why, I don’t know. It’s one of those strange conversations married people have. Anyway, Budge HATES math. I blame Dad. Patience is not one of Dad’s cardinal virtues. He scarred her for life when he tried helping her with her algebra homework.

So we were talking about different kinds of math and Budge mentioned that she didn’t understand trigonometry. In about 15 minutes, I’d explained to her what it was, who used it, and why. I also gave her a rundown on mnemonics for the main trig functions. She wanted to know why it was so easy for me to learn and remember all this when she’d had such an impossible time with her high school math classes.

I answered her, “That’s easy; you never had Mr. Brady for a math teacher.”

As he explained to us in class in one of the precious few moments we managed to bump him slightly off topic, had Mr. Brady managed to conquer paper airplane origami at North Carolina State University, he would have pursued a degree and career as an aeronautic engineer. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get the hang of folding the paper the way this particular professor wanted it folded so he changed his major to mathematics and ended up, somehow, as a teacher. I’m not certain on the mechanism of fate, but I do know that fortuitous alignment of the stars resulted in a generation of math students at Laurens District 55 High School being blessed without measure by putting one of the most gifted instructors to every pick up a blue Marks-A-Lot overhead pen into the classroom.

Lest anyone reading this think Mr. Brady was so memorable because he was easy, happy-go-lucky, loosey-goosey, and tried being our friend, PLEASE get a grip. Mr. Brady had a dry sense of humor, genuinely enjoyed teaching, and loved three things above all else — basketball, math, and his two daughters, one of whom was my classmate.

He was friendly, but he was a teacher first. He was one of the most organized human beings I ever met — at least in the classroom. Most of all though, he was decidedly NOT an easy teacher. Earning Cs in his class was honorable, Bs were a sign of hard work, and As — well, As in Mr. Brady’s class were the Maltese Falcons of the LDHS55 math department.

What made Mr. Brady unique was his ability to teach any concept, no matter how abstract or outrageous, to anyone. I am convinced, within two semesters, he could teach a lab rat to play “Ode to Joy” on a miniature grand piano. He knew no less than five ways to do any problem. If, by chance, a brain-dead stoner in one of his classes couldn’t “get it” using one of those five ways, Mr. Brady didn’t get mad or frustrated — he made up a sixth way on the spot, just like he made up all his classroom examples — on the spot. Now, in case that doesn’t impress you, try making up a problem involving L’Hopital’s Rule on the spur of the moment to get an answer that is neat and easy to use as a teaching example.

He was amazing.

Lest anyone think Mr. Brady was one of those Ivory Tower Birds who could only teach the cream of the crop, be advised that he taught EVERYTHING in the math department. Remedial Mathematics to AP Calculus, he taught them all with the same passion and expertise. He was one of the minuscule fraction of teachers who could — and would — teach all students well and without complaint.

We spend a lifetime trying to forget some teachers. Others, we remember, but for all the wrong reasons. We recall many personalities, but precious little of the subject matter they once imparted to us. Mr. Brady wasn’t like that at all. I suppose the best way to finally impress upon you the man’s ability as an educator is to reveal that I made a 3 on the AP Calculus “AB” Exam at the end of his class. I can’t remember how many of us passed with a 3 or better, but it was a typically phenomenal ratio for his calculus classes. He taught me so well and so thoroughly that I still maintain some knowledge of calculus today — 21 years later — having never found a reason to use it.

The man was good. He was a teacher par excellance and I hope that, wherever he is today and whatever he’s doing (he’s retired, but that’s all I know), he’s reaping a generous reward for making two otherwise unbearable years a little brighter for me.

Good on ya’, Mr. Brady, wherever you are!

Love y’all and don’t remember to wash your feet.

Author’s Update September 6, 2006: When I first published this entry on my blog, I sent a copy to Mr. Brady’s daughter, Sally, to pass on to her dad since I didn’t know where he was living or any of his contact information. Sally wrote me back telling me how much she appreciated the tribute, but that she would be unable to pass it on to her father. Unbeknown to me, and to my great and lasting sorrow, Mr. Larry Brady — finest math teacher ever to pace the classroom — passed away in January of 2006 after a series of strokes. I had no idea.  Resquiescat In Pace, Mr. Brady, and thank you so much.