Neanderpundit

the lens of time does refocus things. Dad was my nemesis when I was a kid, and that’s the way of the world. I wanted to make nitroglycerine, he put the kibosh on that. I wanted to nair several of the neighborhood cats- even saved the money and bought the nair- no dice. I wanted to give the dog a mowhawk- OK, I DID give the dog a mowhawk, but I got my ass whipped for it… Anyway, the point is, I look at al the shit I wanted to do, tried to do, tried to get away with, and all the times dad thwarted me. he seemed to have a sixth sense about the type of trouble I would get into, up to and including collecting shot and rock salt in disagreements over the ownership of produce. Sometimes the shot got dug out. Sometimes the rock salt sat there and dissolved, and was a long term painful reminder as to why I shouldn’t have been coveting the watermelons in that specific field in the first place.

Anyway, as time goes on, I look back at those moments and think less and less about the asswhippings,etc., because I have now well and truly learned the lessons they taught. I can think of them as much needed reinforcements. On the extra hand, I can think more clearly of the good moments, which I do, a great deal.

One such moment happened on a cool afternoon like today, not long after I got my driver’s license. Dad had just come out of one of his many surgeries, and he was sitting around the house grousing because he couldn’t drive. “Where do you want to go anyway?” I asked him. ‘hell, i don’t know. Maybe I’d like to go fishing” so I said hell, let’s do it. We hopped in his truck, me driving, drove down to lake shaffer in Monticello Indiana, a couple hours drive. I was off for a couple days, we both had valid licenses. Dad had just had surgery on his left arm- he’d had an infection in the bone marrow that after scraping it al out had left his humerus eggshell thin. He couldn’t do much besides reel in with it, and since he had a baitcasting reel I loaned him a spinner. That way he could cast with his right arm and just reel with his left, not put too much strain on it.

We stood on dry stones below the dam and cast out into the river. We didn’t catch a lot of fish, but we caught a few, and we sat on the shore frying them in a pan over a little primus stove. Pop had a beer, though he wasn’t suposed to, and I drank a Doctor pepper from a bottle. We hardly talked the whole time. The image of dad standing on those rocks, his pipe bit in his mouth and the aroma of fivestar surrounding him, ballcap on his head,reeling in palm sized bluegills and rebaiting his hook… The memories that count, the true memories, the real memories; they come shining through at the moments we least expect.

I try hard not to be as absent as Dad was, he had a job schedule and a private life that excluded him from being home very much. Most of the time when we were together we were working together, fixing someone’s car, fence, roof, remodeling the school dorms, etc. The moments we had together just he and I have been lost a long time. Now, the history of my misspent youth fades and those times snap into focus- the day’s stubble of his beard, the smell of that pipe, the way he struck a kitchen match on the seam of his Dickies. i can see them now, more clearly than ever before. Sometimes I can even write about those things without going insane with the pain of having lost him. I also am more aware of the times I don’t spend with the oglet, and try to stretch them.

Last week I had another of those moments, and when i did, I got in my car and drove over to mom’s to give her a big hug. I think she thought i was nuts. I’m glad these memories are coming back now, when i can try to write them with some level of eloquence. I’m glad I have these moments to remind me to appreciate those i have yet.

On the way home, dad slept with his head up against the corner of ther truck’s cab. I took the pipe out of his hand lest he burn himself, and as it was darkening, I could see it had a cherry there yet, I put it to my lips and drew a big deep draw, pulled the rough smoke into my lungs, held it there a bit, exhaled it slowly through my nose to catch every nuance of the aroma. I put the pipe in the ashtray and drove the rest of the way home.

Prompted by this post from Freddie:

A lot of years ago, in the house out in Cedar-Tuckey, we developed a wasp problem. And when i say problem, I mean there were six neighborhood kids allergic unto death to the little bastards. So when they decided to build one of their papery nests on our eaves, dad did what he knew best to do.

We knew a lot of people in the refrigeration business those days and it was not uncommon for us to end up with an extra R24 tank once in a while. Dad simply took gloves, unwound some copper tubing, connected it to the R-24 tank, and emptied the whole thing into the hornet’s nest. he then climbed up the ladder and knocked the whole shit and caboodle down.

We put it in an old asphalt bucket.

Now, a lot of people don’t know this about wasps, but they will survive a brief freeze. In fact, a lot of them can overwinter.

We had a particular guy in the neighborhood who was a revolviong asshole. A revolving asshole is a guy, who, no matter which way you look at him, is an asshole. So in the night, I put the asphalt bucket of frozen wasps on his back porch.

We never did get to see him open it, but we did watch him walk around the yard with his face swoll up to look like he had gigantic gumboils. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Now, I like white castle. Not an admission I would make to a lot of people, but I can eat those fuckers. Ten sack? cakewalk. I have, most of the time, chosen to avoid the “plain” burgers because without the cheese to latch onto the walls of my intestines, the little bastards go through at mach 7. So cheeseburgers it is, and while I only eat the fuckers once in a great while, maybe twice a year, I do enjoy the diversion.

One of my favorite white castle memories, was coming down off a three day drunk after a spectacularly painful breakup. I stayed in that bottle a longass time, before I crawled out, and when I did, I was hungry.

At three AM, the only choices you have are home cooking, and White Castle. Oh, sure, you can hit a convenience store and nuke a burrito, or sling one of the petrified hotdogs on the electric griller thingy, but there’s nothing like having ten small, soft bunned cheeseburgers with fresh grilled onions shoved at you out of a drive up window. So my roomie and i, (he being the designated driver) stopped at White Castle and got two ten packs, a couple of shakes, some fries, and a container each of clam strips. (*the clam strips are for the trip home) We sit and eat in front of the TV, a pile of empties accumulating on the floor between us.

Next morning, whcih happened to be a saturday, we dragged ourselves out of bed in time to catch MST3k, and eat whatever hash I managed to sling saturdays, my cooking utensils consisting mostly of a wok and a waffle iron.

About ten seconds into Dr Clayton Forrester’s opening monologue, I got the signal: SHIT BEGINNING IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO… and off I ran. I was thankful that I had only managed to slip into a housecoat over my drawers, and I barely made the seat.

The combination of the Crown I’d been drinking and the cheese sliders was a perfect recipe for colon cleansing. I shat things I don’t think were, strictly speaking, food. Brake pads? how’d those get in there? but the most interesting part was that it all formed a continuous, ropey string. “Dude”, I said to the roomie “cjeck this out” we were used to grossing one another out, so he came running.. “it looks just like a funnelcake!”

Now, as anyone who has eaten white castle knows, the passage through the human digestive systemchanges only the color and the texture of White castles, the aroma remains literally unchanged. The combination of nasty smell and ropey funnelcake appearance pushed my already queasy (he’d been drinking with me) roomie over the edge, and he sprayed most of his breakfast all over me, the toilet, the bathroom floor, the plastic shower curtain, and a plastic statue of Elvis that I have still.

I’m sometimes surprised he still talks to me.