Tocky on 6/6/2018 at 01:27
I was harsh. I nearly always am when I hold things in for a long time and let loose. I suppose if religion gives succor then it isn't all bad and indeed I do charity work with religious folks often. If they ever found out my true feelings though I'm sure they would spend a lot of time trying to save me which would drive me nuts.
I'm sorry about your wife Harvester. If I had known I would have held back on those grounds alone anyway. Death is a hard enough one to deal with. I honestly don't want a conversation on religion. Nothing is going to change me and I don't really want to talk anyone out of their religion if it helps them in any way. I've made my personal peace with things. I am scared of fanatical religion of any stripe but I will deal and not blow up again. I'll try not to listen to American Family Radio and all those that Jesus would have thrown out of the temple in anger because they have brought politics into religion. I really can't take their crap. Puts me in an awful mood.
You are a cool guy yourself, Harvester, so take this advise as tongue in cheek. Since the wages of sin are death try to get your money's worth.
Also, to be honest, though I know I could never prove it, I feel there is some guiding force of good, some presence, and if you want to call that God then fine.
Tocky on 22/7/2018 at 04:48
I'll say this; I sometimes wish for a being to bestow my gratitude on. I've had rough times but most of them have been my own fault. I've wished I could go back and just do some simple little things over that would turn another in another direction. I've wished I could go back and have one more talk or one more hug. There are things I would change on a do over but overall I just wish I could live this exact life over. It's been pretty damn great. And I'm not exactly sure I haven't lived this life before. I get certain glimmers of things that are going to happen. When I was younger I had deja vu often and sometimes with full knowledge of what came next. These days I just get inklings and think oh yeah that was what that was about after. I do tend to obey the inklings. I've found it's better when I do. But that wouldn't make sense would it? To know how it's supposed to go is crazy right?
Sometimes I've ignored those feelings. Every damn time it works out worse. The even more crazy thing is I ignore anyway sometimes. I know it's going to be exactly as bad as I think and plunge ahead. No idea why I do that. No idea how the hell I would know either. It's not just obvious shit I do that about and it can be something as simple as taking one road over another or wearing a particular article of clothing or not. But I better damn well listen. Yeah I know what they say about the brain picking up certain cues that are subconscious but it's usually shit that seems like it would make no difference if I did it the other way but it does. Should I buy this thing? I have no use for it. Why in hell would I buy it? Why am I thinking of buying it even? If I don't buy it then it turns out I need it really bad later no matter if I've never used one before or can conceive of any use for it. Makes no sense.
Little things. Annoying things. Nothing life threatening. Oh no those make good stories. I wouldn't miss those. Mostly. There was a time when we were going to swim across the lake though. We had done it before. I never thought about it then but at the waters edge I stopped. I got the funniest feeling. I couldn't figure why. Everybody else had plunged in and were on the way. I couldn't allow myself to get behind so I ran on in too.
Halfway across it turned into a race. We had done that plenty before too but this time I felt like oh fuck for some reason. I was doing okay, only Frank had managed to pull ahead of me, but I started to get a cramp. I knew I should have stopped right away and shaken it out but I just wanted to close that gap. Then I did slow down. The cramp was getting bad and in both legs and now knotting my stomach. I stopped and just floated steadying my breathing. It would go away. Only it didn't. It did ease some and the guys were getting farther away so I started again.
I wasn't going to push it. But I was having to mostly drag my legs and pull with my arms. It's not as easy to stay level that way and puts more on the other muscles. I set myself a steady motion and pace. After what seemed an eternity I looked at the bank and I swear it seemed I hadn't made any distance. Nothing to do but turn into a machine and keep a slog rhythm and forget the bank. The cramp wasn't working itself out though. It should have. I could feel it wasn't going to either. Pace. Just a steady pace. I can do this. I was doing it. But I was wearing out. It took everything I had and then I had to reach for more. Once, twice, thrice, and more. I reached breaking and pushed on through. The bank was so close only I had nothing left. I reached but there just wasn't anything left. I was going down with home free in sight. Twenty yards and I could not for the life of me (literally) do it. I gave. I let go and gave in to death. Just before my chin went under my feet hit bottom. I had given in and now I was horrified knowing I would have just kept sliding down had my toes not touched. On the bank I walked my cramp out. They tried to get me to swim back across. They didn't know. No fucking way. I would walk through the swampy Sargasso till I could make dry ground and walk around. They tried several times to get me to swim it back. I had done it before and I would do it after but not then. Not a way in hell. Frank swam and came back with an inner tube. It was a long damn swim. It was a big damn lake. Frank was such a good dude. And that was so embarrassing for me to let him do.
Something told me the first time and I didn't listen. I sure as hell would the second time. I wish Will would have. Will was this sweet little guy with a raspy voice and deformed shoulder. It rode higher and he had to keep it in a sling thing. Eventually it straightened out but when he was a kid I would go by and get some weed from his dad. Eric, who was his younger brother, would run up and kick me in the shin and eventually I would work with him after he had grown up. Will came to see him at work and I got to meet him all grown into a man. To me he would always be that sweet kid who was always accommodating and kind. I would swing them around in the yard in this ice skaters spin I developed until we were both dizzy and they would beg me like I was a carnival ride to go again. I still do that with my grand kids. I was always afraid I would hurt his shoulder though. And there he was a tall and straight man. Unbelievable.
Something had to have told him not to swim out to the overturned boat at Hurricane landing. It must have. I bet he had that feeling and ignored it. It would be too shameful to give in and not race Billy out to that old white husk. Maybe it was because he had always been teased at school about his shoulder. Maybe because they had their girlfriends with them that day and he had something to prove. But he had to know. Billy said one minute Will was right behind him and the next there was no trace of him on the water. He said he kept diving around looking for him but it's a deep lake. Sweet Will. Man I wish you had listened to that feeling that said no. Not this time. That's what I was thinking the day we lined up behind that double column of bikers that led the way to his grave.
Don't we all get that feeling? Don't we have some memory of another life guiding us or whatever it is? I know it sounds crazy. A lot of the things I think and feel are crazy. So in the end who am I to dismiss someones religion? I'm just as nuts in my own way. I cuddle with ghosts, I hear limbs break around me in the darkened woods, and even more that I don't tell. I cannot for the life of me just accept only empirical evidence even though my brain tells me that only science is true. I can know it but I can't feel it. When my head tells me to take the straighter road instead of taking the more crooked one I listen mostly. But sometimes I get that feeling. That "you know what happened in the last life" feeling and I listen to that. I unknowingly threaded between two tornadoes one evening like that. I only found out later. I know, I know, only physics is real. Just bits of opposing energies held in check by other energies and on the macro level the brain is just whirring away putting things together that make sense. No oogy boogy crystal mumbo jumbo woo. No looping of the space time continuum. No sampling from the other stream.
I can't help wishing I knew things about others lives like that though. I wish so much I could have saved some who either didn't have that feeling or ignored it. It scares me to think I might not have the feeling when it counts about others. When the doctor said not to worry, that my grand daughter Lana would pass the quarter she had swallowed, I had that feeling. Her parents so trusted the doc that they went ahead to see the Braves play. I wanded my metal detector over her and found it was not in her bowels. It beeped at the esophagus. It was right there where her windpipe could have been closed off. They got it out at hospital but what if I didn't listen to that feeling?
I had that feeling when my wife wanted me to scold my dad about his methods of child rearing. Not this time. I wouldn't do it. I knew. I didn't want to know. I denied it to myself, but I knew. That last time we met we were so happy to see each other. I had my arms loaded with groceries and I was headed home but we stopped and talked awhile. I watched him walk into the store smiling and ached for a moment to go after him. That would be silly though. He died that night. I wish every time I had that feeling I listened to it. I know you think it's a retroactive reframing of memory. I would think that too if I could. I only wish I had listened more often. Maybe in my next life.
Gingerbread Man on 15/8/2018 at 04:05
Tocky you are awesome. I love these stories almost as much as I love you.
Tocky on 17/8/2018 at 05:24
Well shit, I love you too. You ain't like dying or anything and just not telling folks right? I believe in telling folks I love them when I do because I didn't when I should have and then didn't have the chance to say it and that hurt. I just assumed they knew. After July of '97' I started telling folks more often. I became a damned hugger of all things. Never used to be demonstrative. I'm not telling that story though. It pulls me into a black hole. I'm so glad I told my dad before he passed exactly what I thought of him though. He went in February of '98". I'll tell about that.
I had the best dad in the history of the planet. He knew instinctively what made you happy and was only too happy to oblige because deep down he was a kid too. Oh he worked hard every day under a horrible boss but when he came home he would snatch you up and hug you like you were what he had been working so hard for. He bought me the comics I wanted though he made a face at the horror covers, the toys I wanted though I wanted too much, and Christmas? Oh man, Christmas was freaking magical. SSP smash up derby and incredible edibles and Lost in Space playset and Evel Kenievel stunt set and Six Million Dollar Man (I got to tell Lee Majors I still have his doll and he corrected me by saying action figure- right you are Ste... Lee) all the cool stuff. But it wasn't just the stuff, he did things with us, he took us places and explained things and instilled in us a sense of right and wrong that was steady and immutable. He saw things for what they were and never failed to call them for it but kept a bright disposition as if life were the grandest thing and you know what? It was. We had an idyllic childhood. And I think that is what steels you for the crap life throws at you. It ain't hardship making you tough. It's a base of love and support you know will never fail and a joy in just living this one shot.
He took us cat fishing every Saturday morning. Load up the old red Dodge truck before light with our gear and get it cranked. It had a combination of two pumps of gas and a key turn then one more and a turn until it hit. Get it wrong and it would flood. We would be on the bank before the sun broke the horizon and watching our lines while the mist rose from the surface of the water. He never used a float but he knew we liked to see them go under so he always put one on ours. You would hear them slap the surface of the water and know it wouldn't be long. Soon that float would bob a time or two and go under. Time to yank and set the hook then fight them back and forth to see if you got a two pounder or four. Channel cat they were. We would get a stringer full before we left around ten thirty. Old JQ Anderson would come along about eight with his bag of feed and tin bucket and walk the bank banging his scoop on it and the fish would roil the water like crazy. An old straw hat and overalls thin as a bean pole flinging pellets of feed into the boiling mass of fish sucking it down. They reacted to that pounding on the bucket before the first scoop full hit the water though. Always the same thing at the same time. The next hour would be Zebco reels grinding and rods bent to near breaking. There is a picture of me with my seven pounder near as long as me in front of the red Dodge that I treasure. No fish I ever caught meant so much. It had been just me and him that day. The die hards.
We would clean them when we got home and slide the meat in the fridge for a fish fry the next day. Hush puppies and the cats rolled in corn meal and pepper deep fried then home made ice cream and watermelon for dessert. Like as not there would be cousins over to tear up the countryside with after. I recall a yankee uncle saying these fish were the best he had ever eaten. We didn't have the heart to tell him they were the hush puppies.
We did all sorts of hunting. Dove on opening day were thick and had been feeding on my uncles corn all summer. I had gotten a 20 gauge for Christmas and put it to good use leading them as he told me and I was unfailing if they got anywhere close. Dad had been worried I was too tender hearted. I did things like raising a frog from a tadpole and a robin which had fallen from it's nest and when I shot my first bird with a BB gun I cried. It was never going to be alive again and I did that. But I got tougher, you are expected to in the country. I did. That day there were so many. I had the limit and was giving them away that I brought down. I was lost in the blood lust and didn't realize it till I saw the concern in dads eye. A finer line between enough for a good meal and being psycho than I thought. I thought back to the way he had said "tender hearted" that day. It wasn't with admonition but more of a tender fear for what the world might do to me and perhaps a little pride that I could feel so much for another creature. A fine line indeed.
I was proud of being a good shot. My favorite hunting was squirrel. Dad learned I was insulted at the offer of a shotgun and so I always took the 22. We hunted in the sort of old growth forests that no longer exist in the south. Huge red oaks twenty feet apart whose limbs intertwined. I have dreamed of those woods but I'll never see them again in this life. I never mastered that light footed trick he had of not making a sound in dense leaves. That one is still a mystery. I had to get to a spot and not move for long enough they forgot about me. Mostly we got six or seven and headed home. Often we would plink at cans before we did. Eventually I learned it was the hitting a target I liked and not so much the killing. The eating I liked, hypocrite that I am, they had that wild taste you can't duplicate. But I quit hunting eventually. I still treasure the memory of the things we talked about though.
He would often tell family stories like the time his grandfather was shot by a fellow who had been called a liar on the stand by a lawyer and had waited for that lawyer to exit the courthouse. It so happened his grandfather was talking to the lawyer at the time. The lawyer was killed and great granddad wounded though he quickly walked over and yanked the pistol from the man beating him to the ground with it. "I didn't mean to shoot you, John". Of course he didn't. Not only was great granddad his preacher but also married to his sister. Strangely Moody Swaim was never hung at Old Dallas. Many were. Forty something according to dad. None of my kin though some should have been. When we cleaned up the cemetery there he would point to the stones and tell me stories about my people and others. This one shot dead for going to see another mans wife though he had been warned, that one killed by a knife over exposing a crooked poker game, that one there shot by his own brother because he was pulled in front of the man the fellow really wanted to kill. There is no town of Old Dallas now, only a large graveyard on a wooded hill down a gravel road as far from civilization as you can possibly get in my country.
Dad took me to Ole Miss football games. This was during the Archie Manning days. We had been shamed and rightly so by the civil rights struggle of Meredith to enter and needed something like Archie to give us a little pride and damned if he didn't in spades. Dad worked at Ole Miss and got us tickets easy but even so I worked some games hawking cokes in the stands. Still the most money an hour I've ever made. Mostly when Archie played we just sat and watched. Tennessee had buttons on the day we played them that said "Archie who?" on them. The next time we played them we made sure we had our buttons with "Archie 38 to 0" on them. He was amazing. The scrambler, he could run sideways and throw a touchdown and often had to. The stands were solid rebel flags in those days. It never occurred to me then they were anything but football. There are no flags or any symbol of the old south in the stands today. Good riddance. Still my mind goes back to how the stands erupted with them when even butter finger Pugh made a touchdown.
Some of you may recall how I went nuts when the Giants won the Superbowl against all odds that one year. It was RBJ that made the connection about Eli Manning being Archie's son. It gave me a taste of the days we couldn't lose.
Halcyon days of youth. The times were troubled but we were protected. When one of dads buddies he worked with asked did he want to go watch the riots from a balcony near the grove he declined. He wanted to get home to us. That fellow was killed when the national guard fired over the heads of Klansmen bused in from the delta. They should have fired into those sheets. Dad once made me read one of their pamphlets and asked me what I thought after. I told him I was shocked it sounded so reasonable. He said that's how they get you. They start out that way and next you know you are killing your neighbor who never did a thing wrong to you.
I listened to that man in ways I never even knew I was listening in. I wish I could hear his voice again. His advice was never forced. It was always just a sentence or two you could hang your hat on. He mostly let you come round to his thinking on your own though.
He and mom had a perfect relationship. They never had a cross word. It was an unrealistic thing to be raised in. My wife and I certainly did not follow that mold. I sometimes think we love each other in spite of each other but I guess the important thing is we do love each other. I don't think most kids were raised with the deference they gave us either. If we wanted to watch something on TV we got our way. I'm sure they sat through a lot of Night Gallery and Star Trek they didn't want to see. We also were never made to work. But when I heard the lawn mower crank on a Saturday I would soon go out to spell him. We often worked in the garden and then sat around shelling peas as we watched TV. I still love fresh garden vegetables but I'm too lazy for a garden these days. Back then we would run fence and bail hay and pull corn and all sorts of work. Some weekends me and dad would roof houses for those who couldn't afford it otherwise. The whole gang at his work would just pitch in for it. When I built my house way later some of them showed up to surprise me and roof mine. He had good friends.
He gave me everything I wanted. I was a spoiled shit and hell if we were wealthy. When I got to be a teen he got me a car to go with the motorcycle I already had and gave me the freedom to roam, to spend whole weekends with friends. When I went on dates he made sure it was with a full tank and always slipped some money in my pocket. I wish now I had spent more of those days with him, maybe fishing like old times, but I was wild. God we blasted Bowie and Cooper and Floyd and AC DC in our rooms and the most he did was poke his head in to say he thought somebody was beating a bag full of cats with a guitar. And they both had to suffer my brother on drums and me hitting sour licks on my guitar too. Jesus. I could go on about him all night.
That last night I got the call at two in the morning and yanked on my pants and ran up and over the hill in the frost of February grass. He had a stroke. My brother was still home then but he is useless in situations like that. Mom had called me right off. I got an ambulance on the way but we are so far out in the country. He was trying to tell me something. He kept moving his arm and acting frustrated he couldn't do more. I took off his house coat thinking maybe it was constricting him being twisted the way it was. I didn't think that was it though. I told him "Dad we know you love us and we love you and there is help on the way so just hang on" then I stroked his hair they way he did me so often when I lay my head in his lap and watched my programs as a kid. He seemed to calm then. He was still alert when the ambulance arrived and my wife and I followed it to the hospital at break neck speed. But by the time we got called back to that room in Emergency it was to fill out a form my mom was in no shape to. It was a massive stroke and only a matter of hours at most. His brain was gone and just the body breathing like an unguided train. I called all the kids and told them to get here now.
He lasted long enough for them to make it. I held his hand till his last breath then pulled the hose from his nose and kissed his forehead. I'll never be the man he was. Nobody is. Nobody is that selfless and kind and wise. But going through his things weeks later I came across the story of his life. It wasn't long, a few chapters, and I know he skipped quite a lot. Hell, all of his old films and pictures had women in them and the closest my mom came to a snide comment was when we saw another film of him in some foreign port with another girl on his arm. He was movie star good looking. I wish I had inherited that face and those laughing green eyes. But in that story he had written before he passed he said so many things that made me realize how alike we are. He was wild too. His stories were crazy and funny and I wondered why he wrote that just before he passed. Did he know I held my self estimation so far below him I could never reach what he was? Was he letting me know it's okay, we're all human, and I'm okay after all? If that was it then it failed. He will always be a mountain.
Dad in his heyday-
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/9PmTPR1.jpg
Gingerbread Man on 17/8/2018 at 05:27
oh wait I missed the bit where you can smell black people what the actual fuck
Tocky on 17/8/2018 at 14:17
THAT is what you focus on? Read my first post. Seriously. You folks that have never lived with and worked with black folks stun me with the things you don't know. Do you have any idea how hot it is down here? And in the days before air conditioners? We know what each other smell like and both races acknowledge it. What is so fucking hard about that? What? You deny truth for being PC and fake and a liar? Have YOU ever picked cotton with them shoulder to shoulder? Have YOU ever done construction or hot warehouse work or gone to their house to eat and move a fridge or been the only white face in a black juke on a Saturday night? What is IS. I can't help it if you or anyone else lacks first hand knowledge and thinks I'm racist for acknowledging the truth. That's YOUR problem.
I will say it takes about a week or so of unwashed sweating to pick out the difference and these days that just does not happen.
Edit: a white person has a sort of sour smell to them and a black a sort of copper smell. That's the best I can describe it. It's not unpleasant or anything and one of my first memories of someone I loved.
Gingerbread Man on 17/8/2018 at 15:09
That is what I focused on, yes. Like a hair in my sandwich. Sorry if that weirds you out.
Harvester on 17/8/2018 at 16:05
Beautifully touching story about your father, Tocky. I bet he'd be proud of you for living your life like this and remembering him like that.
Tocky on 17/8/2018 at 19:13
Thanks Harvester. I don't know if he would be proud but I think maybe amused at my life. He knows I settled down and took care of my family and most importantly I let him know I remember everything about him and how much I appreciate him for all he did.
As for sandwiches, I just pick the hair out no matter the race and keep eating. That may weird some folks out. It does remind me of a racist joke though-
A Frenchman, a German, and a Scotts walk into a bar and each order a whisky. When it arrives each shot has a fly in it. "Sacrebleu", says the Frenchman,"I cannot drink this!" and puts it back down untouched. The German just thumps the fly out and downs the shot. The Scottsman picks the fly out by the wings and holds it over glass saying "spit it out ye bastid!"
I'm sure we are all a touch culturally biased or even bigoted, me included, but I know what I smell. Your dog does even between individuals. Maybe I can't pick out a Finn from a Serb but I don't hang out with them. I know the difference between the branches of my family just by walking into their perfectly clean houses in winter but perhaps others are not so offlatorally blessed. I did lose a lot of my sense of smell from years of smoking and ten years on from quitting have only gained maybe 60 or 70 percent back. But if you smoke then don't kid yourself others can't tell. You smell like pepper. That's an easy one.
Me and Beth used to sit in the Abbey downing draft and discuss the difference in smell between men and women too. Even with no cologne or perfume there is a difference. I don't think that makes us sexist either. We both preferred the woman smell btw.
zacharias on 17/8/2018 at 23:36
Yeah that was really great Tocky. I feel the same way about my old man, i’ll never really measure up to him.
By the way, if you ever felt you wanted to extend or develop these writings and stories, i’d really encourage you to find another outlet for them (should you so desire.) They’re really too good for the fag end of a ttlg.