My Father
We’re driving. Through hayfields and cotton. Because daddy liked to drive. Because that’s what families used to do before smartphones. Because there was little else to do except to watch lead paint dry.
So we took drives.
Blue collar Americans like my family drove all the time. We drove on Christmas morning, after opening presents. Daddy fired up the family heap on the Fourth of July, before the fireworks. On my birthday, we all hopped in the fifth-hand station wagon and drove until the earth ran out.
We drove whenever slight boredom overtook my father. We drove especially on overcast days, when the sky looked like polished steel, when the air was chilly, when the smell of woodsmoke was in the air.
I’m not sure what driving accomplished. But gas was cheap. And the world was so big.
We were big automobile-singers, too. Daddy and I sang duets as he drove. He would start by singing: “Well, I looked over Jordan and what did I see?”
My part was to answer: “Coming for to carry me home!”
Whereupon he’d sing: “I see a band of angels, coming after me…!”
“Coming for to carry me home!”
I sang harmony. Which was no small chore when singing with my father. If you were going to sing with my old man, you had to give it all you had.
Because Daddy was deaf in his left ear. So he sang like a 180-decibel rocket launch. As a result, one thing I have never struggled with is quietness.
We’d sing until we reached some far flung filling station, way out in the sticks. We’d stop. We’d walk inside and see a man about a dog.
Daddy would ask the man at the counter about this and that. They’d laugh together. Shoot the bull.
People always liked my father. He always asked how their mothers were doing. Daddy always knew how to draw people out of themselves. He was just like that.
We could have been in Bangladesh, where nobody spoke English, and my father would have known everything about every so-and-so he met on the street. He was Mister Friendship.
If we stopped at one of those country-store-slash-gas-stations that served hot food, we’d get tater logs, pulled pork, fried pickles, or whatever. If it was one of those filling stations with no hot food, we would load up on black licorice.
My father was nuts about black licorice. Me, I could take it or leave it. I don’t hate licorice. I don’t love it. I’m licorice-Switzerland.
Frankly, I’ve never understood the appeal of black licorice. For starters, it’s not very sweet, and it tastes like NyQuil.
When our drive was finished, we’d simply turn the car around and drive back home. And that was all there was to it.
Our drives were uneventful. Pointless. Wasteful, even. You squandered gas, you stared at miles of foraging grass, and all you had to show for it was an empty bag of licorice.
But I still go for drives. All the time, actually. Especially on days like today. Overcast days. When the sky looks like steel. When the air smells of woodsmoke.
I drive. I eat licorice. I talk to gas station cashiers. And I remember a man who was an enthusiast of all things World War II. A man who was a disciple of military aircraft.
A man who once wanted to be a Navy pilot, but was rejected because he was deaf in his left ear.
A mischievous man with a troublemaking smile and a preference for cheap beer. A man who once told me, “Always obey your parents when they are present.” A man who was so troubled, so sad, so confused, that he ended everything. And he took half of me with him.
When I drive, I still hear my old man’s tenor voice singing. “...I see a band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home.”
And I smile. Because one morning, the angels finally did.