Hear my laughter; see my tears

Isn't it funny how one small thing can trigger a wave of emotions?  A smell.  A touch.  A sound.  It is crazy how the mind works.

Today marks the anniversary of my dad's death.  He died 19 years ago today. I have blogged about my dad quite often and as you may have read, we didn't have a great relationship while he was on this earth.  Once I hit about 11 or 12, he didn't really want anything to do with me.  We barely talked and if he did have something to say, it was words of correction or instruction.  He may have given me words of encouragement, but had he....I sure don't remember.  Again, funny how the mind works.  Negativity bullies the positive and shoves it into a dark hole never to be remembered. 

So as I was sitting here today, I wanted to post on Face book a song my dad enjoyed, one of many.  I just wanted to post it to share a piece of who he was with my friends.  I looked on YouTube for some and nothing really stood out or I couldn't find what I was looking for.  Then I clicked on a Hank Williams Sr. song and the wave of emotion hit me like a tsunami.  It came out of nowhere.  I was fine all day, usually am since it has been so long, but hearing that song just caused all sorts of pain, and I wanted nothing more on this earth than to see my dad's face.  It doesn't matter how old I am, or what sort of relationship we had or even how long it has been - the ache of the sorrow of missing him never truly disappears.

So instead of dwelling on the sorrow or the pain or even the negativity, I wanted to share what I remember about dad that was positive, memories that bring a smile to my face....so here goes -

He liked fried egg sandwiches and hated tacos.  He loved chicken and dumplings and Little Debbie snack cakes (oatmeal pies in particular).  He had a sweet tooth but enjoyed an occasional cheese puff now and again.  He always wore shoes unless he was in bed and he always wore a white undershirt.  Whether it was winter or summer, he always wore the undershirt and a long sleeved flannel - and sometimes his old brown sweater.  He always smelled and mint tobacco (he gave up smoking but took to chewing Renegade tobacco).  He would always doze in his chair but by some act of God, would always be wide awake when you reached for the remote.  Then he would deny he was every asleep in the first place.  He always walked down our lane to the mailbox, every day and would pick up the trash and can along side the road about half a mile in either direction.  He and my mom never fought in front of me.  They raised their voices at each other one day and I swore they were going to get a divorce (haha).  He was a genius, I am sure.  He read at an unnatural speed and retained everything he read.  He loved Jeopardy and I would keep score when we watched it because I wanted nothing more than to beat him, which never happened.  I miss hearing the *tick tick tick* of his typewriting coming from the tiny room he called his office.  I miss hearing the ball game on the radio as he escaped to go listen to it and keep stats (not sure why he did that but my son does the exact same thing).  I still laugh at the fact that whenever I belched at the table, he would get so utterly disgusted and throw down his fork and say "For heaven's sake - unhinge your jaw like a snake why dontcha?".   I miss hearing him say "dadburnit".   I  miss the hot summer days in the garden (that he did entirely by manual labor) and the all day job of butchering chickens (ok, I don't miss that all too much).   I miss the sound of the ball game on the TV echoing through the house and dad talking to the players as if they could hear him.  I miss how he called my mom "Reet" (her name is Rita) and all us kids he called by a shortened version of our name (Tracy-Trace, Jeffery-Jeff, Robin-Rob, Billie-Bill and Misty-Miss).  I miss how he would go outside on toss the baseball with me.  I miss his voice.

I miss him.

But God is good.  God gave me a son that reminds me so much of my dad, it's scary.  His build is the same, his obsession with sports (when I don't ever, or ever have, had a sports game on in my home), his intelligence, his fascination with numbers and stats, his soft voice and gentle spirit and there are times where my son will do a mannerism or an expression that takes my breath away because it is my dad looking back at me. 

Then there are times when I just can't grasp the memories.  I can't remember what he looked like so I would stare at his pictures for a long time trying to remember, trying to grasp a tiny piece of him.  Then God would send him to me in a dream.  Granted, I know it isn't my dad in that dream but the dream is so real that I wake up thanking God for sending it to me.

I cannot wait to get to heaven. 

Therefore, in light of this day....I am going to post my favorite short story my dad wrote.  It is taken from his book "Hear My Laughter; See My Tears".  It was hard to choose just one. My dad had written a book of short stories, all based on true incidents of him growing up in the coal mines of Kentucky.  Enjoy.


Autumn always comes to the mountains of Eastern Kentucky on cat's feet, setting off silent explosions of brilliant colors that subtly change nature's face to one of breath-taking beauty.  As soft as a baby's sigh as it falls into untroubled slumber, autumn paints the hillsides with an artist's palette of vibrant colors and one can almost hear the fading heartbeats of summer.  In no other part of the world does autumn take on a more Tinkerbell-ish character of a playful sprite than in the rugged mountains of Eastern Kentucky.  It sprinkles wondrous magic dust over a part of the world that often cries so loudly for beauty.  It rumps up and down hillsides and deep into valleys so lonesome they cause tears to flood the eyes of sentimentalists.


It was in the midst of God's shower of colors that PeeWee Tallions and I decided to hop a "coal-drag" home from school and save our shoe leather.  It wasn't a spur of the moment impulse, mind you.  The idea of latching onto the side ladder of a slow moving coal car had been discussed hundreds of times during our evening treks from school to home.  Every time we'd almost talk ourselves into giving it a try, however, the fear of having to drag a wooden leg around for the next sixty or seventy years like old "Peg" Walker, and the discouraging images of getting our hides tanned if our folks ever found out always diverted our 12 year old bravados into safer conversations complete with bragging and ludicrous lies.


"Let's do'er today,' PeeWee said as we walked alongside the railroad tracks toward home one mid-October evening.


"Nah, its getting' kinda dark, and we might miss the ladder and fall under the trains wheels," I answered, hoping the last in a long line of excuses would serve to deter him.


"Ya turnin' yella, ain't ya?" he said, accusing me with his flashing brown eyes.


"I ain't yella!" I snapped, hoping to start a conversation about courage instead of having to prove it.


"Then, by dog, let's do'er.  If ya don't, ya gotta be yella-dog chicken," he said, sticking out his chin.


"Okay, okay but I'm only gonna do it this one time.  If my dad finds out about it, he'll give me a double dose of willer-switch tea," I said.


"Ya think mine won't?"


"Yeah, but my dad's bigger than yours."

"That don't mean nuthin'.  Anybody'll tell ya that Italian men are the hardest whuppers inna world," PeeWee countered.  He always had to come out on top of every comparative conversation.  I guess that was because he was only five feet tall, skinny as a hat pin and needed verbal victories to make him feel bigger.


"Wait!" he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a halt.  "Do ya hear it?"


"What?"

"The coal-drag.  It's comin'....hear it?"

I did but said I didn't.


"By dog, ya're 'bout as deef as a brick, ya know that?  Open ya big ears and listen.  Ya hear it now?"  he asked, highly annoyed.


I couldn't deny it again. Not far around the bend of the mountain behind us, the "chomp-chomp" chugging of a laboring locomotive grew louder and louder.  In a matter of seconds, it's shiny cow-catcher and belching smoke stack came into full view.  It was moving toward us at a pace a little faster than a brisk walk.


We stood knee-deep in dusty weeds alongside the tracks and waved at the striped hatted engineer like a couple of morons.  The burly man waved back and gave us a grin that split his coal-blackened face.


We stood side by side, counting the loaded cars as they crawled by.  When the twentieth car was almost upon us, PeeWee gigged me in the ribs with his elbow and yelled, "Let's do'er!"


It was alot easier than I imagined it would be.  PeeWee latched onto the front ladder and I grabbed the rear one.  Nothing to it, and it was great fun!  We were riding home at a nice, leisurely speed and all we had to do when we neared our homes was jump off and walk the remaining short distance.  Nobody'd ever be any the wiser.


As the coal-drag chugged along, however, it seemed to me that we were picking up speed.  Hoping it was my imagination, I looked down and discovered that my worst fears were confirmed.  The cross ties were slipping by at a much faster clip.  We'd sped up considerably.  No doubt about it.


"PeeWee, we're pickin' up speed!  Let's jump off!" I yelled.


"If ya do, ya're a yella-dog chicken!"  He yelled back.


The steel wheels were now clicking with a steady rhythm and the chilly wind whipped my thin jacket like a flag in a gale.  I looked down again and noted that the cross ties were now little more than a black blur.  The trees alongside the tracks dashed toward us at lightning speed.  We were now traveling much too fast to even think about jumping off and our houses were less than a half a mile ahead.


Now PeeWee was looking back at me out of frightened eyes and shaking his head from side to side.  I assumed that he was telling me not to jump.  He needn't have worried.  Jumping wouldn't have left us with enough bones intact to spin a yo-yo.  We were stuck to the side of that car until the train slowed...whenever and wherever that might be.  Both of us looked longingly as the train sped past our houses down in the bottom below the tracks.  I didn't know about PeeWee but I hoped my dad hadn't been looking out the kitchen window and spotted us hanging onto the side of the coal car like a couple of cockroaches stuck to the side of a wedding cake.


A mile or so beyond our houses and heading toward Hazard, I pointed upward indicating to PeeWee that we should climb up and sit atop the loaded car.  My hands were growing stiff, making it difficult to hang onto the ladder rung.  He nodded agreement and we inched our way up the ladders.  Crawling on our hands and knees across the sharp-edged coal, we went to the middle of the car and sat up.  After looking into each other's tightly-drawn and frightened faces for a couple of minutes, PeeWee's lower lip began to tremble and tears clouded his eyes.


"Don't ya dare start that PeeWee.  It's too late to bawl now," I said, my own voice stiff and choked.


"How we gonna get off'en this thing?  It jus' keeps goin' faster an' faster," he whined.


"We ain't 'til it slows down," I said.

"When will that be?  Lordy, we might wind up in Mexico or even Louisville."

"Ain't nuthin' we can do about it."

"But I'm cold."

"And what makes you think I ain't?"

It was bitter cold atop that gondola.  Darkness had all but fallen, bringing with it colder temperatures.  Frigid wind lashed at our thinly clad bodies and numbed our hands and faces.  PeeWee slammed both his hands between his legs in an effort to warm them and gave up trying to control his tears.  I, on the other hand, figured that the only thing that could possibly save us was a miracle, so I tried my hand at praying.


Seven miles down the line, the lights of Hazard appeared like dancing fireflies off in the distance ahead of us.  PeeWee and I were hoping for the same thing.


"Do ya reckon this thing'll stop in Hazard?" he asked, looking at me from behind a coal-blackened face made streaky by his wiping tears away.


"Maybe....let's hope so," I muttered and went back to praying.  Sure enough, the train began to slow down just outside of Hazard.  Just a little more and we'd be able to hope off.


"Come on.  Let's get back down the ladder so we'll be able to jump off if it slows down more," I said.


We scampered down the ladder like squirrels and waited for the train to slow down even more.  Very slowly, it did.


"Okay....jump!" I yelled to PeeWee.  He released his grip and leaped backwards, turning a complete backward somersault and rolling like a ball when he hit the ground.


Naturally, I followed suit but I didn't jump the way PeeWee had.  Instead, I lowered my feet until they hit the cinders along side the tracks and turned loose of the ladder rung.  In order to keep my balance, I had to run faster than I thought my legs could ever carry me.  As it turned out, they didn't carry me very far.  My feet got tangled and I took a tongue-biting belly-whopper upon the white bedrock alongside the tracks.  As I skidded forward on my belly, tiny red and white dots exploded before my eyes and I felt sizable portions of my skin covering my knees and elbows being sacrificed to all the gods of stupidity.  Finally, after an eternity of skidding across bedrock and razor-sharp cinders, I came to a grinding halt.


With every bone in my body aching, I crawled to my feet.  Even though I was able to stand, I was still certain that both my poor kneecaps were shattered.  They weren't, or course.  There just wasn't enough skin left on them to cover a golf ball.  Bleeding kneecaps and hands smarting from the cinder cuts notwithstanding, I made my way back to where PeeWee was sitting on the brown grass a few feet from the tracks.  Incredibly, he was laughing his head off!

"What's so funny?"  I asked, thinking that maybe he'd hit his head and would be a certified idiot for the rest of his life.


"By dog, we did'er, didn't we?  We rode that rascal," he laughed.


"And, by dog, I oughta kill ya for talkin' me into it.  What we done was stupid, an' we're gonna get our jackets warmed when we get home," I said, irritated by his goofy laughter.

"It was fun though, wudn't it?"


"Yeah, you'se havin' so much fun, it moved ya to tears," I deliberately badgered.


"I wudn't cryin'.  The wind was blowin' in my face and makin' my eyes water," he shrugged.


"And I'm gonna black'em if ya don't stop that lyin'.  Get up, we gotta walk back home," I said.


It was after midnight when PeeWee and I finally made it back to our houses.  My mother and father were sitting in the living room.  Dad in his rocking chair with pipe going and Mama crocheting a mile a minute.  Mama's mouth dropped like a trap door when I walked in, her expression a mixture of relief, shock and anger.  Dad just looked angry.


"Wouldja look what the cat drug in," he said in his quiet, firm voice.


I guess I did look a sight.  I was covered in coal dust, my jacket and pants were shredded at the knees and elbows and blotches of dried blood covered my clothes.  Getting hit by a coal truck couldn't have caused much more damage.


Mama laid her crocheting down and walked across the room to get a closer look at me.  "Are ya hurtin', son?" she asked.


"Skinned up a mite, an' I'm a little sore," I told her.


"Looks like ya been sortin' wildcats an' didn't get the job done," Dad said.  "Now what happened to ya? Let's hear it."


"Me an' PeeWee hopped a coal-drag," I said and proceeded to tell him the whole story.  PeeWee had suggested we tell everybody we'd been kidnapped and tortured by gangsters, but I wasn't about to allow him to get me any deeper in trouble than I already was.  I decided to tell the truth and take my medicine.


"Good lord, doncha know ya coulda got killed?" Dad said.


"I know it was stupid, Dad.  Ya want me to fetch the switch?"

"I don't think so," he answered.


Hope sprang upward inside me.  "Ain't ya gonna whup me?"

"Lord knows I oughta, but I ain't.  Looks to me like ya've learned a lesson an' been punished enough for your ignorance. I don't suspect a whuppin' would add much to what ya've already been through.  I'll tell ya this much, though.  If ya ever so much as think about pullin' such a stunt again, ya'd better give ya little heart to Jesus cause ya little behind is gonna belong to me.  Now clean ya'self up and go on to bed," he said.


After I'd washed off the coal dust and dried blood and was safely in my bed, I offered up thanks for having been saved twice in one night.  I figured God must like me an awful lot.

*Excerpt from Hear My Laughter, See My Tears
-Robert G. Back 1986