"Well, there's your problem..."

From an early age, my Dad learned how to be a decent mechanic.   He didn't have just a ton of money growing up, so it was always cheaper to fix things himself, and he really seemed to enjoy it.  He ran a lawnmower repair shop as a young man, raced go-karts, and preferred to make repairs on all of his own vehicles, so he was pretty well-versed in how to keep engines running.  Having only one hand made the process a bit slower sometimes, but he never complained about that, other than to holler at me on occasion to hold something in place while he did something else to it.  As I came of an age to have my own car, he insisted on showing me how to change the tires, change the oil, check the other fluids, and do basic maintenance on it. 

Back in the early 90's, we both worked at BASF Corporation in Freeport, Tx.  I had bought his old truck, a 1988 Jeep Comanche.  He had once run it off the road and spun out into a barbed wire fence during a rainstorm, so it was already scratched and beat up all to heck and back before I ever got it, but the engine worked just fine.  I had gone to lunch one afternoon and as I made the turn off of the highway to head towards the plant, my truck died.  Just up and died.  I coasted to the side of the road and tried to restart it without success.  I was stumped.  Battery cables attached just fine, and the lights all worked.  Gas was nearly empty, but I'd driven it far beyond that point before.  There were no odd noises, it just wouldn't start.  I pulled out my giant cellphone and called Dad.

Dad was there in just a few minutes, and pulled his Dodge Dakota in behind me.  I saw him step out of the truck, and walk up to my window, which I had already rolled down.  He twirled his finger at me, telling me to try to start the engine, and he poked his head in to listen and to look at the dashboard while I did so.  I tried to start it...no luck.  Dad pulled his head back out of my truck and looked at me with this odd expression.  Then he looked skyward for a moment, took a deep breath, and turned and walked back to his truck, got in, and drove away.  I was left completely bewildered by his wordless departure.

Just a few minutes later, he pulled back in behind me.  He leisurely got out, and brought a brand new gas can with him.  Without a word, he flipped open my gas tank cover, unscrewed the lid, and proceeded to pour gas into my tank.  While he did this, he continued to look at the sky.  I'm pretty sure he was concentrating on taking slow, deep breaths at that point.  When the gas can was empty, he closed everything up, strolled back up to me and twirled his finger again.

It started right up.

Apparently, I had been mistaken in regards to just how empty my tank had really been.  He gave me that odd look again, shook his head, and walked back to his truck.  Not a word had been said the entire time, and I was left feeling like the world's biggest idiot.

I laugh so hard when I think of that day.  Since then, I've never run out of gas again...every time the needle gets close to the E, I remember Dad, looking at the sky as he held the gas can up to my truck.  I always chuckle and pull over to gas up right then.  Thanks for the lesson, Dad...you taught it well.

One-Handed Water Skiing

My Dad always loved water skiing. He had a blue boat (the 'Powercat') that we'd take out to Bastrop Bayou, and Mom and Dad, family and friends would ski until everyone was exhausted, or until it got too dark to ski anymore. There are a handful of incidents that bear retelling...

First, it should be known that my father lost his left hand in an industrial accident while in his late thirties. There was quite a bit of stress and pain, many sleepless nights as a result, but after several surgeries to alleviate the pain from the injury, Dad never looked back. He went right back to doing all the things he used to do.

There was one time when he had his left forearm bandaged from surgery, and he had been told not to get it wet. Well, apparently, he took the advice quite seriously. He figured he'd better be extra-careful while water skiing!

My Mom remembers telling him constantly, "Hey, the doctor said for you not to get those bandages wet!" To which he replied, "They're not getting wet! See?" And he'd wave his bandaged stump at her from behind the boat, where he skied happily along.

At one point, the bandages came unraveled and fluttered off to land in the water, and Mom nearly lost her mind. Dad responded by saying "Mary...the doctor said not to get my stitches wet...the bandages don't matter." And he showed off his perfectly dry stitches.

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Another time, he was skiing along, and apparently thought that he would be the coolest of the cool if he could let go of the tow rope, ski up the bank, and sit in his lawnchair among the assembled family and friends. Mom could do it, so he figured that he could certainly pull it off as well. The plan was working fine until he neared the bank, and his ski got caught by something underwater, bringing it to an abrupt, dead stop. Dad, of course, did not stop, but did his best imitation of Superman as a result.

He told me, "It's funny how time slows down during something like that. I realized that I was headed straight for a bed of sharp oyster shells. I thought to myself, 'Dummy...you're about to put your nose down among them shells!' So I rolled over in the air and just got my back all scratched up. It hurt."

He decided not to try that particular stunt again. There were other stunts instead, but those are entirely different stories.

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And then there was the mullet. The fish, not the hairstyle. They can apparently be quite excitable. My Mom was driving the boat, and Dad was having tons of fun skiing on both skis for a change. Suddenly, a fish jumped out of the water, and smacked Dad right in the breadbasket. I can only imagine the sound he made. The wind had been completely knocked out of him, so he crouched down on his skiis like a downhill snowskier, and rode like that for awhile. Once he got his breath back, he stood up again, and skied on as though nothing had happened.

"Why didn't you just let go of the rope when it hit you?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? That dumb fish knocked the wind right out of me! I figured if I let go, I'd have drowned myself!"

Well, he didn't drown himself. As usual, he took the hit, endured, and just kept on rolling. Seems like he was always like that. Nothing fazed him much. Whatever happened, he would find a way to just keep moving forward.

So if a giant fish jumps out of the water and smacks the wind right out of you, just hunker down, hang on, and wait until you can stand up again. Thanks for the lesson, Dad.

Pics from the Past

Wow. Mom's finally pointed me to box after box of old pics, mementos, and old documents. I'm speechless. For now, I'm posting only a couple of pics of Dad that I've uncovered. More, and the stories that accompany them, will eventually follow.



Dad's Platoon. Below is what he marked on the back of the photo.



And here's what I assume to be Dad's first Dow employee badge. I hear that these things are worth some money. Thanks anyway, but I'm keeping this thing.



And here's my when he married my mom.



There's more to come. Thanks for checking in.

Pics of Dad

We're here at Mom's house for the holidays, and I've discovered that she not only has a scanner, but has tons of family pics. Many of these are hidden in frames behind other pics. You see, she never actually takes them out of the frames...she just adds newer ones in front of the old ones.

Anyway, here are some pics I've recently found. I'll do my best to put them in order from oldest to newest. If anyone knows his age or anything else about these pics, feel free to let me know.



Dad and sister Bessie. He's a teenager here.



Dad lied about his age to enter the military. He's about 17 in this shot, on the left.



Here's all of his brothers and sisters. From the left, Bessie, Joann, Ollie Mae, Sissy, William, Buddy, and Johnny.



Not sure how old Dad is here...probably early 20's.

Since I'm here with the family, I'll be collecting more stories and pictures. As always, if you have any you'd like to share, send 'em my way!

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.

These Sneakers Were Made For Walkin'...

A little over a year ago, Dad was 79 years old, used a hearing aid, and had lost most of his vision to a side effect from some medication. Nevertheless, he pretty much did what he wanted to do, and how he wanted to do it. Snowblowing the driveway at 5am? Yup. Gardening? Yup. Fixing cars? Yes, he still did some of that as well.

One day, Mom came home to find a massive, beautiful bouquet of flowers on the kitchen table. Knowing that Dad must have bought them for her, she asked him who had come by to pick him up and drive him to the store.

"Nobody's been here today. Just me."

"What? Then, how in the world did you get to the store?"

"I hitchhiked to Martin's Supermarket and bought them myself. A nice lady picked me up and drove me there, but danged if she didn't leave without me."

"Well, how'd you get back here?"

"I just walked home."

At the time, Dad could only see shadows and shapes. However, little things like that never deterred him from doing things, so he just walked along the road, carrying a huge bunch of flowers in his one hand.

Did I mention that it's nearly 5 miles to Martin's Supermarket?

Two Against One...Hopelessly Outnumbered.

Mom and Dad used to play a lot of tennis while I was growing up. Dad was never what you might call a natural athlete, but he absolutely loved sports like baseball, kart racing, water skiing, bowling, golf, and tennis. He might not have been the best athlete, or the most graceful, but the man didn't have an ounce of "can't" in him, so he continued enjoying his activities long past the time when his cronies had given up such things. And he made his opponents look bad almost every time.

Two of my uncles (on Mom's side) were in their early thirties while Dad was in his early fifties, and they had tired of the butt-kicking they had been getting from him on the tennis court in recent months. They finally hatched a plan: one brother would start off the game and do his best to tire my Dad out, and then the other brother would jump in and finish him off. They chose a hot summer day that they felt would stack the odds in their favor (surely, that old man can't play for long in this heat!), and set up the game.

Uncle #1 started the game, and Dad starting winning. Nothing fancy, nothing pretty...just winning. Sweat was pouring off of them both, and Dad could not have been happier. He used that odd, gangly footwork of his to run down every ball, no matter where it flew, and sent it zooming back to Uncle #1. It was a tough game, and the hot sun beat down on them both.

Eventually, Uncle #1 reached his limit, and signaled for Uncle #2 to jump in to take his place. Uncle #1 barely made it to the shade before he collapsed. I don't remember if anything was said about the switch, but I do recall that it made absolutely no difference to my Dad. He'd have played against the devil himself that day. Hey, that's just how he rolled.

Uncle #2 was fresh and ready to go. I recall he had a smirk on his face when he tossed the ball up in the air and slammed what I assume was his best serve towards Dad. TH-WACK!! The ball came back like it had been shot out of a cannon, bounced just inside the baseline on Uncle #2's far side, and got stuck in the chainlink fence beyond. Uncle #2 turned to Uncle #1, who was still flat on his back in the shade, breathing heavily, and hollered at him.

"Hey, I thought you were supposed to tire Willie out?!"

A lazy wave from the shade accompanied the wheezy response.

"Look, I did the best I could!"

And Dad laughed that laugh of his, and told Uncle #2 to stop bellyaching and get back to the game. They had forgotten that Dad had spent much of his youth working manual labor jobs in the hot sun, and later spent many years working in the magnesium cells at Dow Chemical in Freeport, TX. He worked in rooms that processed molten magnesium. You know, "molten"...like hot lava from a volcano? Dad was not only accustomed to the heat...he LOVED it!

My poor uncles never had a chance. He kicked the crap out of them that day. They should have brought Uncle #3 with them, I think.