A Note from Brian Briscoe...

Little kids accept things. They just do.

And when I was little, the sky was blue, the grass was green, and Whit's father had one hand.

It was barely a source of curiosity even. I remember Whit pointing out a photo once. It was a group of men standing together. I think it was a bunch of coworkers. And Whit asked me if I noticed anything different about his Dad.

I stared and stared, but couldn't figure anything out.

"He has two hands in that picture," he said. I found this rather puzzling, until Whit explained that for the purposes of the photo, he'd worn a prosthetic hand.



I was so accustomed to my worldview that included one-handed Whit's Dad that I was puzzled as to why in the world he would have worn that.

Honestly, I still am.

Because it was no factor in his life, or none that he ever let on about. I remember Whit's mother struggling to open a jar of pickles once. She handed it over to him. He wrapped it up in the crook of his arm, grabbed it, and wrestled it open.

That's just the way it was.

Many a night he was tasked with driving me home after a visit. We'd hop into his truck, and take off for my house. In his truck. The one with the manual transmission.

My father ran around with him just a bit here and there, the way dads of best friends will do sometimes. They weren't tight, but they had the occasional fishing trip or visit together. Mac was a good 20 years older than my father, and I wonder if it made any difference to my father to be about 30 and running around with a guy of about 50.

And yeah, when Whit and I were teens his father was flying ultralights. I remember the parts in the driveway, the wheels, the motor that looked like it had been on a lawnmower sometime not that long ago. I remember the orange helmet too.

Dad told me how Mac had explained that he'd "never landed it without crashing." Again, the man was in his 50s at the time.

I have always had modest tolerance for peppers and spicy things. Mac could eat peppers like they were M&Ms.

And he drank straight buttermilk.

I don't know what Whit's father was made of, but it wasn't the same stuff as the rest of us, and any person who knew him in the least would be quick to agree.

Come to think of it, that would explain a lot.