Dad had one of those extraordinary lives, not unlike a cat he also had nine. By the time he turned thirty I think he had already used five of them. He had tick fever with a 105 temperature, fell off the back of a logging truck with some of the pay load landing on top of him, he flipped his 67 Chevelle 3 times (in the same accident), and fell from an oil rig derrick at the height of 65 feet. And I didn't even include the time he lay on his couch groaning and essentially dying from a fiddle back spider bite because he refused to go to the hospital. He saw life simply; he was either going to die or he wasn't. Those are pretty simple terms, and ones we should all learn to live by. It seemed in my teens and 20's I was constantly getting a phone call that essentially said, "if you want to see the old man alive again you better get over here forthwith." Most times he resisted the advice, that served him well, that was until it didn't. That kind of ill-advised behavior cannot be abided by without eventual consequences.
Sometimes dad told the truth, sometimes he just told tall tales. The best part of the game was trying to figure out which stories were truth, and which were just a smidgen of the truth included but stretched like Silly Putty on a summer day. Like the time he sent mom to Gibson's in Weatherford Oklahoma to pick up what he lovingly referred to as WORM OIL. Such a product in the traditional sense does exist, but you cannot purchase it over the counter. If it didn't exist, the people who produce plastic worms for fishing purposes would be out of business toot sweet. Truth be known WD-40 would probably suffice in a pinch. Think of it like putting a chaw of tobacco on a snake bite, it might not be the best choice, but it could save you a trip to the hospital or in grandma's case, to the vet. I'll never forget the look on mom's face after she interrogated the store clerk only to find out that she had been duped by her own husband. Dad had a lot of fun with that, but mom wasn't amused. It would come up on occasion in conversation over the years as a source of pain for her like the time she put an experimental sugar substitute in a homemade cherry pie.
When I was but a tike there was a quick store in my hometown called Toot & Tell. As a kid this was great fun, you would just sound your horn, make your request, and soon you would have a sack of goodies. Or in dad's case a sack of random crap, like a half gallon of milk, a tube of Preparation H, and a pack of Newport's. The needs of Western Okies often run the gamut. And a fact that is still a mystery to me even to this day is the old man's smokes always went into the freezer. Does anyone know why? This is a question for the ages that most non-smokers are perplexed by. Visiting Toot and Tell was like being off to see the wizard without the eventual letdown. When I got my own bag, it was usually full of a couple fists full of Double Bubble. Dad and I liked to play this game where we would see how many I could put in my mouth at one time, I think my all-time record at age ten was 23. It's no wonder my dentist was perpetually pissed off.
Many were the times the old man and I would take a fishing trip, start out having fun, but end up miserable. I remember sitting around a honey hole somewhere up around Guthrie eating bologna sandwiches and swilling blue cream sodas until we were ill. It was at that point things got dicey. Once the sun went down the place turned into a heaven for mosquitos. We had to make a choice about whether we would stay zipped up in our sleeping bags all night to keep them out and bathe in our own sweat, or just unzip and take our chances. I opted to stay zipped, this is known as a reality check. At some point pop read in the Farmer's Almanac that you could offset the attack of mosquitos by tying dryer sheet around your neck. That experiment was an abject failure. I don't suppose it ever occurred to him that the best way to dodge West Nile Virus was to just be at home in our own beds by dark but, if we did that what would I be writing about today?
I remember once when dad and some of his oilfield pals wrapped me up tightly in a hammock and once it came unwound, I fell face first in the mud. When they were walking away, I heard dad say, "well it always worked on the Flintstones." Then there was the time he and one of my older cousins heard me say that I would like to try my hand at some bull riding. Before I knew it I was on top of an onery old steer learning the lesson of a lifetime. Did you know bull riders have to have a low center of gravity, up until that time, I DIDN"T. Which brings me to the time when we tried to jump multiple hay bales on a Yamaha Street bike with me (where?) yes on the back. Did I fall off? Of course I did.
Over the years my pain became dad's entertainment. Although he always seemed to know exactly just how far he could push the envelope without me ending up in the ER. At times I was more like his little brother than his son. Pop and I were pals, and as you know pals often get in trouble together. What is it that makes young men prone to trouble, is it testosterone? It was dad's idea to hang a rope swing over the top of grandma's muddy pond where I lost multiple pairs of dress shoes. It was his idea to fill the root cellar full of water and go swimming in it, (which thankfully we never did). Sometimes even a ten-year-old knows a bad idea when they hear one. It was his idea for me and my cousins to take turns pushing each other off the top of the chicken house in a tractor tire. And it was certainly his idea to use grandma's favorite tom cat for BB gun practice. Thanks for the memories pop.
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