Monday Poetry Jam - Fatherhood or honkey tonk

An interesting combination of themes, and, of course, I immediately felt I had to try and do both together.   Fathers are just such good subject matter for honkey tonk blues -- "A Boy Named Sue," etc.   It's been a busy week so my offering is pretty much thrown together from notes on scraps of paper.   And unfortunately there is no music to go with it.   I think the first part has the feel of sad honkey tonk but the last part is more like: "For he's a jolly good fellow which nobody can deny..."   

Also, I need to make a disclaimer.  This is not about my own Dad. 

 My Dad, the Hermit of Dismal Key

Well, sort of not.  Just like it is not about me...sort of not.  Both my Dad and myself were indeed raging alcoholics.  We were both assholes when we were drinking.  And we both eventually went to A.A.   He died sober several years ago and I hope to follow that example -- although preferably not in the too near future.

So the theme of the poem is accurate for both of us.  But to the best of my knowledge nobody named anything after either of us, neither of us had a truck, and we never knew anyone named Big Jim McGrew.  On the other hand,  I did keep a pail by my bed so some of the details fit.  It's all poetic license anyhow.   So, after way too much babble, here is the poem:

Lucky's

(Chorus)

At the back end of town new the old train tracks

there's a place they call Lucky's where nobody looks back.

It was named for my father who went there every day,

in search of some kind of salvation, they say.

Whenever they called that he'd run out of luck,

I'd go bring him home in the back of my truck,

and roll him on the cot with a pail by his head

and spit when he moaned that he wished he was dead.

Now Big Jim McGraw would have granted that wish

'cause Dad dipped his spoon in that married man's dish

just one time too often.  So I knew Dad was dead

when Jim came to the door with a bruiser named Fred.

(Chorus)

At the back end of town new the old train tracks

there's a place they call Lucky's where nobody looks back.
It was named for my father who went there every day,
in search of some kind of salvation, they say.

But instead they announced that they'd given up booze

and they wanted to share with my Dad the good news,

that a day at a time, his life could be freed

and, amazing to all, my old man agreed.

They lived the 12 Steps and then other's came too

and the town came to know then as men who were true.

Then they bought the old bar whose business was fleeting

and turned it into a clubhouse for meetings

Now twenty years later the old man passed away

and the whole town showed up with respects to pay

and every night down by the old railroad line

the A.A. is great and the coffee is fine.

(Chorus)

At the back end of town new the old train tracks
there's a place they call Lucky's where nobody looks back.
It was named for my father who went there every day,
to share his salvation with others, they say.

Brief grumble about the spiritual axiom

Somewhere in the 12-Step Book of Alcoholics Anonymous there is mention of what we recoverying alcholics like to all the "spiritial axiom."   Then, most of the time we make a face. 

It goes something like -- pure paraphrasing here because I'm too lazy to look it up this morning -- It is a spiritual axiom that whenever anything bothers us, it is usually because something is going on with us.

A.A. is like that -- we keep having to take responsibility for ourselves, turning things over to God, accepting what we cannot change.  We are suppose to stop trying to get what we want and practice wanting what we get. 

So it can be very frustrating when I'm surrounded by assholes and I can't stand up and tell them they're assholes.  I can't storm abound home and office slamming doors and kicking garbage cans.  Instead, because I'm so dadgum emotionally healthy, I have to look at what it is inside me that makes me think I'm surrounded by assholes. 

Damn it!!  I can't even hold on to a good opportunity for self-pity for very long!  So I guess I'll take the dog for a walk and enjoy the sunrise. 

(Of course, this doesn't mean that one or two of them might not be genuine assholes...)

Getting off the pity pot

Yesterday I was grumpy.

Mostly I was grumpy because I had so many things to do, I was freaking out because I didn’t have time to do them and couldn’t choose which thing to do next.

And one of my favorite people reminded me of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Which reminded me of the time at the end of my drinking career when I was avoiding A.A. like crazy. I knew, by then, I had a problem but was scared to death of giving up alcohol and drugs.

Because…

Because I didn’t think I could deal with the boredom. Without a beer in my hand, how could I ever watch a football game again? Or listen to a song? Or write a poem?

When actually…

I was doing none of those things.

So I have to laugh this morning thinking that I was getting frustrated and grumpy because for the last 32 years my life has been so full.

So this morning, we’re off to look at the Memorial Day Sand Castle building competition, plant flowers in at my sister-in-laws, take Brian’s dogs for rabies shots, cook ribs on the grill…and hopefully twenty five more things! And I’ll try not to complain about abundance…

Rattlesnakes, Amends, and Endings

I apologize in advance if this blog is a bit too long or not so filled with slapstick. Blogs should be short. But it may be tough to bring the threads together in this final blog about my Dad.

BAGMAN: “Even tougher if you waste time talking about it instead of writing it!”

BUTLER: “Of if you keep interrupting, Brother Baggie.”

Okay. First of all, a short introductory fact that seems trivial but will be important later. Although the blogs I have written this week would seem to indicate that I spent lots of time on Panther and Dismal Key, the fact is that most of the two decades my father was there, I visited a few times but mostly communicated through letters. Snail-mail, although the terms hadn’t been invented then. The important thing to remember is: It took three days for a letter to go from Massachusetts to Florida, and vice versa.

Second, short introductory background – Two years before the end of my Dad’s hermiting, E. Foster Atkinson passed away and my Dad moved up in rank to the bigger shack on Dismal Key.

Rattlesnakes – The Panther on Panther Key was elusive but rattlesnakes were plentiful throughout the area. On times when I visited, Dad would always give me an extra walking stick which we used, not for walking, but to regularly beat the brush ahead of us and around us, to give these fellows time to slink away. I saw a couple but never got a good shot. My Dad saw them regularly.

One quick digression –

BAGMAN: “And you wonder why this is going to be too long?!!!!”

There was a tree house on Panther Key that my father had never investigated. But I really wanted to see if it might contain some treasure and was determined to climb up and poke my head in the small entrance hole in the floor. Of course, we were both concerned because it was an ideal place for snakes. So before I climbed up, he and I bounded it unmercifully with our sticks. Then, finally deciding it was safe, I carefully climbed the tree, prepared myself, and stuck my head up through the hole.

Six inches from my eyeballs was a huge coil of scaly diamonds aimed at my nose. I slammed my head back so violently, I put a gash on the back of my neck from the rough wood of the entry hole. But even as one part of my consciousness was preparing my introductory mea culpas to St. Peter, the adrenalin was catching up and I was identifying it as a large rattlesnake skin, shed some time in the past by a large but thankfully now absent reptile.

Enough about snakes, for now.

Amends. Alcoholics Anonymous is built around 12 steps of recovery. The 8^th and 9^th steps have to do with clearing up the wreckage of our past behaviors, making amends to people we had hurt. I had done this, at least, to the best of my ability. I had written friends, returned money, and in those cases where a simple apology would be meaningless, demonstrated changed (amended) behaviors.

But I had never done one with my father. And why should I, for Pete’s sake? His drinking caused him to leave me with my grandparents. Of course, that turned out to be great for me in the long run (another story) but my alcoholism had done nothing to him. Why would I owe him an amend? I owed him nothing.

But it nagged at me and getting free of guilt is survival for an alcoholic. One day, I had to admit that I had almost always been self-righteous with my father during visits and in letters. I knew we were both alcoholics but I was sober! I had found A.A.! He had tried a thousand times and failed. I preached at him. I refused to give him money. Actually, probably a good decision when dealing with an active alcoholic, but I had done it with an attitude. “You know, Dad, I’d love to help but I think you’ll just drink it up like always.” My tone was such I could have just as easily have added, “You dumb sot!”

I was successful despite him, not because of him. I had become a respected professional and he was a bum. A colorful bum, but still a bum. I told funny stories about panthers, and such, but at a certain level, that was how I felt. I had to get some humility and change that.

So I wrote him a letter expressing regret and love and understanding. I was humble. I took responsibility for my attitudes. I mailed it.

Three days later, I got a letter back from him. It was his amends letter to me.

I hadn't known it, because we didn’t always write that often, but during the last several months, his eyesight had been failing. He could no longer see rattlesnakes and one time a large rattler crawled across his shoe before he noticed it. He finally had to give up hermiting and had moved back to a small camper in Goodland, Florida.

Being back in civilization meant he was within walking distance of a liquor store. In no time he had drunk himself into yet another detox center. But then…you never know when it will click in…he actually got seriously into the A.A. program and got sober and started working the steps. He never drank again.

I know it has been a long blog, but if you remember in the beginning I mentioned that it took three days for a letter to travel the East Coast. Three days. Each way.

Months later when we were visiting and having the pleasure of actually attending an A.A. meeting together, we compared notes and on the exact same day at roughly the same time in the afternoon, we were, without knowing it, simultaneously writing amends letters to each other. I think that God works in very mysterious ways. Of course, some might say it could also be coincidence and I’m not into debating it.

Either way it was pretty cool.

So, bringing it to a close, he lived in Goodland for about five more years, attending A.A. meetings regularly, helping other alcoholics find sobriety, playing the accordion, painting pictures. He had a chance to meet Karen before he died.

And when he finally died, not of cirrhosis, but of a heart attack, I drove down for his funeral. It was attended by a huge crowd, incredible for someone who had been a hermit. And people got up and spoke of what he had meant in their lives. Men talked about how he had helped them stop drinking and it was because of him that they had their children back. One after another, people spoke about what he had done. I felt they were all looking at me.

Finally, it was my turn. I couldn’t control my voice. I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember it was pretty much like this:

“I’m an alcoholic. My Dad was an alcoholic. He left me when I was six and although we stayed in touch, we really didn’t have much time together on this world. In some ways you all know him better than I did. And I just want to thank you, today, for sharing what he meant to you. Because now, for the first time in my life, I can say without any reservations, that I am proud to be Al Seely’s son.”

Estate Sale

Sometimes, my sense of humor falters. It doesn’t actually go away, but sinks down slowly into an observant crouch like a cat in the corner when a stranger enters a room.

Estate Sales do that to me. I haven’t been to many, Karen usually preferring yard sales and auctions. But enough so my reaction didn’t really surprise me as we walked up to the Kruger House. It was a large, split level reddish wood home under live oaks with Spanish Moss hanging. A vertical sign that said “Kruger” had been screwed into the trunk of a tree near the driveway long ago; the tree had grown around the sign, embracing it almost to the letter “K.”

Seated at a card table in the garage was a young woman with an adding machine and a metal cash box, checking out people who came out of the house with their new treasures. She smiled at us as Karen and I passed her and entered through the door to a hall near the kitchen. It was not crowded, less than ten people wandering around, picking up items, looking at the price tags, putting them down.

Karen, efficient and focused, began her orderly search from room to room. Without any purpose or desire to buy anything, I was first drawn into the livingroom, where I just stood, feeling a sense of a space where someone had recently lived. I didn’t know whether the woman had died, gone to a nursing home, or somewhere else, but watching people come, look, and leave with various parts of her life, I knew she wasn’t coming back to this space.

Why did I know, somehow, that an older woman had lived here last? I couldn’t define it exactly. Maybe it was the bird prints on the wall, the sets of dishes, the Tony Bennet and Perry Como records, the curtains. Men have those things too, but…maybe it was more the lack of something.

I moved on through the house and the feeling grew. It lacked a sense of vitality. Then again, I told myself, the people in charge of the estate sale had pulled everything out of drawers and placed them in boxes and on shelves. Whoever had been here was gone. Of course it lacked vitality. But I couldn’t shake the sense that it had lacked vitality before that.

The furniture was all 1950’s, no modern leather, but no antiques either. Cloth sofas with worn spots. 33 rpm record albums and cassette tapes. No CD’s.

Then I was in the large bedroom, a double bed with bare mattresses. A large closet was open, about half full of hanging clothes, each with a price tag written in magic marker. All dresses and women’s clothing. It didn’t surprise me. Another closet in the hall had the same thing. Both were half full. Both, I thought, were half empty and had been for awhile.

I was ready to leave and went back to the living room to wait on Karen. This time, I noticed the golf bag. It was bulky, seemed a bit sparse on clubs, and was very dusty, as if it had been just pulled out of a shed or attic. There was one pair of very large men’s golf shoes, tied together and draped from the clubs. They were covered in dust as well. Why had she kept these and nothing else, I thought.

In the bookcase (“all books 50 cents”), surrounded by paperback romance novels, I spotted immediately the plain dark blue cover of a familiar book, the “Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.” It made me smile. I looked in the front and saw it was a 7^th printing, 1957 and on the fly leaf was the inscription, “Nonnie K. – 1962.” Two years before I even started drinking! And I tried not to judge but couldn’t help it. The book was not underlined or well worn and I hadn’t noticed any of the other little sayings or signs or clues I usually see in houses of people who are strongly into recovery. Maybe she had stayed sober all those years. Maybe not.

And finally, sitting on a worn sofa just before Karen came down with a couple of serving dishes, I discovered and look through a fancy gift book from the 1987 Augusta Masters Golf Tournament. There was a typed letter taped to the flyleaf that began, “Dear Buddy. I’m sending you this book to commemorate the wonderful time we had and to thank your company for helping co-sponsor the reception. We hope you and your wife will be back next year.”

Before following Karen out to the check-out table in the garage, I pulled two quarters out of my pocket and grabbed the Big Book off the shelf, even though I already own 8 copies.

We didn’t talk much on the way home; I couldn’t think of much to say. But as soon as we got home, I took Sally for a longer walk than usual, and I spent the time looking at puffy clouds in the sky, smelling the new chlorophyll of Spring in the air and working to stop imagining what our own closets would look like with little white price tags hanging on all our clothes.

I think I’ll stick to yard sales and auctions and stay in the car the next time we hit an estate sale.