I was watching my Father today....
He is way past seventy......
And now, slower of step,
He thinks, a long time, before he speaks....
I cannot tell if he is exercising simple good taste, or thinking of his own past, or simply cannot find words to employ....
It is none of my damn business, anyway....
Why?
Because my father's life, is His life.......
Not mine.......
My God, if there is any value recounting the "wars", the continuous, often debilitating "wars", between He, and I........
In telling you what this"emotional warfare" cost....
And continues to cost, to this day.....
Going on fifty years!!
I would tell you....
But where is the value in that?
Who cares?
(It is a "little thing" between, He and I......)
Well....
Maybe there IS value in it....
Perhaps.....
Perhaps I am too stupid, to understand that my Father, living his life as he lives it, makes a statement about being an individual....
About being himself..........
About, so beliving in an ethic for life, that nothing on this planet can change it....
Or Him.....
God Almighty, you have to admire that!!!!
I know I do...
Now.....
As I sneak up on fifty years (and none too happy about it), ........
I realize, perhaps, being true to one's self, is the greatest strength of all......
Let us just say, my Father is a good man.....
Regardless of our personal wars....
Regardless of his failings as a person....
(My God!!!....let us not even start upon my own failings!!!)
Tell me.....
Who does not fail?
Point to that woman, or man, who never created a human mess...
Never screwed up?
Can you?
He IS an incredibly, moody man......
He was a Banker....
Which exposes his, "Fifties" and "Sixties", decades.(The economic, racial, red lining" in loaning money to minorities, and, the beginnings of his, "Republican" political affiliations.....
Eventually, burrowing all the way to the core of his political and social beliefs......
Of course, I am a bomb throwing "Socialist"...
The "bomb" part, is a joke, ok?)
And, politically, I always will be.....
He is a perfectionist.....
I am less than a perfectionist....
Because, I did not have to be....
My Father made that possible....
And a hell of a lot of other things, too.....
For me......
His only son.......
My Father is a true "Southerner".....
He lived the "real", racial, and moral, meanings of the words, "black", and "white"......
(Much like the recent Nobel Prize recipient, James Earl Carter......)
Unless you know what he knows.....
There is not a chance you will ever see the world as he sees it....
His view of the world, and his time, is as valuable, illustrative, and informative, as anyone else's view.....
For a long time, I did not respect that....
But I do now.......
And you will never be able to truly understand....
As I did not......
Unless you have thoughts, going back a lifetime....
An entire lifetime.....
His lifetime......
There is not a chance, you can understand how the world really "was", growing up in the "Forties", in the "South"......
No "Historian", will ever write a book, revealing the roots, the totally honest roots, of the relationship, between "black" and "white" people in the South.....
"Political correctness", took care of that......
Those years may be as mysterious as any in "American" history..........
My Father saw those years; lived them.....
Think about it......
All the nearly unbelievable social strife.....
All the overwhelming societal change.....
What would that much change do to you?
If your entire world, became turned upside down?
These were the years when the "South", became "Republican", (here, I speak of his "Fifties" and most specifically, the"Sixties",....whatever those decades REALLY MEAN........[I use a lot of qutations around words I question].....bear with me....)
And let us not even dwell upon Viet Nam.....
Or, the overall issue of a sustaining definition of "American Patriotism".....
Or his views of the value of a "college education"...
Something he gave me......
( Always wondering why, I was not working.....)
(Even though he got one, too...Wake Forest, Raleigh, North Carolina.....no, not Winston Salem, North Carolina....God!!!... you people have no class!!!!.........)
He was quite the athelete....
He lettered in sports....
And taught me how to catch a baseball with a glove....
He taught me to play golf....
For hours, day afer day....
I became better than him, at golf....
Secretly, I suspect he thinks it a, "sissy game"...
Maybe that is why I got better at it than him....
I remember beating him the first time....
I was fourteen.....
God, I did not know what to think!
Of course, he was really teaching me, how to act in this world...
How to win, and to lose....
With equal grace.....
With an ageless equanimity......
Almost always, making you better than those around you.....
Certainly, those times, were a better lesson in comportment, from a concerned parent, than what the majority of the present "crop" of young "Americans" get from their parents....
Or understand.....
Or even feel necessary......
He is also, a consumed baseball fan....
Faithfully, including, this almost mystical year, a Boston Red Sox fan.....
In the Forties, when no one in the "South", liked the Red Sox....
(Why should they? They are Boston!!!!... Of course, there are many "Yankees", here now......but, there was a time when a "Yankee", was an "observed neighbor".......They are welcome here, now.... after all, I am not my Father.....)
Curiously, for a "Son of the "South" ", my Father loved the Red Sox.....
Why?
One man.....
The "Big Guy"
The "Splendid Splinter", Ted Williams.....
In my Father's eyes, Ted Williams was about the best think this side of John Wayne....
He is the last man, in the history of the game, to have a single year batting average above .400.......
My father worshipped him....
And there are reasons.....
Ted Williams was an incredibally intelligent student of baseball...
His natural talents are beyond my abilty to describe....
He spent the best years of his athletic career, flying jets with John Glenn (remember him?...another member of that squadron, included Neil Armstrong....), in the Korean War.......
When he returned to Boston....almost forty years of age, he achieved the magic, .400, as a batting average....
At his last "at bat", he hit a home run....
And finally, in a gesture no one expected, tipped his hat to a world he often found himself at odds with......
Ted Williams was a hero.....
He was also an asshole....
He possessed none of the modern skills of a savy media driven athlete....
He always said what he thought....
He regularly raised his middle finger to jeering Boston fans....
They loved him.....
They hated him....
He was my father's ultimate "human symbol".....
And, I think that is the man my father, was, is, and will always be.....
(Ted Williams could not play golf either....)
I Remember all of those years growing up.....
Before cable television made eveything watchable....
Before everything was just too easy....
When my Father would take a stack of bank folders into his room, and listen to to Red Sox games on a cheap radio.....
Maybe it was a kind of twisted therapy....
But maybe, my father believed in his own world....
Rejecting a future he could not resist......
Even as his own world, died before his eyes......
Inflexible?
Definitely.
Afraid?
Most certainly.........
But belief does not compromise....
Belief is pure and strong......
It is not a thin reed....
Belief is, what it is......
Try to remember that, particulary, if your own beliefs, (if you have any), change like the Seasons........
Or you find yourself at a loss.......
When you wonder who you are......
So, boys and girls, if you are lucky enough to still have the "old man" around, and still kickin.....
Still able to give you that "look"......
And to make you feel like the child you are....
Give him a thought or two......
Chances are, he deserves a retrospective....
Chances are.....
He deserves.......
So very much more.......
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