I came into this world in 1949, a mere flicker of life amidst the portal to the West, Fort Worth. The good nuns who ran the hospital, those stern guardians of order, chose an unconventional method to usher me into my first cries, with a 12-inch wooden ruler upon my fragile backside rather than the customary spank from a soft hand. From that day forward, I held a quiet disdain for nuns, a sentiment my mother echoed with an understanding heart. I emerged into stark confusion—bright lights glaring above, towering figures in black robes scuttling about. A tiny stranger in a bewildering land devoid of any plan, I only wanted to know what the hell just happened and where I was.
I was a happy kid, or so I’m told. My routine was breakfast, playing until lunch, eating a baloney sandwich, washing it down with Kool-Aid, playing some more, eating fresh-baked cookies from Mrs. Mister’s kitchen, watching afternoon cartoons, taking a bath after supper, and going lights out—pretty mundane stuff.
My family rallied behind Roosevelt in the 1930s, their hearts giddy with hope for a better tomorrow. They believed with every fiber of their being that Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled this nation from the dark abyss of despair during the Great Depression, and perhaps he did in many ways. Pushing the buttons that led the country into World War Two with the Nazis and giving the checkered flag to spank the Japs. The Works Progress Administration sprang forth from his dream, and thousands of men and women found temporary refuge in constructing parks and carving streets in Fort Worth; each brick laid a testament to earning a paycheck. My father had a lovely singing voice, so he filled our home with a constant tempest of musical disdain aimed at Dwight Eisenhower from the first light of dawn until the sun sank low and I was fast under my covers. Eisenhower was a gentle figure, a soft old soul cradling a golf club like a weary king holding his lost crown tightly. Later in life, when I took to the sport, I learned he was a 3 handicapped and was a certified bad-ass who commanded our troops on D-Day.
I was too young to grasp the significance then, but amidst the familiar shouts and wailing, I began carving my political identity. To belong to this raucous, somewhat heathen brood, I learned to hurl adult insults at Eisenhower and shake my tiny fist in solidarity with my kin. It is a truth held dear — a family that goes full bore batshit crazy together stays together. We were a close-knit brood, vowing to all enter the mental hospital together if need be to prop up the sickest of the clan. My father was the first. Politics and his alcoholic mother got the better of his mind, and he was tied down and shocked like Ready Killowwat. He came out of the procedure a Republican, which caused his extended family to shrink back in disgust and horror. The doctors had taken a witty lunatic Democrat and turned him into a pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed professor of Ryan Street. His demeanor hadn’t changed much, but the burn marks on his temples never faded. I viewed him as a now sophisticated Frankenfather.
Thanks to my electrically converted Pop, I eventually forgot about old Dwight. I learned to read and write and took to my Big Cheif Tablet, hoping to make a mark, or at least a permanent stain, on this planet. Politics went by the wayside, and I lost interest in gnashing, wailing, and blaming fault. I was becoming a writer thanks to my favorite aunt, Norma, who diligently taught me to read and write before entering first grade. I was a bored child prone to fidgeting while daydreaming about Mark Twain and Micky Spillane while sitting at my tiny desk. I had no interest in the little people around me, uneducated booger eating feral children with no purpose.
When John Kennedy was elected president in 1961, I began reading Life Magazine, my mother’s favorite slick-paged rag. He was a nice-looking fellow with an elegant wife. My mother and her friends went limp, noodle-wobbly-legged when discussing Mr. and Mrs. Camalot. I didn’t get it until the Cuban missile crisis came about. He was willing to risk the population of America just to give Castro and Krushev a butt-whooping and the middle finger; “here Jackie, Hold my 80-year-old Scotch and soda and watch this shit”. JFK had some big ones, as attested by Marylin Monroe. All of us school kids knew we were about to be ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Teachers stepped up the nuclear drills, and we spent the better part of each school day hiding under our desks. Why? If the bomb incinerated our school building, then our tiny desk wasn’t going to protect us. That’s when I realized teachers were as stupid as the rest of us Neanderthal knuckle-dragging children.
When the lovely gentleman with the perfect hair took a headshot in downtown Dallas, Texas, I was like most of my kin and friends. We all felt terrible and mourned for a few days, but then it was “back to the basics of life;” Luckenbach, Texas, didn’t exist then, so we made do with Fort Worth.
My cousins and I were heavily into Brother Dave Gardner, the preacher turned comic. His albums were a bulging bag of witty, logical, and borderline racist comedy. America hadn’t learned quite yet to be so easily offended. Brother Dave’s favorite targets were Lyndon Baines Johnson and James Lewis, a fictional black character from the Deep South. LBJ was perhaps the most excellent Politicasterd crook in history, and by damn, he just had to be from the great state of Texas. We agreed; the lumbering goon from the hill country was as slimy as they come.
Around 1965, I began to form my own political beliefs. I was neither a lib nor a conservative, But a white flag on a long stick, wafting in the breeze. Heavily into surfing and playing rock music on my cheap Japanese guitar, I began to listen to the Beatles. I was told that some songs held mysterious political messages. When Sargent Pepper‘s Lonely Hearts Club Band debuted, My bandmates and I recorded the album on a Reel Reel tape machine and played it backward. After that, I was sure the four lads from Liverpool had been sent by Beelzebub to corrupt our nation’s youth. That’s around the same time our drummer, Little Spector, bought into the Hindu religion and found solace in Ravi Shankar and his melodious Sitar. It seemed I was the only one in the band with enough political knowledge to hold a riveting conversation with an adult.
The 1960s found me non-committal to a political party. The long hair and playing in a band were my disguise. Most of my friends and bandmates were in the bag for the liberal side of life; I was a relic, an uncommitted poof in the wind, although I dug Robert Kennedy and was just getting into his mantra when he followed his older brother to the Spirit In the Sky. Now, there was no choice, but “Little Richard” Nixon and his “Five O’clock World” beard shadow and sweaty upper lip creeped me out.
In 1976, I took a direct hit to the head from the mast while sailing my Hobie Cat 16-foot catamaran sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico off the island of Port Aransas. I was sailing by myself, which is not recommended, and was jibing downwind, which is also a no-no, when the mast caught the wind and reversed position, knocking me off the boat. I was wearing a diaper rig attached to the main mast, and that saved my life. What I do remember after the initial shock from that experience was that, like my father and his electrical conversion, I was now a Republican and have been ever since. I wonder if there is voting in Heaven?
Notes From The Cactus Patch 