A strange phenomena I live with is that since his death I have dreamt about him almost every night. He isn't the main subject of the dream usually, but he is there. I'm with him, or he is with me, or he is around in the dream somewhere. Kind of interesting. The dreams are NEVER sad or full of pathos. The opposite. I'm usually glad to hang out with him. He is usually driving, or telling me a story, or we are watching someone or something. Anyway, ol' Dad. He's still around! ha!
My father was an interesting man. I will try my best to characterize him here.
He was pretty complex in many ways, yet simple in other ways. He was VERY smart. Very quick witted. Funny, silly, clever, and competitive. He had a very bad temper. He was very loving and quite compassionate. He was considerate, and inconsiderate in equal measures based on the situation. He was extremely devoted to his Christian faith, loved Jesus, loved the Bible, and loved sports (baseball, football, boxing). he was big, strong, intimidating as Hell, and had an active and curious mind.
He loved to eat. He loved sweets (candy, ice cream, and snacks). His teeth took a beating but he had all of his teeth to the end. Yeah, he had his share of dental problems but for the most part he had all his teeth to the end. Here's a funny little thing. I never one time, ever, saw my dad brushing his teeth. Never. I'm not saying he didn't brush his teeth. I just never saw him do it. I did a couple times see him rub his teeth with wadded up toilet paper. He'd vigorously rub all his front teeth up and down and side to side. He never had bad breath, so he was doing something right.
He loved pranks and practical jokes. I mean he absolutely LOVED that. He would watch prank videos endlessly. He loved watching people be confused, and or baffled, startled, and scared.
As previously alluded to, he spent long hours studying his Bible. He was a fiercely decent man. He never cursed, and swore only on extremely rare occasions, when he had become incensed by something.
Like I said, he had a TERRIBLE temper. He would blow his stack in extremely loud and volatile ways. Yet he never physically abused us. He would yell, tirade, lecture, and scream all while pacing back and forth. When he did this it was truly scary. As he was always large, and had a booming deep commanding voice.
He was a radio announcer for over 30 years. For some reason, reasons I'll never understand, he chose of ALL fields possible, a career in radio broadcasting. And damn, that career was not good to him. he was a DJ, a term I think he was very proud of. He worked at various radio stations KITY, KITE, KONO, KQXT, KEXL, KSLR... to name a few. As a kid my mom would say "Listen, that's your daddy on the radio". Sure enough my dad's voice would be emanating from the speakers. I thought this was great during those long days before I attended school, when it was just me and Mom at home. Mom would listen to him on the radio. That's pretty cool.
He was big into sports (Baseball, football, golf). Fiercely competitive. He was a standout sports star in his little town of Meridian Texas (up near Waco). He had the newspaper clippings to prove it.
He loved to laugh. He did voices, comedy skits, routines, and liked to make people laugh. He loved Benny Hill. Probably his most all time favorite humor. Bawdy, silly, and hilarious.
He loved music and was actually a very good singer in his own right. He was never much of a musician however, he could play the Ukulele pretty well. He LOVED to sing and was always singing around the house. He had several songs he would routinely sing.
He loved short wave radio. He was really into that for a long time. I never actually understood what exactly "short wave radio" was even though I had him explain it to me a few times. Basically he listened to radio stations from around the world. Of course with the rise of the internet all that was made superfluous. But for a while he would brag about tuning in radio stations from places like Africa and England. He'd call me in and say "Hear that?" I'd listen and I'd hear a voice speaking a strange unknown language. "That's cool." I'd say. Deep down I thought it really was strange and cool to be able to hear radio broadcasts from that far away. For those of us born before computers the world always seemed so huge. Now, of course, it isn't. Email, social media, cable TV... it's a tiny world now. But my dad loved that.
He also got really into CB radio. In an age before cell phones being able to communicate from the car while driving was EXTREMELY cool. Dad got into that CB stuff in the 70's big time. It was a big fad back then. Dad, of course went all in.
Hobbies: The Flying Wing incident. Massive crash out. Dad had many other hobbies too. He'd get really into stuff, get into like crazy, and then abandon it usually forever. One thing he did that with was motorized airplanes. You'd start them. They actually ran on fuel. we had one of these:
Some of them, you'd put together using balsa wood model kits. Then paint them. Then attach a motor.
Then it would fly in a circle attached to a line. You'd turn around and around and around while watching your little plane flying.
Like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qYRukK82SA0?feature=share
Dad made a Japanese Zero, and had a Messerschmidt plane (made of plastic). I still remember the smell of the fuel. They were hard to land and most of the time they simply crashed. One day dad decided to fly on he made called a "flying wing". It was his big project. He had put his heart and soul into it. It was a work of art. He had painted it and got a HUGE motor for it. A powerful motor that he had to start with a "chicken stick" which was a stick you used to start it so it wouldn't break your finger. We all went up to Dellview Elementary into a big field with the express purpose of flying that sucker. It was big. About 3 feet across. Long story short, he crashed it into smithereens. He got really angry. It seemed Randy was blamed. Perhaps for not launching the thing properly or whatever. Dad went nuts. He had never ever been that angry. He was basically out of control. It was a big event in our lives. Dad was at an emotional rock bottom. Out of work, broke, and with his hobby now reduced to garbage. Trust me when I tell you, it was the low point. For a moment it looked like he was leaving. He finally calmed down and the whole episode was ignored. I'm pretty sure he never flew one of those things ever again. It's kind of funny my dad had really bad luck with stuff like planes. One time I went and bought him a legit remote controlled plane for his birthday. It cost like $100. Looked like this.
In the 80's he really got into metal detecting. He bought several metal detectors and all the tools to go with it. He found a buttload of coins and rings and stuff. He actually got pretty good at it. Man he was really into it. He had one's that looked like this:
He had several other kinds too. Like everything, his interest eventually waned and he moved on to other interests. His next major hobby was golf.
From the time he was 60 until around 75 or so, he was really into playing golf.
He made golf clubs, he went to school in order to learn that particular skill, and he made all of us some golf clubs. He did a really good job. And he became a pretty decent golfer. We played at Brackenridge, Riverside, Willow Springs, Mission Del Lago, Alamo Golf Course, Rebecca Creek, Pecan Valley... you name it, we played it. He hit a hole in one once at Olmos Basin on a 120 yard par 3. So did I (at Carmack on a 160 yard par 3). I think he and I were the only ones that hit aces. Anyway we had some really good times and some really bad times too. Dad was kind of a jerk to play with sometimes. He had a great vision of making and selling golf clubs for a living, but never was able to. Oh well.
He liked cars. Though he never ever liked to actually work on cars. As in auto mechanic work. He drove some real bombs in his day. Oddly enough, he was prone to having the occasional, pretty bad car wreck. He had several pretty decent smack-ups. Since he hated wearing his seat-belt he would always get badly injured. Broken ribs, a concussion, etc.
In 1995 he got "fired" from radio. He never really worked again after that. He had a couple retail jobs, but that was it. The circumstances surrounding that deeply hurtful event were strange and painful. He had finally been promoted to General Manager, a position he had coveted for many years but never got. Finally he got it, and within a couple weeks he was "let go". Sad. He never recovered from that and refused to go back into radio. Which sucks because he could have made good money, but he refused to deal with it. Mom went into a depression tail-spin and eventually died in 2003. Fate decided that they would both be fired from their jobs in the same year. They went from making almost 90,000 a year (combined income) to ZERO. After about 4 years they were stone broke. Mom declined until she eventually died tired, broken, depressed, and hopeless. They had been married for 46 years. Dad was never the same, but he managed to somehow live another 19 years without her.
Shortly after he got fired, he got GERD (in 1996), and looked like death warmed over. We all thought he was dying. He went from a robust 260 lbs. down to 190. He looked gaunt and weak. He finally fought his way out of it, but it was pretty bad.
He liked pets. Dogs mostly. Funny thing about Dad was he had a penchant for euthanizing our sick or dying pets with a .22 caliber rifle. He would "put them down". Most of our pets would die of old age. He liked cats and had a close relationship with many cats over the years especially Milo whom he greatly loved. Shooter too. In his later years he got a pug named Daisy. She eventually died and he got another pug named Rosy. Rosy was different that Daisy. Daisy was sweet and docile. Rosy was wild and rambunctious. We all had a love/hate relationship with Rosy. She was a little stinker. In fact, oddly enough she was the ultimate cause of my Dad's death. She was acting up one day and he tried kicking her, lost his balance, fell backwards and cracked his spine (broken back). From that day on he was in constant pain and misery. He slowly got worse and worse over the following year and eventually stopped eating dying of malnutrition in hospice care. Such a sad end to a noble man.
My dad had many crazy incidents he was a part of in his life over the years. I was enamored with him. Thought he was the "bees knees" as they say. I think I actually just had Stockholm Syndrome. Let me tell you some of his greatest hits.
The Motor cycle crash incident, in which he destroyed my 1983 Honda motorcycle. In 2011 or so, I managed to bring one of my lifelong dreams to life. I purchased a 1983 Honda 500 Motorcycle. It was a really nice cycle. It was red. It was retro. It was cool. I loved it. I only had it for a little while because my old dad crashed it. He asked to ride it and stupidly I let him. Because of that momentary lapse in reason and sanity he rode it off having never ridden a motorcycle before in his life. He got confused hit the gas, forgot about the brake, and hit the curb decimating the forks. He got hurt. He was 70 something and when he hit the curb he flipped ass over elbow over the handlebars landing like a stunt man in someone's yard. He effed up his legs. He barely missed a fire hydrant. Anyway he was banged up badly. Almost as bad as my cycle which was screwed and I never rode it again. A total loss. Did he ever apologize for that? No. Did he ever express concern over the loss of my cycle? No. I had made payments on it. Bought it from Andy Schoffer on Fredericksburg Road. Finally paid it off. It looked like this:
In his later years he tried to "rescue" Randy and Carol, but it's damn hard to do that when you make $1,200 a month. He had all his life to prepare for retirement and did not accomplish that goal. He lived check to check right up until the end, and left this world deeply in debt.
My old dad was a complex and interesting man. I loved him. But he also frustrated me greatly. He taught me a lot about the Bible. I probably would not be a Christian if it wasn't for him. He used to sit in the tub, with a board he had constructed, with his typewriter, his books, his Bibles, etc. there and he would study and study and study. A lot of times he would call me in and share the knowledge that he had learned with me. Wonderful stuff. I believe he was saved because he often said to me, about salvation: It isn't about what we do, it's about what He (Jesus) did. True true. I would say that his dedication to the word of God and his willingness to share that with me is his greatest legacy. But he said something to me when he was an old guy that bugged me. One time he said to me, "Son, did you know that I don't sin." I chuckled thinking he was joking. He wasn't. He said, "I'm serious. I don't sin. Tell me a sin that I commit." and of course I thought of several things... (ha!), but I just dummied up. He further said, "I'm an old man, I just am here at home, by myself, so... I really never sin." This kind of bothered me. Now, he never murdered anyone, or raped anyone, or committed theft, or any of the big sins. But ALL behavior that falls short of God's perfection is sin. He HAD to have known this. I KNOW he knew this. So why did he tell me that? Like I said, it bothered me. I think in his old age he started to lose some of his faculties. It happens. He didn't get really bad, but I noticed he was losing some of his mental acuity.
Anyway, I loved my Dad. Three years gone.
