Blessings

Every now and then, I pause and count my blessings. I’ve had a wonderful life. In my time, I have been a cowboy, a carpenter, a diving instructor, a sky diver, and a computer geek. I rode a bull exactly one time. I have had an office in my basement, and I have had an office on the 27th floor above Madison Ave in NYC. I spent 25 years in New Jersey and have seen more Yankee baseball games at Yankee Stadium than I can remember. For fifteen years I owned a Jaguar XJS. It is a magical ride. I now live with the girl of my dreams and two dogs in the middle of nowhere in beautiful, sunshiny Florida, in a beautiful house with a pool, a pavilion, and a gun range. I have three wonderful kids who are enjoying life and building successful careers. My grandsons actually are Chaos and Mayhem.

I think back on how I got here, and invariably I think of my dad. He was honestly the most amazing person I have ever known. He was a doctor in General Practice for 16 years. He practiced radiology for 20 more after that. While in General Practice, he delivered more babies in Jonesboro than anyone else. He used to drive up to Cedar Valley to do physicals for the Boy Scouts every summer. In the early 1960s, he got $25 for delivering a baby at home. I can’t count the number of times he sewed me up on the kitchen table.

He was compassionate and caring to everyone, especially strangers. He participated in the community, and helped the YMCA in Jonesboro get it’s new building built. He loved golf, but didn’t have time for it until he retired, and then he just didn’t play. He loved to fish, but wasn’t very good at it. Patience wasn’t one of his strengths. He loved barbeque, football and Ole Miss. He had a circle of friends as wide as the world. He seemed to know everyone, and everyone seemed to know him. I once dated a girl from Paragould. Her father was a banker, a one-eyed banker. We had been dating for several weeks when I found out that dad was the doctor who removed his eye. I once hit a deer with my truck. The state trooper who wrote up the report looked at me and said “You Doc’s boy?”. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him.

My sister was a straight A student, and Miss Perfect. Sweet Pea could dance like a Russian ballerina or a hot Latina doing the Tango. Just pick the music and she could do the dance. She was a smart as she was beautiful. I remember when Dad got her a super fuzzy deluxe Texas Instruments calculator for some math class she took when she was in high school. I could tell how proud dad was of her by the way they talked about math. Math was her super power. He valued intelligence and knowledge over all things and with Sweet Pea he found both.

My little brother was a nationally ranked swimmer, and a basketball phenomenon. While competing at a national level in swimming, he went several years without losing a single race. It was a bad outing if he didn’t set a record. We traveled all over the southern United States to the big meets of the time…The Phillips 66 Meet of Champions, the Jr. Olympics in Stillwater, OK., some damn meeting in Georgia I can’t remember the name of. Like Sweet Pea, he made straight A’s in school. He was Mr. Everything. In the one year he won Cross Country for the State of Arkansas, set the state record for the high jump and was All State in Basketball. I showed him three cords on my guitar. The next summer he and some friends put a Christian rock album out (Fun in the Son) and their band (Manna) went on tour in the South Pacific. His senior year of high school, his high school basketball coach named his first born son after him. My brother wasn’t Jack Armstrong, All American boy. He was Jesus Christ, Superstar.

In every family there is that one kid. In our family it was me. I was Bart Simpson before Bart Simpson was Bart Simpson. There was nothing that I could not find a bad influence in. I used hunting as an escape from school. I got a hair cut every six months whether I needed it or not. I was sometimes late for English class due to duck hunting. I learned that blondes really are more fun. I got uncounted cars stuck in every conceivable location while going hunting or trying to get laid. I sometimes enjoyed illegal smiles. I made friends with drunks in Truman to facilitate my bootlegging business. I made A’s in chemistry and Physics the same semester that I flunked Algebra II. Algebra was my last class for the day. It interfered with fishing. I squeaked through English Lit, and became a published poet. I worked at Minuteman hamburgers for exactly two weeks before the manager pissed me off and I quit. I bought a bucket and a squeegee. I washed windows for about a dozen businesses to earn my beer, gas and ammo money. I made a habit of breaking my hand for a while. Dad and his friend the orthopedic surgeon (Dr. Larry Mahon) would dip water out of the pool for the casting kit to set my hand while enjoying bloodymarys. I almost didn’t get to participate in the Science Fair one year because the sheriff confiscated my science fair project. It was a moonshine still. Dad wasn’t happy, and I made my first trip to the county jail. I almost had a second trip later that year when I got caught stealing the Black Oak Arkansas population sign. Fortunately the Justice of the Peace let me pay a $25 fine and I got to keep the sign. Early in my Junior year of high school, it was suggested to my parents that I graduate as a Junior as I had become a disruptive influence at school.

Everyone loved dad because he helped so many people. I have a different perspective. I remember a man who always gave a screw-up of a kid another chance. He had two high achievers and me, but he always believed in me. A friend once commented that my dad was ‘awfully hard’ on me. That wasn’t quite right. He didn’t expect anything from me that he didn’t expect from Miss Perfect or Jesus Christ. I was just a loose cannon. I was hard on dad. Being young and dumb, I never realized it, but as a father now I can clearly see it. No matter what I screwed up, he was always there with another chance. I truly and deeply know what unconditional love is because I experienced it time and time again. For no good reason, he always believed in me.

I said all that to say this: Dad was not perfect. As with everyone, dad had his flaws. He had some dandy’s, too. When I remember him to my kids, that’s not what I remember. I let his flaws lay silent and dark because they do not do him justice. They were not representative of his character, of what I learned from him, of what he did for me or of what I want to pass down to my kids and grandchildren. Passing down the lessons from this man does not require that I preface his story with a dutiful recitation of his flaws. They know he was human and accept that. I want my progeny to know that he was a good man, a really, really good man; a man of integrity, intellect, of honor and ethics. He encouraged me and my brother to help those who could not help themselves, and defend those who could not defend themselves. By his example, he taught my brother and me to be gentlemen at all times. I may have failed at this on occasion. He unconditionally insisted on fairness and honesty in all things. In his actions and attitudes, my brother, my sister and I learned tolerance. We learned kindness, courtesy and respect by the way he treated my mother. We learned integrity by watching him conduct ordinary business. He was what I wanted to grow up to be.

I don’t believe I can ever live up to the standard my father set, but I will never quit trying. (He taught us to be stubborn, too.) I want to pass on to my children all the good qualities my father had, and I want to let his struggles with the realities of the human condition rest in peace. That’s not to deny he had flaws. It is to say that I think my offspring are better served by learning about the good things he taught rather than dwelling on the imperfections suffered by a good man.

I think it is important to remember, uphold and honor our parents for the good things they taught us, and blessings they gave to us.

Friday, November 12, 2000 we laid him to rest.

Count your Blessings every day.

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