"Daddy" Part V: "It's going to be alright."

Now, I am keenly aware of the fact that all of this can be explained from a purely psychological model. I have read William James and his followers. I have also seen plenty of religious conversions, good and bad. Moreover, I have examined my own religious conversion to paleness, trying to understand it and myself. People of faith will accept as valid what happened to my daddy, people who have no particular religious faith will explain it how they will. There is no reason for the believer to doubt both aspects of religious conversion, the spiritual and the psychological. Orthodox Christianity has always maintained that God meets us as human beings and addresses us in the complex of mind, emotion, and will that makes us uniquely human.

In his case, however, I must say this of my daddy: From that August day in 1974 he was never the same again. His life was turned around to a new and healthy direction. This would be true until he died in 2000.

Nor is any of this to say that the rest of his life was one long consistent trajectory. Far from it. It was marked by the same circuitous inconsistencies that characterize most lives. But, one thing is certain to everyone who knew him: From the mid-70's to the end, Daddy reordered his life in a new and overwhelmingly constructive way. He reinvented himself.

A large part of the credit of this goes to his new wife, Ann. Daddy and Ann married in the mid-70s- 1975? I don't remember the date, but I do remember the circumstances because I married them in a private ceremony in the living room of the Baptist parsonage Kathy and I were then living in just out of Tulsa. I also remember the Dragon managed to get our number and phone at two or three in the morning the following day. She was drunk and savage and she managed to push all the old buttons of fear and hate in my mind. It would be years before I was beyond that. When I finally learned of her death in 2007 I would be beyond that and would find nothing in my heart but sadness and pity for her.

Shortly after their marriage, Daddy and Ann moved to East Texas where they engaged in a semi-homesteader existence. They lived in a variety of settings, the most demanding being a utility shed bought from Wal-Mart and turned into a homesteader's cabin. The only running water they had was from a sole hydrant a few yards from the front door. By working and saving, the two of them were able to buy a few acres where they placed a very used trailer. While living in the trailer, Daddy build a sizable log house from the native pine trees on and around the place. The floors ran in every direction, but it was snug and comfortable, having a bathroom and plenty of running water. Daddy had been born in a log house and always said he wanted to die in his own log house. When the trailer burnt to the ground, Daddy was able to run into the burning structure to retrieve his arrowheads, but everything else was lost. He and Ann were great ones for starting over. They finally were able to purchase an old frame house and have it moved to the acreage.

During these years Daddy accumulated a large group of friends. He was always serving people, looking after them, especially the aged. He continued to collect their stories as he visited with them.

After settling in the area Daddy and Ann joined the local Baptist church where they were to remain members for many years. With work, church, and community, Daddy lived an exemplary life. He was liked, loved, and respected. Most of the darkness that had long plagued him was dispelled.

But, it is always a mistake to view people through tinted glass and it would be such a mistake to view Daddy in this way. One of his famous introductions to what he was about to say was, "I ain't going to lie to you..." His honesty about his personal demons was one of his most attractive (and disturbing) traits. Times of darkness would periodically fall upon him and when they did he had a ritual. He would buy a bottle or two of bourbon, give the pickup keys to Ann to hide, and go on a weekend "toot" as he called it. In the early stages he was a happy drunk. Ann once looked out the window to see him him stark naked, standing upright over the seat, driving the tractor round and round the yard- singing. Toward the end of such forays, he grew dour and maudlin. He would sometimes call me toward the end of his toots and talk about early days, pour out his grief over real and imagined failures, and declare his love for me over and over again. These were distressing conversations, but as I grow older and more self aware, I find it harder and harder to judge him for these times. On Monday mornings, he would be up early, bathed and shaved and smelling of Old Spice. He would be the earliest to work and covered his hangover and guilt with a flood of songs and teases. Months would pass before such a thing was repeated.

Our times together during these years were good, though too often few and far between. When we did visit, it was a time of unmixed happiness. We never had an argument or quarrel for twenty plus years. And while the visits were too few, the phone conversations were regular. He has been gone for ten years and I still occasionally think, "I need to talk to Daddy about this."

His love for me, for Kathy, and for his three grandchildren was devout. And it was returned. In his last illness, I came into the living room of his house to find his then lax, six-foot frame cradled in the lap and arms of his oldest grandson, Martyn.

During the last decade of his life, he and I made the pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. that I mentioned earlier. I have never seen him happier and more alive. It is a joy to be with a man who delights in everything he sees. And delight he did- in everything, from the new threshing barn at Mount Vernon, to the buffalo hide teepee at the Natural History Museum, to Jefferson's "little mountain," it was all a dream come true to him.

One morning, while there, we finally found parking near the Viet Nam Memorial. We walked past it to the Lincoln. He was very quiet and deeply moved as he stood on the steps looking at the great Emancipator.

When we returned to the car, someone had parked close to us and I had a tough time getting the car out. Finally, Daddy got out and began to direct me. I kept touching the bumper of a new Volvo behind us. A young well-dressed man came over and began to protest that I was damaging his vehicle while Daddy assured him to the contrary. As the exchange grew more animated, I rolled the passenger window down and quietly said, "Daddy, get in the car." After I had repeated this several times, he acquiesced and took his seat. But, the young man was persistent. He leaned over and began to tap on Daddy's window. Daddy began to roll his left shoulder and roll down the window at the same time with his right hand. Placing my hand on his agitated left arm, I said quietly, "Don't hit him." With a similar quietness, he replied, "I'm going to draw the son-of-a-bitch's picture in the sand!" "If you do," I countered, "we may be here in jail for a year." I finally managed to get the car out and away. After a pause, Daddy said, "You could tell he was a Yankee by the way he talked. They're all arrogant bastards like that." But, within seconds, he was back on the sunny side enjoying the marvels of our nation's Capitol. He was sixty-six or seven at the time. But the old embers glowed beneath the gray ash.

In the next years, the embers would continue to glow. He would read and study his arrowhead collection; he would serve others and drive his pickup through the community with his faithful Bassett hound, Magoo. He would become more relaxed, more at peace with himself and with everyone else. He would maintain his simple Christian faith and his devotion to hard work. All with the passion that had always marked his life. Things would go on as usual on that little patch of ground in the Piney Woods of East Texas until his last great trial came upon him.

And when it came he would learn to die.

...to be continued