Family Stories - Part Two

This is the continuation of an earlier family story post (found just below).

My father had stories, too. I wonder if it’s an inherent part of being a male that makes you want to tell stories. My high school wrestling coach used to tell us all the time, “Twenty years from now, when you’re sitting in a bar, no one’s going to care how you did in Mascoutah or Cahokia or Alton. All they’re going to want to hear is ‘How’d you do at state?’” Even then I knew he was wrong. I was pretty sure no one would ever care about any of it. At best, some guy might listen in and offer up a “Huh, isn’t that something?” only to ensure that you’ll half-listen to his own lame story of supposed athletic prowess. But I guess he was right about one thing. We’ll always want to tell the stories.

Not a single one of my father’s stories were ever about a great accomplishment. Instead he told stories of angry sisters and even angrier commanding officers. Over the years he probably told me dozens and dozens of stories from his childhood but I can only remember a small handful now.

There was the time he and his brother John and cousin David went out into the woods. He grew up in Arkansas and, from what I imagined, was surrounded by thousands more trees than people. The three of them used to get into trouble all the time. They grew up in a time and place where kids seemingly just disappeared for the better part of each summer day. So long as they made it home for dinner in one piece there didn’t seem to be too much concern for where they had been or what they’d been doing. There were a whole host of stories that began this way, with them heading off into the woods. However, the only one I remember involved a snake. A really big snake. Unlike me, who grew up in a city and afraid of most living things, they were country boys and fearless. My uncle John reached down and snatched the snake up by the tail and proceeded to violently beat its head against a tree until it was dead. I can’t imagine why in the world he would do this other than to fight the boredom of growing up in rural Arkansas. Perhaps that’s why the story stays with me. Because I just can’t understand it. Years later, when I would sleep over with his son, my Uncle John would come in and set his black leather belt on a chair if we got too loud. It sat there all night. Long and limp, just like a dead black snake.

Another story that I enjoyed much more involved a carefully placed doll, a rocking chair, and a long piece of string. My Aunt Elaine had the misfortune of growing the only girl in a family of three boys. Although she was oldest, it did not shield her from what must have been years of cruel taunts and pranks. In this particular story she came into her bedroom one night only to find an unexpected form sitting in her rocking chair. Slowly, the chair began to rock – on its own – and she screamed. She tore out of the room in a panic and headed straight to my grandparents. All these stories ended with the boys getting into trouble but never seeming to care too much.

My dad also told of the time his company was ordered to stay out of the Mess Hall because it had just been mopped. They were only days away from boarding a plane for Vietnam and he decided he really needed a candy bar from the vending machine – in the Mess Hall. Sure enough, he was caught. His commanding officer not only reprimanded him but physically assaulted him in doing so. He wound up being held back from his flight because another officer had caught word of what had happened and was requesting an investigation. My dad wound up going later on another flight. What started as a funny story ended quite differently. Everyone on his original flight was killed.

The only other story I recall is that when he took my mother out on their first date they went to a restaurant so greasy that you slid right in through the door. At some point he looked at her and told her he was going to marry her. Given that he was rarely a serious guy I can only assume she thought he was joking. But he wasn’t.

And that’s it. My four stories. Well, there are actually fragments of a few others. He overslept and missed my birth… He also forgot, once, to give my mom a phone message. Someone in her family had died and she found out days later from someone else... He begged my grandparents for a trumpet. They went out to get him one and came back with a piano instead. He hated it and referred to it as “the trumpet.”

Looking through these few stories I remember, I realize now that none make him look all that great. Despite possessing all the kindness and patience in the world, the stories he told about himself generally (though not always) made him look like an idiot or a jerk. And it occurs to me that my own stories are much the same. Self-deprecating.

I wonder if you learn just as much about a person from the stories they choose to tell as from the stories themselves?