Masterminx

I was talking to my father on the phone tonight about his delusional obsession with Blue-Collar comedian, Ron White. My father does not resemble Ron White in the slightest. Not at all. But he thinks he does. He even affects a shitty fake accent when he recounts his little stories of how throngs of young women in casinos will follow him around because they think he's Tater Salad. There's no fucking way. No way. My dad's a lunatic.

I mean, ok. My dad is from Chicago. He only lived in Kentucky for maybe a decade, as an adult. That accent is totally fake.

So, I was pointing out the differences between Ron White and my dad: Ron White is tall, and he's big but not fat. My dad is barely over six feet, and round as a happy German housefrau. My father protested that they were only five pounds apart in weight, according to Mr. White's routine. I moved on. Ron White's hair is all silver (foxy). My dad's hair is still mostly black. He said that he had a lot of grey. I said, okay. Ron White is from Texas. My dad is not from Texas.

He said, "Yeah, but I lived there for a while." Now, here is something I have not heard before. So, I asked him to explain.

What I heard was one of the saddest stories, when you think about it. I took it with a pound of salt, because I know my dad has a habit of making himself the innocent hero of any story.

It started in Chicago. He lived in a condo with my mother, years before I was created. They were in their early 20's, I'm guessing, since he was 26 when I was born. She was just about to turn 28. This story took place at least three years before that.

Anyway, my mother was bipolar, and unmedicated. She gave my half-brother and sister to their father. She became manic...or rapid-cycling. She became unstable. They packed up a few suitcases, and got into my dad's Cadillac and just started driving. They left everything behind.

They spent the first night at a motel in Missouri. He spent the night, holding her while she cried hysterically all night. He didn't know why she cried, or what was wrong. But he was so in love with my mother, and young, he didn't know what else to do. In the morning, they got back in the car and drove. They didn't know where they were going.

They spent the night in a mom-and-pop motel in Paris, Texas. Again, she cried all night. He was just there. He didn't know what to do. They stayed in the motel for a couple of days. As he prepared to check out, the old lady that was running the place asked him if he would be interested in getting free board for a while in exchange for helping her husband build a boat shed. They didn't really have any plans, he and my mother, so he agreed.

He complained to me about having to spend long days on a galavanized steel roof in 105-degree sweltering heat. He built the shed, poured the cement pad for it, constructed a sidewalk path for it, and completed all of the work alongside the old man who just wanted a place to dock his boat. The work was completed for a couple of days, and my father and mother were getting ready to move on, when the old man had a heart attack and died.

The young couple drove on to Albuquerque where my father looked for work, unsuccessfully. My mother was resltess (manic), and the money was running out. They drove on to Phoenix, where my father got work as a repo man. They didn't stay long; she wanted to be someplace cooler, and greener. He took what little money he'd saved from his work for the bank, and they drove back east, settling in Tennessee.

It was Oak Ridge. My father points out that Oak Ridge was the place they decided to put a nuclear facility because a little radiation leak would go unnoticed in the moronic populace. Clearly, he did not love Oak Ridge, Tennessee. But once they got an apartment in Oak Ridge, mother decided that she wanted...something else. He told me, "She said, 'I'm going to leave you now. Don't follow me.'" I can't imagine the crushing blow that would have been for him. It must have been horrible.

She left. She went to St. Augustine to retrieve her children. After a few months of complete silence, she showed up without notice and said she wanted to be with him again. For reasons that I don't get, he took her back. They moved to Kentucky, to be near her family.

After a year, he told her he'd buy her a house if she gave him a child. I was conceived on his birthday, and when I was born, she named me after him and handed me over.

But that's another story.

My father is a philandering drunk. But, I think that my mother taught him to be that way. She could have been the last woman he really loved without question. She could be the last woman that he let control and destroy him.

It's very sad.
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