Tag Archives: dad

Charcoal

Charcoal: (v) to cook over charcoal.

My dad tried hard.

I didn’t know it at the time–I was a teenager and I thought he was an old man. He was pretty old–older than most of the dads.

Sometimes he would imitate joy over having me as a son. I was usually watching television at the time, and unaffected by his attempts at
conversation. Then, when I needed five dollars to take a girl on a date, he distanced himself from me–protecting his pocketbook.

We never connected. But to his credit, he never stopped trying.

He even decided to go out and buy a really cheap grill from Buckeye Mart, complete with charcoal briquettes and lighting fluid. He was determined to grill hamburgers in our back yard.

He had no experience.

The first half hour was spent trying to figure out how to ignite the charcoal. Then he ended up wasting about two pounds of hamburger because he didn’t know you were supposed to wait until the fire went down. I faithfully stood by his side watching as he told me I would be taking over the grill in just a few moments.

I never did take over the grill.

The charcoal he bought was so cheap it wouldn’t stay lit and the lighter fluid was bargain brand and not very effective.

So at the end of the excursion, my father presented a platter of hamburgers that looked like charcoal briquettes, and some that were still raw.

It was a fiasco.

It would have been fine if he had laughed at himself or admitted his lack of foreknowledge. But he didn’t. He blamed Buckeye Mart for having inferior products and me for not being adequately motivated.

It is not a good memory.

But it does remind me that a sad man–who happened to be my dad–kept trying to please a very bratty son.

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Cabin

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Cabin: (n) a small shelter or house, made of wood and situated in a remote area.

The human brain is not spacious.

Matter of fact, it’s pretty cramped.

When you add the clutter of prejudice, misconception, disappointment and selfishness, it can be extraordinarily confined.

That’s the way it was with my dad.

My dad never got a chance to find out if he was a good man or a bad man because he was surrounded by men just like him. Therefore he compared himself to them.

They were all frightened of change.

They were all nervous about not having enough money.

They were all intimidated by despondent and dissatisfied women.

And they were all looking for a retreat.

My dad went to Canada–sometimes twice a year–to hunt and fish, but mostly to try to find something in his brain that was his own.

My mother didn’t mean to be intrusive. She always felt she was being helpful. The problem is, helpful is rarely achieved if no one is asking for help.

My dad was not unhappy, he just wanted to be left alone. So he built himself a cabin out on a small piece of land that we owned outside town. It was rustic, it was small, and had very little in it–except my dad, when he wanted to be away from everybody.

My girlfriend and I occasionally slipped out to the location to “play doctor” which eventually led to “hospital.”

But every time I came into that room I could feel his loneliness. I know it sounds poetic, or even misplaced, but there was a quiet in the room which was disconcerting instead of reassuring.

The day he died, people gathered at our home to consume all the casseroles which had been brought in by well-meaning relatives. I slipped away and drove to that cabin, walked in and sat down on the cot that was in the middle of the room.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps I thought I would feel the spirit of my dearly departed father.

All I felt was the loneliness which was now even more lonely, because its only visitor had finally escaped.

 

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Brook

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Brook: (n) a small stream

About two miles outside of our little town, my dad bought a piece of land, where he hoped his growing children would be able to escape and get a sense of “farm” and fresh air.Dictionary B

It wasn’t large, and because it wasn’t tended well, it was usually overgrown.

But every once in a while I got an itch to go out and walk through the tall grass to a clearing where there was a high bank surrounding a brook.

The stream was not very impressive–probably about seven feet across at its widest place, and no more than a foot-and-a-half deep.

But it was usually clear–see right to the bottom.

One day I told my dad I was going to go fishing in the brook. He laughed at me, and explained that our little waterway would not sustain fish because there was no place for them to go.

After soaking my worm in the water for about an hour–to no avail–I realized he was right. I was about to give up when I sensed some movement in some nearby rocks.

It was a little fish.

I don’t know how he got there (or if he was a she). But he was obviously trapped, not knowing which way to go. Every time he swam forward he hit a rock, and every time he swam the other way, he bumped his nose on a stone.

He was literally caught between a rock and a hard place.

So for the next hour, I threw my hook and worm near him, hoping to draw the little fishie onto my rod and reel, so I could go back proudly and tell my dad he was wrong.

When the worm didn’t draw the fish’s attention, I attempted to reach in and grab him. He was very athletic and eluded my grasp.

I finally gave up.

I went to tell my dad to come and see the fish that was in our brook. He waited, puttered around, and finally made his way out to view my discovery.

The fish was gone.

I have no idea how that little blue gill figured out a way to escape his prison. But Nature always comes up with a plan.

Fish are not like us.

They don’t get frustrated, mad … and decide to hide out in their room.

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Bra

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Bra: (n) an undergarment worn by women to support the breasts

When I look in the mirror I see some wrinkles.

But also, I peer at the countenance of experience.

I have people who call me Dad and also Grandpa.

After years and years of relationship, there are souls who come to me for counsel.Dictionary B

I have even been referred to as “wise.”

I have awards which proclaim that I am a creature of merit.

But still–when I see a bra, I get giggly

There is a little boy inside me who has a childish view of a garment.

I could pretend that I don’t.

I could force myself to look at a bra and think it was similar to a t-shirt. But I would be lying.

I think it is fruitless to pretend that we ever escape the first inclinations of our youthful lust, but instead, just gain the insight to run away from them … before they take us down tawdry paths.

 

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Average

Average: (adj) mean or median norm, meaning something that represents a middle point.

It caused me to become a better man, dad, writer, musician, driver, shopper, handler of money and general human being.dictionary with letter A

The day I realized that everything in life eventually averages out and lands in the realm of modicum was the time that I finally knew how to set my goals.

Let me give you an example:

When I looked over at the batch of children hatched from my lust and whim, I thought to myself, what do I want these little dudes to be in 25 years?

At first, my list of requests and preferences was too long. And then I came up with three words:

  • Solvent
  • Loving
  • Creative

With that in mind, I developed my parenting approach.

To make sure they were solvent, I never gave them money without giving them work. Why? Because the only ways to get money other than working for it is winning the lottery and stealing. You can see why I chose what I did. They did not always like the work, and their work was usually pretty mediocre. But even an average work ethic pushed them to the front of the class.

To make them loving, I forced them to go see people who were not very lovely–hurting, frustrated, addicted and poverty-stricken. They were somewhat repulsed, but still ended up much more empathetic than some of their friends.

And finally, creative. Every time they wanted me to buy them something, do something for them or get them off the hook for using their talents, I refused and made them produce something with their own hearts and hands, even though I must tell you, the result was often so ugly that I needed to quickly bury it in the back yard.

Still, they knew they were responsible to come to Earth and provide resources instead of just consume them.

Since human beings will generally end up average, it’s a good idea to have a standard. That’s why we keep Santa Claus around–he reminds us of the importance of giving.

And we maintain a belief in God, although we’re not sure…because He encourages us to find our better humanity. 

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Archive

dictionary with letter A

Archive: (n) a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.

Making memories.

Just yesterday someone was extolling the beauty of such an endeavor.

It seems noble–to “archive away” the blessings of our lives, to be retrieved at various intervals to enrich our thinking and stimulate our warmth.

During the holiday season, I find myself in the presence of family. Even though I realize the word “family” is a noun by the laws of grammar, in many ways it is a verb–either past or present-tense.

For the danger, as we well know, in getting together with those who were raised in the same house, and who even share genetic material, is that the conversations will drift back to former times instead of truly enjoying the moment or even dreaming of great ideals.

It’s just not for me.

So to balance this out:

  • I must be willing to cease to be someone’s dad in order to press forward and become their friend.
  • They must be willing to abandon obligatory reverence or even some fearful flashbacks, to acquire the tenderness of a “new-wine relationship.”

It takes great maturity to be childlike in our faith. Without that maturity we all have a tendency to remain childish.

I don’t think I would make a very good archivist. I would understand the concept, but I think my mind would push towards making new inroads instead of visiting the museum of my past.

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Anchor

dictionary with letter A

Anchor: (n) a heavy object attached to a rope or chain and used to moor a vessel to the bottom.

It was made of aluminum, about twelve feet long, with three wooden, bench seats inside, one of the perches broken.

It was my dad’s boat.

It more resembled a canoe with a thyroid problem.

But whenever my dad launched his vessel onto the great and mighty waters of Hoover Lake, he suddenly transformed into some sort of John Paul Jones, which to me as a boy, appeared as a nautical monster.

He began using the lingo of the sea and was perpetually angry with his crew–embodied solely in myself.

He explained that the best way to fish was to find a quiet, deep lagoon and drop your anchor so your boat wouldn’t move, and you would be present with your bait, to lure in the schools of fish. (Often we often must have arrived during some sort of fish holiday–because the schools were usually out.)

Nevertheless, he yelled at me to drop anchor, which was a forty pound cube of cement block, which he had put together by pouring it into a plastic bucket and then destroying the bucket to free the cement once it had hardened. Attached to this heavy clump was a rope.

Now, you must realize–we only had twenty-five feet of rope on our anchor–which is fine is you happen to be perched in twenty-three feet of water. But as I lifted the huge mass over the side of the boat and dropped it into the water, I was never sure if it actually hit the bottom.

So after an hour or so, my dad would look up from his fishing pole, where he had frozen his eyes intently, and realize that we had floated far from our desired spot.

This initiated a whole new tirade of “captain-to-deck-swab” complaints. I tried to defend myself by explaining that we did not have enough rope to reach the bottom of the lake, but he never seemed to quite comprehend that if the anchor doesn’t land on the bottom, it really doesn’t keep you in place.

What great symbolism.

After all, if our anchor is floating along with society’s ideas and standards instead of landing firmly on solid ground, we, too, tend to drift from our preferred placement.

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Ammonia

dictionary with letter A

Ammonia: (n) a colorless gas with a characteristic pungent smell which dissolves in water to give a strongly alkaline solution.

I was a punk.

What I mean by that is that I was twenty years old, married with two children and thought I knew everything. And if I didn’t, it wasn’t worth knowing.

We were poor.

Not the kind of ditch-digging poor, but impoverished … because we didn’t have jobs.

We lived in an upstairs hovel that a dump might consider suitable to deposit its trash. We tried to keep it clean, striking an agreement with the cockroaches to only come out at night.

Both of my young sons were in diapers. This was long before the practicality of Pampers. We’re talking about cloth diapers, which we kept in a pail of water in preparation for the laundromat.

So one of my downstairs neighbors took it upon herself to call Children’s Services to report our lack. They showed up and complained that the house smelled like ammonia from the diapers.

It did.

It was very difficult to disguise it. It’s similar to the situation where people own a cat and insist that the kitty litter deters the odor, until you walk in and sniff the air.

Apparently the ammonia thing was a big deal to this lady from Children’s Services. We had to go to a hearing in front of a judge to discuss our dirty laundry.

The lady railed against us in front of the magistrate for a good fifteen minutes. She closed her indictment by describing in vivid detail the stench of the ammonia in our abode.

I have never felt such a collision of emotions. I was embarrassed, enraged, convicted,  confused and basically helpless.

When my accuser was done, “Your Honor” turned to me and asked me if I had anything to say. For the first time in my young adult life, I was speechless.

So the judge stepped in, sensing my plight, and cited, “Don’t all diapers smell like either poop or ammonia?”

Although my attacker tried to object and further elaborate on the odor, the judge silenced her and dismissed the case.

I had experienced the mercy of the court.

I grew up a lot that day. We tried to wash our diapers more often, to prevent ammonia from filling the air.

It is a rather nasty, stinging aroma.

 

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Ammo

dictionary with letter A

Ammo: (n.) informal term for ammunition.

My dad decided to take my older brother and I rabbit hunting.

I didn’t want to go but I had used up all my excuses trying to dodge attending school on undesirable days.

So I was dressing, getting ready for the excursion, when my brother stomped into the room and declared to everyone, “I stored the ammo in the trunk.”

He then posed for a moment, seeking approval over both his deed and proclamation. I quickly ran into the other room and hid in the closet so as not to suffer the intensity of being knuckled on the head by my older sibling.

Once inside, with the door closed, I giggled until I cried. What a doofus!

One thing was sure–all the rabbits in Delaware County were safe for another day.

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Aka

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Aka: (abbr.) also known as: e.g.John Merrick, aka the Elephant Man

J. R. Practix.

That’s the name on my birth certificate.

But during a brief season of playing football, I was aka “Big Jon.” Matter of fact, through high school, I was “just Jon, without an h”. I often joked that I selected the name because I wanted to “get the h outta there.” Some people thought that was funny.

  • A tiny handful knew me as “the music guy.”
  • There were those in my town who acquainted my personage with “deadbeat.”
  • Aka “Daddy,” which became “Dad”–and on more formal occasions is even announced, “my Father.”
  • Aka “Studly,” even though that was used so infrequently that I’m embarrassed to bring it up, but still, willing to propagate the myth.
  • Aka “Composer.”
  • Aka “Vagabond.”
  • Aka “Writer.”
  • Aka “Preacher”–though I was never actually able to embody the look or attributes of a parson.
  • Aka “Musician”–though I must bow my head in the presence of the true clerics of chords.

Then came grandchildren. So …

  • Aka “G-Pop.”
  • Three of my sons were adopted in my heart as god-children, and they chose to refer to me as “Pop.”
  • Aka “Husband.”
  • Aka “Lover” (in generous moments by forgiving females)
  • Aka “Business man” (unless you look at my books)
  • Aka “Traveler” (Just check my odometer)
  • Aka “Human being,” of which I am most proud.

I realize today that I have so many names associated with me that if I had a driver’s license to match each one, I would look like a criminal on the lam.

And speaking of lamb, I recommend it … with mint jelly.