Rest in peace

I put on my Navy blue suit yesterday and went to a funeral for my Aunt Peggy, my father’s sister, who died in her sleep a few days ago.

I didn’t expect it to be a real emotional experience, since I had hardly seen her in the past 10 years, and she’s been in failing health for a while. But there were still a couple of moments that got to me.

They used all pre-recorded music at the funeral, which was a first for me. The first song was some over-produced “contemporary Christian” song that went on longer than Stairway to Heaven, but wasn’t nearly as good. I bet Aunt Peggy wouldn’t have chosen that one.

But then they played George Jones’ version of Amazing Grace, in which he sings the first verse a cappella. I looked over next to me and saw some tears in my daddy’s eyes, so naturally I lost it for a minute. If you can sit in a funeral chapel and listen to George Jones sing Amazing Grace and see your daddy crying and not tear up yourself, then I don’t want to know you.

The whole experience was sad, but more in a nostalgic way than a mournful one. It reminded me how little I see anybody in my extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins. These are people who were once a big part of my life, and now there are some of them I hardly even recognize.

I remember as a kid, I would see my family a lot, not just once a year at Christmas. They weren’t just names and faces, they were central figures in my universe. We’d go over to an aunt or uncle’s house to eat, or just visit, or we’d see each other at one of my grandmother’s houses. I’d hear my mama and daddy talk about them, so I knew about their problems, their joys, their triumphs and their failures.

On my father’s side of the family, my uncle died about 20 years ago, and my grandmother died a few years later, and we all just stopped getting together. People moved away, and I’d go years without seeing some of them. It’s a shame.

One thing that struck me at the funeral is how much older everybody is getting. My poor Uncle Joe, married to Peggy for 60 years, was just a shell of himself. The years and a case of Parkinson’s Disease have taken their toll. My memory of him is that of a hard-working, down-to-earth man with a firm handshake and a quick laugh. The man I saw at the funeral was not my Uncle Joe.

And Aunt Peggy was quite a character, a Dolly Parton-type who was partial to wigs, jewelry, makeup and flea markets. Her house was always loaded with things she picked up at flea markets. My mama never could understand why somebody wanted “all that mess” in their house.

I got together with my mother’s side of the family not long ago, to celebrate my grandmother’s 97th birthday. That was nice, but we probably won’t see each other again until Christmas, unless something bad happens, God forbid.

But, what to do? It’s a problem without a solution. I could say I’m going to make more of an effort to see everybody, but I know that’s not going to happen. Everyone is too scattered with too many things going on in their lives. Sometimes, memories just have to suffice.

Father Knows Best

I was watching TV today and a commercial came on, and it featured the president of the United States telling us that we needed to do something with our kids and be good fathers.

Now, that made me wonder. Is there really someone out there today who saw that commercial and suddenly realized, “Hey! The president is telling me go spend time with my kids. I think I’ll take them bowling.”

Probably not. Either you know how to be a good father, or you don’t. A president can’t tell you how, and you can’t learn from a Web site or a TV commercial or a public service announcement on the radio. If you’re counting on that to guide you in fatherhood, you’re probably a lost cause.

But there is someone who can show you how to be a good father – and that’s your own father. A father is the most important influence on a child’s life. If you don’t believe me, go to any prison or strip club and ask the men and women there about their fathers.

My father taught me how to be a father mostly by example – you work, you provide, you don’t complain, you be there when they need you, you do whatever it takes to make sure the family is taken care of. The rewards are you get to see your children grow into good human beings, and you get control of the TV.

My dad never really sat me down for those Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best kind of father-son talks. He usually kept his instructions pretty simple and unambiguous. If I were going out of town or somewhere with friends, he would simply look at me and say, “Don’t act the fool.” And I knew exactly what he meant. I didn’t have to take time before I did anything to ponder whether, if I took that action, I would or would not be “acting the fool.” I just knew. And 99 percent of the time, I chose not to act the fool.

About two weeks before my college graduation, when I was home on the weekend, he walked into my room and said, “Do you have a job lined up yet?” I said no. He said, “Get one.” And he walked out. That was pretty clear. So, I got one.

When it was time to cut the grass, he didn’t come ask me to cut the grass. He didn’t negotiate with me, or offer me money, or tell me that it might be nice if I cut the grass. No, he’d walk into my room, and say “Go cut the grass.” And that’s what I did. There was no point in putting up an argument. I was going to lose, because he had God, the law and the power to withhold food on his side.

Of course, when you become a teenager, you tend to discount your father’s advice, because you’re smarter than he is, or so you believe. But sooner or later, and it may take years, you are going to realize that he was right.

I remember once I got lazy and didn’t want to change my own oil, so I went to one of those oil-change places. My dad told me that I needed to be careful when I did that, and I should always crawl under the car myself and make sure they put the oil filter back on tightly. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard, and took my car to these places for years to get my oil changed without incident.

Then one day, about three years ago, I went to such a place just before I drove to Savannah on a business trip. I should have been suspicious, because the guys working there looked like they’d smoked more dope than Bob Marley, but as usual I did not check to see if they tightened the filter.

Sure enough, two days later, I’m driving out of Savannah on I-16, and I hear a “thump,” like I’d run over something. In a matter of moments, my engine overheated, smoke began to come out of the engine, and by the time I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, the engine had locked up. I looked under the car, and sure enough, no oil filter. Only a few oil splatters and a smoking engine. That explained the thump. They hadn’t tightened it and it fell off.

I wound up riding back from Savannah in the back seat of a pickup truck with a family of rednecks who smoked, argued and listened to modern country music very loudly for 4 hours, singing along to every Toby Keith and Tim McGraw song. Yep, I was thinking the whole time, I should have listened to my daddy.

So I hope you had a chance today to call up your daddy and tell him that you love him, and you appreciate everything he’s done, and you promise that even when you weren’t listening to him, he was making an impact on you. Happy Father’s Day.

Back in time

I sojourned back up to Athens Friday night to watch The Dashboard Saviors play a show at the Caledonia Lounge.

You have perhaps not heard of this band. They were big in Athens, and other places, in the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s before they gave up chasing the dream, but they still get together every now and then to run all the redlights on memory lane.

They are a fantastic rock and roll band. I may be accused of being a little biased, since the founder, songwriter and lead singer, Todd McBride, has been my friend since kindergarten. But you don’t have to just take my word for it. In 1992 they were featured in Rolling Stone magazines “New Faces” section with an enthusiastic writeup. R.E.M. guitarist Pete Buck liked them so much that he produced and played on their first album.

The band toured the United States and even Europe, mostly Germany, I believe. In their heyday they were a hard-driving, tight band playing intelligent rock music, driven by John Crist’s propulsive drumming and Mike Gibson’s Southern-fried shredding on the guitar. (Sorry about that attempt to be a music writer).

But, they never “made it.” They couldn’t get on MTV or on the radio or ever seem to get that one big break that would put them over the top, or at least get them to the point where they could make a living playing music.

Why didn’t they make it? Who knows. Maybe they weren’t pretty enough, or cheesy enough, or just couldn’t get lucky. Instead, other questionable rock and roll bands got big during the period, like Blind Melon and the Goo-Goo Dolls and Hootie and the Blowfish.

Freakin’ Hootie and the freakin’ Blow-freakin’-fish.

I used to go see the Saviors play a lot, mostly in Athens or Atlanta. I hopped on stage with them one night in Greenville, S.C. and delivered a blistering lead vocal on Johnny 99. Too bad that’s not on YouTube somewhere.

Whenever I watched them play, I always wished that I had the guts to get up there and do what they were doing. They did inspire me to teach myself guitar and learn how to write a few songs. They even played one of my songs one night at an Athens club, which was a big thrill.

Their show the other night was good. You couldn’t tell it was the first time they had played together in a couple of years. While they were onstage, I imagine that the boys were transported back to the days when they thought it was going to work, when playing in a band was all they could imagine. When you’re 25, you can’t see yourself at 45.

I felt a little sad when the show was over. I wondered how they felt. Did it make them remember how things used to be? Did it tempt them, ever so briefly, to try and give it another shot? Did they feel like they gave up too soon, or maybe not soon enough?

But when they were onstage, it didn’t matter. In that hot, crowded little Athens nightclub the other night it was 1991 again, everybody was having fun, and I was wishing once more that I was one of the ones up onstage.

Out of place

One thing I don’t like much about my job is occasionally I have to go to meetings, where I am definitely a square peg in a room full of round holes.

I had to drive up to Athens this week to sit in a room with a bunch of politicians and business leaders and chamber of commerce people. I wore a suit and tie, just like every other guy there, but I suspect that’s about all I had in common with them.

I just really don’t know what to talk about to these people. They will usually come up and introduce themselves to me, and after reading my nametag, they realize they don’t know who I am. So then they ask me what I do, on the off-chance that I might be somebody important enough for them to be nice to. Inevitably they are disappointed by my answer, and soon find a way to excuse themselves.

I was listening to a “classic rock” radio station on the drive up to Athens, so as a result, I had a lot of things on my mind when I walked into lunch. For one, I’ve always wondered how, as a teen-aged boy, I didn’t seem to notice that Freddie Mercury was gay. You have to understand that, for a boy of that age growing up in the South in the ’70s, the idea of a man being gay was not something we could really grasp, let alone accept. Yet I’d see pictures of Freddie prancing around in tight pants with his porno moustache, and all I thought was, “These guys rock!”

Also, I heard a song by the band Boston, and that reminded me of my theory that Boston was not actually a group of musicians, but rather some sort of computer program created by Tom Scholtz, founder of the “band” and holder of a Master’s degree from MIT. Really, does their stuff sound human? Go listen to Long Time and tell me you can find one ounce of human emotion in there. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I wondered some other things, too. Like, in AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long, Brian Johnson sings in the verses of a certain “she” – “she” was a fast machine, “she” kept her motor clean, etc., etc. But in the chorus, he’s singing to someone directly – “you” shook me all night long. So, was it two different women? And would he be telling the woman who shook him all night long about this other woman, who knocked him out with her American thighs? I don’t think that would be very smart.

Anyway, these are the things I wanted to talk about to my lunch companions, but I never really found a way to work it into the conversation. The woman sitting to my right is the director of some hospital and she was wearing an outfit the same color as an orange Creamsickle. I made a couple of attempts to talk to her, but we weren’t clicking. She struck me as more of a Celine Dion fan than a classic rock fan, so I didn’t bring up my theories.

Part of the buffet was some fruit salad, and I had some on my plate, but I was having trouble eating the grapes with a utensil. Grapes are really not suited for a fork, because it’s hard to stab them, or a spoon, because they tend to roll out. I couldn’t eat them with my hands, because I was in such high-tone surroundings.

So I looked over at Creamsicle woman and said, “You know, you would have thought we would have invented some new utensils by now. How long have we been using the fork and spoon? Hundreds of years? Why did we decide to just stop utensil development there? And please don’t bring up the ‘spork,’ because it’s not good for anything.”

She just sat there quietly, looked again at my nametag, and found a reason to excuse herself.

Eventually the lunch meeting ended, and I slipped out a side door, climbed into my car, put in a Louvin Brothers CD and took the long way home because I like riding through the country. At least the day wasn’t a total waste.

I need a vacation

So far this year, I have experienced the following:

- an overflowing toilet that led to a 4-week home repair.

- a mysterious medical issue that has resulted in visits to eight different doctors, an operation, a plethora of unpleasant tests and medical bills piled to the ceiling.

- uncertainty at work brought about a couple of weeks ago when we learned that upper management was bringing in consultants who were looking at “cost containment issues” by discussing ways to “maximize efficiencies” resulting in a more streamlined “target organization.” In other words, don’t buy any green bananas.

On top of that, my house needs a new roof, the dryer is squeaking, the upstairs shower isn’t working and I’ve been letting my 15-year-old son drive the car. If anybody has a Valium stockpile they’d like to unload, call me. And you thought Jon and Kate had problems!

In other words, I am ready for a vacation. How’s this for irony – this week my daughter went to Disney World with a friend, and next week my son is going to the beach with one of his friends. Meanwhile, mom and dad – the ones who actually have jobs and make money - are stuck at home. We need better friends.

In some ways, I like to follow my father’s lead when it comes to being on vacation. He would get into the hotel room, park himself in front of the TV, strip down to a T-shirt and boxer shorts and eat like a feral hog.

This is why I’m generally against the idea of taking non-family members with us on vacation. If they do go, they need to understand that they will see me in my boxer shorts, covered in Doritos dust and belching like a volcano. Perhaps I should have them sign a waiver.

My dad also always took a pair of binoculars to the beach. I thought this was odd, but he would tell me that he liked to sit on the hotel balcony and look at the ships as they passed by. He seemed to always have them trained on the beach, though. Finally I hit puberty and understood why he brought them. Way to go, dad!

We took a yearly vacation to Panama City Beach in Florida. My dad didn’t believe in making reservations before we went, so we would ride up and down the strip looking for vacancy signs. Then the hotel and the hotel room had to pass my mom’s inspection, so it could be a harrowing few hours before we finally found a place to stay. Bless their souls for saving the money and taking me on vacation, but I do not recommend their methods.

These days, we like to go down to the Gulf Coast of Florida or Alabama, to places like Perdido Key or Orange Beach. The beaches are nice and not nearly as crowded as Panama City, though you do have fewer options if you decide to go get a tattoo or an air-brushed T-shirt. And you don’t see as many big girls in tiny rebel-flag bikinis.

I don’t know if I’ll get to go anywhere this year or not. We are planning to go to Disney World in November, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, but that’s not a very restful trip. I need a good week of sleeping late, eating doughnuts and looking for ships through my binoculars.

And if anybody wants to invite me along, I’ll even buy some new boxer shorts.