Chapter 19

“At the Movies”

    I don’t associate with all that many people who are big moviegoers. Cousin Claudia said the last time she went to the movies “Midnight Cowboy” was showing. She said that she and her husband thought it was a Western. The experience soured her on all movies.

    Hey, I saw “Midnight Cowboy” too, but I didn’t let it ruin the theatre experience fo me. When it got an Academy Award for Best Picture it did cause me to question life as I knew it, but it didn’t diminish my desire to go to the movie. I think it had to do with DNA. When I was a kid, I didn’t know much about chromosomes and stuff like that. Today, I’m practically a geneticist. I’ve got it down.

    In researching letters, diaries, memories for this book, I have determined that I got my love for the movies from Dad. I’d show you the math and diagrams, but would much rather just tell you the story.

    Among the best ideas Dad ever had in his entire life was to occasionally take Dennis and me to downtown Houston to catch a movie at either The Metropolitan or The Majestic Theatres. I don’t know what got into him. The Capitan was right down the road. Great movie house. Built in around 1950 in that old opulent ‘20s style with the balcony and weird paintings on the wall and a plush curtain. The Capitan was great… for the common man.

    But, Dad, when he was in the best mood ever, would find Dennis and me and ask us the stupidest question ever asked. “Do you boys want to go downtown to see a movie?” It was like Christmas in summer. We even wore our church clothes. We were going uptown, just Dad, Dennis and me. Of course, Lynda, Larry and Susan were grown and out of the house. When you moved out of the house, you were pretty much missed out on Dad paying for stuff.

    Downtown Houston was pretty much like I expected Mars or Venus to be. I was just completely out of my environment. A different world. Buildings so tall that I got scared when I looked straight up. And, we even parked in a building. Just bizarre as it could be. If you parked in a building in Pasadena, you had to go through a wall. Not, so in Houston. They had buildings where cars could stay.

    Before the movie Dad always took us to LC Cafeteria for lunch. LC was like a Wyatts or Luby’s or Furr’s or Piccadilly’s or—  I’ve got nothing else. Please, nod like recognize one of these places.

    Dad even let us get a dessert… and it wasn’t even our birthdays. I remember once Dennis and I both got lemon pie. Somebody did something weird to it. It tasted like soap. And, I knew what soap tasted like. The weird thing about bad pie is the fact that you remember it. I remember two pie experiences in my life. One was the lemon soap pie. The other was chocolate. Landed right on top of Dad. Remind me to share later. I’ll try to work it into the next chapter.

    Dad never rushed us through lunch. Never said, “Hurry up, guys, we’ve got to get to the movie before it starts. We never heard that because Dad never knew when the movie started. We just showed up when we got there. The person in the ticket booth had no problem selling you a ticket for a movie that had been on for an hour or more. During our outings to The Metropolitan and The Majestic, we never once got to see the first of a movie first. We’d enter, Dad would get us each a popcorn and soda pop, then we’d stumble into the dark auditorium and feel our way to seats on the right side. Remember, Dad saw best out of his left eye, so we sat on the right...  I suppose so he didn’t have to turn his head too far. I never really came to grips with the reasoning.

    Oh, and this was before stadium seating and steeply slanted floors. Back then, theatre seating was designed by the same people who designed church auditoriums. They apparently seldom went to church or the theatre. Just never imagined anyone mike take the seat right in front of you and block your vision. If I went back in time, I wouldn’t be able to add much to society in the way technological advances, but I could sure give ‘em lyrics to some great songs, and I could tell ‘em to slant the floors of their auditorium and  set the stage or screen up higher. Jim-a-neee! That’s what Mom used to say. If it can’t be attributed to a Disney cricket, I have no idea where she got it.

    Okay, so we’re back to the movie. When we sat down, we had no idea how far into the movie we were. Could be 10 minutes are an hour. What’d we’d do is watch the end of the movie and then stay planted till it started up again. Oh, and this was a time before clean up people entered the room and swept up all the popcorn and spilled drinks. Back then they only did that at the end of the day, if at all. The movie would end, and five minutes later, the next would crank up. And, you wanna know what’s really stupid? We weren’t the only ones who came into the middle of the movie. I don’t know what the deal was back then. During a movie, there’d be people getting up and leaving all during the thing. They’d recognize the part they came in on, and then just leave. Life back then was just weird as it could be.

    Like everyone else, we generally left after catching up to the part where we came in. But, for the special movies we’d watch the whole thing from start to finish. Red River,  High Noon, The Searchers…  Oh, and Shane comes to mind. Dad loved that movie. We came in when Shane and all the small ranchers came into town to buy supplies, and Shane got in the fight with Ben Johnson and all the other Ryker guys. But, we didn’t leave at that point. We may have even seen it two complete times.

    I always felt bad that Jill didn’t get to go to the movie with us. It had to be because she too young and she was a girl. Being a girl was a big downer back then, especially if you had four brothers.

I never felt bad that Alan couldn’t go with us. He was just a little squirt. He wouldn’t even appreciate a movie. Oh, he’d like to go, but he wouldn’t pay attention. Dad wasn’t going to fork over money for a meal and a ticket to someone who couldn’t pay attention. Who can blame him?

Now that I think of it, there was a time when Dad took all four of us younger kids to the movie. It was on a Sunday… which was weird, because we never went to the movie on a Sunday. It was unscriptural. Bound to have been. But, sure enough, one Sunday after church Dad asked if we wanted him to take us to the movie. He said he was going to drop us off and pick us up when it ended.

At the time I was flabbergasted. We all were. A Sunday movie? Hey, don’t ask questions, just go with it. So we piled into the car and Dad headed to the Capitan. That’s where “The Ten Commandments.” During the drive, Dennis mentioned that “The Lost World was showing at ”The Longs” down the road from the Capitan. The Lost World! Dinosaurs. We loved dinosaurs. Dad didn’t care. He wanted us to see “The Ten Commandments.” Told us it would be more exciting and religious and that, it being a Sunday we should see it.

“Okay, Dad, if that’s what you want us to see.” We told him something like that. Said it in a way that let him know how disappointed we were. When we got to the theatre, we were all ready to get out of the car, but Dad stopped us. “Okay, okay. You can see the stupid dinosaurs. And, he drove us to The Longs.”

Boy, did we all wish we had gone to see the Moses movie. “The Lost World” wasn’t even a movie. It was documentary thing like might see at school. And, it lasted only a little over an hour. And, that’s all that was on. No three shows with cartoons and previews. We ended up calling Dad was sooner than we thought we would.

Dad wasn’t surprised by the call, though. No, he knew all along that the dinosaur movie was a short one. It didn’t hit me till I was married what was really going on in Dad’s mind that day. You see “The Ten Commandments” was almost four hours long. That would’ve been four hours that Dad and Mom would’ve had to themselves. No kids in the house on a Sunday. One can only imagine what they might do with their time. A young Mark couldn’t imagine, but someone else might have.

We eventually did get to see “The Ten Commandments,” but that didn’t do Dad much good. At that point he probably didn’t care one way or the other. Kids. They can really wreck stuff.


Of course, back then, all movies were not shown indoors. See where I’m going with this? You bet ya. We’re headed for the Drive-in. We’d finish supper on a Friday or Saturday evening, and Dad would say, “What would ya’ll think about going to the Drive-in?” What would we think? What would we think? Good grief, Daddy, we’re already there. I mean we’re sitting here at the kitchen table, but our minds are aat the Drive-in. Yea, Daddy! Give me five! On the downside! – No we never said stuff like that, but I sure wish we would’ve.

For a dad to pile his family into a car and head off to an outdoor theatre to see two or three movies, a few previews and some cartoons… well, he’d hafta be nuts. But, that’s what Dad did, and we loved him for it.

A visit to the Drive-in had a lot going against it. It was usually hot as all get out. And mosquitoes. You had to ignite one of those green PIC spiral things to fog away the stinging demons. The stuff was like a really bad smelling incense. And, where do you set the thing in a car? Mom usually put it on the dashboard in front of her. Oh, how that woman sacrificed.

To this day, there have been no studies done to see what inhaling PIC smoke did to your lungs. Some have said that the smoke actually served as an antidote for the tons of DDT we inhaled while chasing the bugman. Of course, I don’t remember Mom chasing the bugman all that many times. One or two, maybe. – What? The bugman? Oh, the guy in the jeep with the giant drum of DDT in the back, who would drive around the neighborhood and release a giant fog of the stuff. It was giant, I’m telling you. You couldn’t even see the hood of the parked car you just ran into. We tripped over garbage cans, bicycles, tricycles, Volvos, kid brothers… We straddled trees, telephone poles, street signs… All for the purpose of running with reckless abandon in a fog of poison. And, we’re still alive. Hey, I can’t believe it either.

By the way, back to PIC, today there are only six people in the country who know what the acronym PIC stands for. I’m not one of them. I’d be really disappointed to learn it stood for “Place in car?” That’s just not inventive enough.

So, we had mosquitoes and heat. Boy, summer drive-in outings were killers. We loved ‘em, too. Hey, it was something big to do. Some of the lousiest movies I ever saw were at the drive-in. Of course, at the time, I had no idea they were that bad. Did I mention earlier that we used to watch “The Laurence Welk Show?” Hey, we had a lot of tolerance for hooha back then.

On most drive-in nights, Dad would let us kids go to the seating area near the concession stand. Of course, we waited till we had eaten all the popcorn Mom had popped for us. A grocery bag full of the stuff. Popcorn and spilled Kool Aid was all over the backseat. You’ve got to understand that this was before floormats. Hadn’t been invented yet. The floors of every car we ever had was nothing more than black rubber glued to the metal floor. You could’ve sprayed the car out with a garden hose and not messed up much.

You’re not going to believe this, but a time or two, Mom fried up a bunch of chicken and we ate it in the car during the movies. I’m not joking. Fried Chicken, popcorn and Kool Aid. When we left the car to go up front, we were four greasy kids with purple lips. – “Hey, look! Those kids had chicken! And, grape Kool-Aid! Let’s kill ‘em!”

Most of the time Jill and Alan played on the swing set that was set up just below the giant movie screen. Occasionally, I did too, but you don’t have to spread that around. Dennis and I usually sat in the old wooden chairs that were screwed into the concrete patio. We’d sit there and watch the moths fly through the projector’s ever expanding light ray. But, most of the time we watched the movie.

If you’ve never heard the sound of a drive-in movie, you just haven’t lived. The speakers set up for the cars were connected to short, frayed wires. You’d hafta to roll your window part way up to get the little curved slot to fit on the window. The speaker was a heavy, gray, box with a dial and slits at the bottom. That’s where the sound came out. If you stuck an empty green bean can over your mouth and yelled into it, that’s pretty much the sound that came out of the speakers. I used to do that a lot. Anyway, back then, we could still understand most of the dialog that came out of the speaker. Today? I couldn’t come close.

The speakers by the concession stand were no better. Just bigger. If there was a fast talker on the screen, you might as well forget about it. “Wha, wah, wuh, wah? Wum, wum, wha, wha, wha…” Pretty cool stuff.

The biggest travesty to mankind, when I was a kid, was previews. I loved ‘em, but they were hyped beyond all reason. Did you know that the previews only showed the real exciting parts of a movie? Well they did. Every third preview had a guy in a gorilla suit. He was all over the place killing people. Didn’t bother stooping down like a real ape. He just walked around like he was a menacing thug on a visit to a hotel.

Then there were Martians and zombies and brains in fishbowls. Again, pretty cool stuff. Western previews were always good. The guy who did the voices back then didn’t talk in a low whisper like they do today. The voice of the previews was way excited. Acted like he had not only seen the movies, but was in ‘em. Made me want to come back and see what all the fuss was about.

Turned out, the previews were the only exciting part. The rest of movies were generally snoozers. And, the preview guy didn’t seem to mind at all that he was selling a load of horse hockey. I always felt that grownups should taken advantage of kids like that. Made me feel cheap.

And, speaking of feeling stuff, by the time the second movie was over, Dennis and I were pretty well spent. Jill and Alan had already headed back to the car. Dennis or me had to escort ‘em back, ‘cause they couldn’t remember where we parked. Couldn’t remember spit.

When Dennis and I finally made it back to the car ourselves, we were pretty well dead to the world. We had to shove Jill and Alan to the middle of the backseat. Mom had been ready to go home after the first movie. The second movie was generally the best one. They saved the worst for third. I’m not sure Dad ever caught onto that. He’d want to stay till the bitter end.

I don’t know. Maybe they saved the sexiest movie for last. I only remember seeing part of one. It was about guys on motorcycles riding around being mean. Not mean enough to keep me awake. Just pushing people around kind of stuff.

The next thing I knew, Dad was waking Dennis, and telling him to put the speaker back on the pole. Dennis always got to do the neat stuff. Dad would then navigate the car around the poles and over the humps in an attempt to get ahead of all the other cars. Pretty exciting stuff. If someone had invented door extensions for cars, Dad would’ve been stiff-arming drivers right and left. He didn’t wait well. Oh, and I might add that Dad never drove off with the speaker still hanging on the back window. Some people did that, you know? I never saw it happen, but I sure saw the results of it. There were always an assortment of speakerless poles. Not mute Polish people, mind you. That’d be silly. 

I don’t think any of us ever arrived home awake. Any of us kids. Dad probably stayed awake for most of the drive. The sudden stop in the driveway usually woke me up. Dennis and I each had a window seat, so we’d ease the door open and stagger out of the car. Our rears would be covered in popcorn. Mom would reach into the back and grab Alan, and Dad would get Jill and they’d carry the little twerps into the house and put ‘em in bed.

Dad had a good sense of humor a lot of the time, but I was usually afraid to test it. Just once I wanted to say, “Hey, Daddy. After you get Jill in, how about coming back for me? I don’t think I’m gonna make it.” It’s one of the few hundred things I wish I had said to Dad. He would’ve probably laughed. How could he not?

The ol’ drive-in experience is one of few childhood adventures that I don’t care to relive. The thought of going was always fun. It was the “after that” part that generally stunk on ice. By the time you make it home, you’ve sworn off the drive-in… until next payday. – “Hey, who wants to go to the drive-in?” – “Yea, Daddy! Who’s the man? You’re the man. Oh, yes you are!”

Yeah, that’s something I wish I had said to him. It might’ve gotten me a stint in military school, but I wish I had tried it. I think Dad may have wished I had, too.

  

Chapter 18

Dad and Mom church directory photo.

Mom would absolutely hate the thought of you seeing this picture.

“Lesson on a life”

    I’ve made no secret of the fact that a lot of times I was scared of Dad. You may have picked up on that. So much of my fear was uncalled for, unnecessary and all around stupid. If I had it to do over I’d try to get so much closer to him. At the time, that was not gonna happen. That’s pretty much the way it is when you’re a dumb kid with no confidence or self esteem. 

    I may not have mentioned it, but I got three spankings from Dad. I can only remember details of one of ‘em, but my mind’s pretty made up about there being two others.

    The one I remember caught me all unawares. Set me to pondering a bunch about it afterwards, too. They’re the worst kind.

We were living on Camille Street and I was, oh, probably 11. Dennis, Jill and I were in the backyard with the Edgertons -- David, Diane, Debbie, Denise and Darrel. There was a pattern with their names that I never picked up on at the time. (See dumb kid reference above.)

Oh, and now that I remember, you can forget about Darrel being in on this. He was likely standing over by the chain-link gate, preoccupied. Daryl was a slightly plump 3-year-old who wore nothing but underwear…. all four seasons. Didn’t matter. The kid would prowl around with one hand down the front of his dirtied briefs and the other up to his mouth close enough for him to insert a thumb. And, I don’t really think he kept track of which hand he was putting where. All but two days of his life he had a runny nose. I don’t remember him ever saying anything. Maybe I wasn’t listening.

Regardless, I can’t blame Daryl for what happened that afternoon in the backyard. What happened was a massive wrestling match. We didn’t even choose up teams. It was just a major free-for-all. Ever had one of those? It’s been at least three years since my last one. On Camile Street our free-for-alls were relatively harmless. There was seldom any gouging or biting, but you’d see some serious arm and leg twistings, tossings and an occasional pinch. Denise. The kid was ruthless.

    It’s probably germane to the story that I had a crush on Diane Edgerton. Slightly germane. Just as sweet a girl as I ever met… next to Barbara in the first grade. Barbara was an angel. Blond  hair, shy, cute voice… She moved off right after Christmas. I came back from the holidays and she was gone. It took me the rest of the—Uh, I’m sorry.  Where was I?

    Oh, Diane. A crush I had. The crush was reciprocal, too. Not sure that’s proper terminology, but it sounds good. My infatuation with Diane lasted up to the time we decided to kiss over by the backside of her house. We touched lips for about a nanosecond and then it was over. For me. The crush that is. I don’t know why, but the kiss destroyed everything. I don’t know if it was a stupid sense of shame on my part or the thought that any girl who would give herself away that easily was not crush material. I don’t know. I just know I was a stupid kid. I actually hurt Diane’s feelings, too. The memory of the experience did much to build on my sense of self-loathing.

    All right, enough of that. We’re returning to the backyard where there was a massive tangle of bodies. Again, no gouging, but tossing and a few headbutts. Not like today. Back then you’d headbutt a butt or shoulder or back. If you ever butted a head, it hurt like everything, and you’d cry. Not like today. Nowadays, it apparently only hurts the headbuttee. The headbutter can do it all day without feeling a thing. Evolution.

    At some point during the melee, Mom yelled for Dennis and me to stop. I had no idea why she singled us out. Jill is in the middle of all this getting pounded. But, Mom tells Dennis and me to quit. So, we stopped for a couple of minutes. Maybe one. Then we were back at it. Dennis would keep shoving me down till I managed to trip him. I was a great tripper. Gifted.

Then I’d toss David over my shoulder. Jill would headbutt me in the back. Debbie would move in close and start squeezing and bending my arm, leg, neck… it didn’t matter. Debbie was the antithesis of her older sister, Diane. Debbie was a stocky, freckled, tomboy. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I could spit, and I was a poor spitter. Still am. That girl could fight. We even came up with saying related to her prowess as a fighter. After a tough day of play, if you looked really beat up somebody might say, “Wow! You look like you’ve been “Debbied.” (I just made that last part up.)

    We weren’t five minutes into Round Two of Wrestlemania when Mom let loose once more. “Dismark! I’m not telling you again! You kids quit that fighting!” (Back then Moms saved a lot time by running names together.) At that point I did something really stupid. Seemed perfectly normal at the time, and I’m sure I would’ve gotten away with it had Dad not stopped his tinkering in the garage long enough to see what was going on. Dad was watching. Oh, my word.

What I did was instantly let loose of Debbie’s hair and release my leg-hold on David’s neck. Then, I said, “Mother, I’m not fighting!”

    Get it? At that very moment I was not fighting. I had been fighting when she yelled, but not at the very moment I answered her yell. Apparently, Dad didn’t understand, nor was I brave enough to explain to him the intricacies of the lie dodge. Next thing I knew, everyone on the block heard my name. Dad was standing in the back doorway of the garage and yelled, “Mark!”

    It is so bizarre how a moment of frivolity can immediately give way to sheer terror. At that moment I would’ve given everything I had or could steal not to be named Mark. But, I was the only Mark in the backyard. Oh, there was little kid across the street named Mark, but Dad wasn’t calling him. I’m not saying the L’il Mark didn’t wake up from whatever he was doing when he heard his name. But, I assure you, he experience nothing like the bigger Mark on the other side of the street from him.

    By the way, the fighting stopped. You might’ve already guessed that. As I made my way to the garage, the Edgertons made their way out of the backyard. Jill and Dennis ran to the very back fence. In the corner. Guilt by association was a concern for us kids. I don’t believe there was a living soul that was happy about the situation. Oh, maybe Darrel. He’d been yelled at and spanked so much by his mom, that he probably enjoyed the thought of someone else getting some negative attention. No, I don’t believe that for a minute.

    Dad led me to his and Mom’s bedroom. I hated that. I would’ve much rather been spanked in my own room. That way I could just stay there when it was all over. I did my best crying in the closet. Dad didn’t say anything until he grabbed his belt off the peg in the closet. I’m not sure his pants would’ve stayed up had he taken off the one he was wearing. It’d be a real hoot if, while spanking your kid, your pants fell down. It’d just kind of ruin the whole moment.

    Dad doubled up the belt and then spoke his first words since yelling my name. He said, “I don’t ever want to hear you lie to your mother again.” Then he reared back and I instantly turned and jumped face down on the bed. He didn’t tell me to get in any special position, but I just thought it best to face the punishment by not facing Dad.

    He didn’t hit me all that many times. Maybe five. But, they were hard hits. I remember more from Dad’s the sound. Oddly, I don’t remember feeling them all that much. I believe I was in shock more than anything.

Dad never mentioned the spanking hurting him more than it did me. He just started swatting. And, I started bawling. Well, in truth, I was bawling from the minute I heard him call my name. One of those having-trouble-catching-my-breath cries. I was too scared to be embarrassed about Diane seeing me cry.

During the whipping, I didn’t think Dad was trying to teach me a lesson or lead me on the path everlasting. I don’t think a person as mad as he was could have any positive thought about “me.” I was fully convinced that at that moment my daddy didn’t like me anymore. He was embarrassed to even have me as a son. I was such a disappointment that he wanted to hit me. I don’t believe that now, but at the time no one could persuade me different. 

Who can tell what goes through a parent’s mind when he’s mad enough to hit one of his kids with a belt. I think it would be really hard for someone to do that out of a sense of teaching a kid something. I think it would have to be more out of anger than anything else. Had he taken time to think about it, maybe he wouldn’t have done it. But, it’s hard to think when you’re really mad.

This I do know: if Dad had been as out of control as I thought he was, I would still bear the marks of that spanking. The man could’ve easily broken me in two had he not maintained a bunch of control.

The crazy thing is, Dad never had to lay a belt on me. I believe I mentioned it before that all he had to discipline me, or any of his other kids, was to say that we had disappointed him. Didn’t have to show it with a spanking. Added nothing to my shame. Added greatly to my fear, though. 

    If Dad ever went to bed angry at me, he never showed it. At some point he always came close to apologizing. After my spanking, I went to my room, shut the door and sobbed. In the closet of awhile, but eventually on the bed. At some point I stopped sobbing, but couldn’t lose the little quick gasps that come from a big cry.

    Right before bedtime, Daddy opened the door and came over to the bed. “Are you okay?” he said. I looked up and tried my best to smile. I don’t think I managed it, but I did manage a calm, “Yes, sir.” Dad didn’t manage a smile either, but he did tell me that he didn’t enjoy spanking me, and he didn’t want to have to do it again. Before leaving the room he said, “Uh, it’s important that you don’t ever lie.”

    I lied and assured him I wouldn’t. I didn’t realize I was lying at the time, but I should’ve guessed it. The important thing was that I knew I would never lie to Mom when Dad was at home. I was certain of that.

    Having Dad just take a minute to talk to me, made me feel so much better. I could see that he didn’t really hate me, and, though he didn’t apologize, he was sorry he handled things the way he did. I believed that more out of wanting to believe it.

    I thought a bunch about that experience over the years. And, I’ve come to see the whole thing in a different light. I imagine you may have also. I have since realized that it was the whole wrestling-with-girls thing that upset Dad the most. Dennis was a teenager and I was only three years younger. The entire spectacle had the appearance of unacceptability. While I wasn’t placing any sexual significance to the melee, I do realize I enjoyed tumbling around with Diane. I didn’t wrestle with her all that much, ‘cause she was not that good a wrestler and I didn’t want to hurt her. But, I did enjoy being around her.

    I think Dad, knowing what he knew about once being a youngman, in a sense was just stewing over the thought that Dennis and I might have had illicit thoughts during the free-for-all. I can’t speak for Dennis, because I was too busy holding my own. That Debbie was a big scratcher. And, Denise was a real pincher. Did I mention that?

    Anyway, I believe that, before he spanked me, Dad really wanted to say, “Mark, you’re too old to be wrestling around with girls. And, not only were you wrestling with girls, but you lied about wrestling with girls! That’s the worse lie of all!”

    I’m convinced that if you shuck down the corn, that’s what you’re gonna find. Dad would’ve likely spanked me for just the lie, but it wouldn’t have gotten out of hand had the sex angle not been in the equation.

Sex. I was pretty sure it was the worst thing in the world. You get a whipping for the mere hint of it, and when you die the thought alone was enough to burn you forever. Do you now how long forever is? I don’t either. It’s so weird, the whole sex and eternity thing. I don’t get it. Never have. I’m pretty sure Dad never fully came to grips with the spiritual ramifications of the human urge. Hey, who has?

    Me? I quit trying to make sense of it. I just wish like all get out that Dad would’ve, at some point in my young life, taken me aside and said something like, “Son, you’re probably having some weird thoughts, and some odd sensations happening to you in the nethers. I don’t understand ‘em any more than you do. Wish I did. I just want you to know that you’re not the only one on the planet or even in this house who is experiencing it. Truth is, God is a wonderment. If He wasn’t, He wouldn’t be God.”

    Something like that would’ve made me feel almost normal. Of course, Dad would’ve had to have pointed to my “nethers” when he mentioned it, or I would’ve never picked up on what he was saying. It’s all moot now. Besides I don’t think Dad ever used the word “nethers” in his life. Why would he?

    And, that kind of down-to-earth, self assuring conversation with parents never took place in my neighborhood. Maybe in my world. Certainly not during my life with Dad.