My father grew up on a farm in Enterprise, Alabama with his brother and his parents. Except for his college and army days he never lived very far from that farm.
My father was a very complex human being. He was intellectually gifted. He had many different talents that he employed for his business use and personal satisfaction. His two most enjoyable past times were golfing and fishing. When he started golfing he only had two clubs, a seven iron and a putter. He played quite a few rounds with only those two clubs. It vexed my uncles and cousins that although their college team often beat his college team and they bested him in other ways, they never beat him at golf. Not once. His fishing took him most often to his father's pond, "Pop's Pond", but he spent countless hours on the bays, inlets and rivers of Florida. But he did so many other things than golf and fish. He loved carving animals from Ivory soap and balsa wood. As a visual artist he created beautiful paintings with oil and acrylic and drew with pencils and charcoal. Sometimes on his way home from a a job he would pull to the side of the road to sketch a scene he liked. He was a good musician and sang bass in his church choir. With Helms Construction, his own company, he poured and finished concrete all over Alabama. His crew poured head walls, curb and gutter, flumes, sidewalks and more. If he couldn't find a machine or a tool to do what he needed, he just invented it. He drew it up on graph paper with his ruler, compass, protractor, and slide rule. Then he took that blueprint to a machine shop where they brought it to life. In my three summers with Helms Construction I used some of these machines myself. And they worked! He was well-liked by his crew and earned the respect of vendors and county inspectors alike.
My father, for all of his brilliance, ability and wit , like all of us, made some very poor choices. Those choices drastically affected my family and they affected me.One of the worst choices he made was the decision to start smoking cigarettes when he was a teenager in the army at the end of World War II. He smoked morning, noon and night until he couldn't in the hospital before he died. Dad died of lung cancer at the very young age of 69. Except for cancer he was as strong as an ox and as sharp as a tack. Although the warnings were on the packs years before he died, he never apologized for smoking or felt any guilty about it; He enjoyed every cigarette he ever smoked.. The only good thing about going that way is that it gave us about a year and a half to tell him goodbye. When we knew that we were counting them down, those fishing and golfing excursions with my brother and my dad took on an immeasurable significance. That was the only good thing. The worst part was how much pain he was in toward the end. Lung cancer is a horrible way to watch your father die. From my childhood, he always called me by his nickname for me unless he was upset with me. Then he called me "son".His last words to me were "You're a good nurse Crockett."
My father was curious about everything and fascinated with things. He paid close attention and noticed things. Whereas I have no sense of direction, he traveled without a map or a compass and I never remember getting lost. We took the scenic route a few times, but we never got lost. I remember once on a trip home from a job in Eufaula, my brother was driving and he was in the backseat. He pulled his cap down over his eyes and challenged us with, "Anywhere along the road ask me what you're seeing and I'll tell you". With no prompting that we were at any particular location, for ninety miles he described in detail any house or farm that we asked him to describe.
My father graduated with a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute. We know this college as Auburn University. His brother was a graduate of the same institution. They both were passionate about Auburn football. Back in the day we listened to Auburn games on the radio but Dad and my uncle took us to a few games too. Besides the games at Auburn, they took us to the 1971 Gator Bowl when the Ole Miss quarterback, Archie Manning, was playing with his arm in a cast. Auburn beat them 35-28.
Dad watched very few games on television. He said that he had rather go golfing or fishing and learn of the score later. But he always knew who won. As far as I know, he never listened to or watched The Iron Bowl. He said it was too stressful. On one of those last fishing trips on West Bay, Florida, I asked him why he never got tired of it. He cast his line in the water, slowly lit his Salem and took a couple of drags, propped up his feet, looked around at the beauty of the day, turned his head toward me and with a wry smile and asked, "Crockett, what's there to get tired of?"
Tomorrow I plan to watch the Iron Bowl. Will it be stressful? Every snap. The blowouts have seldom been engineered by my team. Will Auburn win? The pollsters tell me not to get my hopes up. But I can take you to the place on Highway 231 between Montgomery and Troy when on December 2, 1972 Bill Newton blocked that second punt and David Langner ran it in for a touchdown. I can still hear my mother and my aunt screaming, not about the touchdown, but for me to put my hands back on the steering wheel. Auburn won. And 17 to 16 is forever burned into the annals of Iron Bowl history. And I can show you where I sat in my den when on November 30th 2013 Chris Davis ran that missed field goal back 100 yards with no time on the clock to a stunning Auburn victory. So anything is possible with the Iron Bowl.
That farm in Enterprise still belongs to my family. We don't farm it, but we own it. I find some measure of comfort in the fact that no matter who wins the Auburn/Alabama football game tomorrow, my name will still be on the deed. The value and history will not be diminished. Will my father be watching the game? Does he agree that something could be more important than the Iron Bowl? I've read that there's a River of Life, so I'm pretty sure he'll be fishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment