In the Living Years

He sported a Fedora and a blue pinstripe suit. He was a handsome man.

The suit, in 1968, was already 20 years old. Mom sent it with me to college in case I needed one for weddings and funerals.

I never knew what happened to my father’s hat. I never saw him wear it outside that wedding picture when he was 16—his and my Mom’s wedding. She was 21. She was beautiful.

The union was scandalous.

Contrary to what you might think, they didn’t have me until five years later, in 1950. And I might have been a mistake.

I may understand my father better when I reflect on him and his life now that I am 73. I wish I had this insight during his living years. Somehow, we mellow. Our perspective alters through years of maturing.

I always knew my father was a father, not a Dad. There is a difference in my mind: fathers contribute the sperm and uphold their responsibilities to raise their children. He was responsible. No one can deny that.

After his death, I found a letter addressed to me. He said he was not around because he wanted me to learn to be responsible and independent.

I forged his signature on a work permit application and went to work in high school. I paid for my school clothes, gas, and my fun stuff. As we say in the South, “I learnt the responsible and independent lessons well.”

I would go on to work 60 years before “retiring.”

In my opinion, Dads engage, encourage, inspire, lead, and, along with Moms, nourish and outwardly express love and affection. Mom was good at that. My father, not so.

My father didn’t know how to be a Dad because he only had a father. Again, my reflection.

Only once do I recall my father engaging with me as a Dad. He took me fishing at Railroad Lake late one summer evening when I was 13. I caught a large grass carp. He helped me land it. He seemed proud of the accomplishment.

Later that week, he moved to the Princeton Hotel at the depot. I visited him there once. A few days later, he moved in with a consort.

In the 1960s, as you might imagine, this was disgraceful, especially in a small town where everybody knows everybody’s business. I was 13 when all this started. He returned to the family home when I left for college in 1968.

I spent my high school years being a good kid and seeking father figures. I had some good ones, such as Mr. Bill Brown and Mr. Gid Shelby Pool. Later in life, I would adopt Mr. Jim Knipe and Col. L. B. Harper as surrogates.

My Mom cared for him all through his cancers and surgeries. By the end of his life, it seemed he had reconciled some things. He had overcome much of his manic depressiveness, a disorder I dealt with as well.

He and his brother Don became extremely close. He was mostly proper with my Mom and rarely hurt her feelings or ignored her. On the one occasion, I witnessed such behavior, I called him on it in front of the family. I never heard of it happening again.

To atone for his absence all those years, he insisted on helping pay for the lake property and the restoration of the 1850s cabin on Lake Barkley.

I saw him smile once when Kay and I announced she was pregnant. The pregnancy didn’t last, and I never discussed what happened or the sadness with him.

All things help us grow and learn. With time and reflection, our feelings change as we mature.

As Mike and the Mechanics say in their classic song, “If only we did things differently in our living years.”