Heath. Regarding what you said about “normal”, thank you.

That’s a wise & most compassionate notion. So glad I tuned-into dbis. & you are probably right on target. Well left of misinformation. As `Stranger` so deftly reminds us, our planet is chock full o people permanently changed by direct contact with the machines of war, each & every one deeply involved in their own individual very situational normalcy ..amongst us who don’t know jack.

Based on my father’s truths & consequences prior to his relationship with war: sporty, fun-loving, intense & charismatic, a tone-perfect whistler with a vibrato to stir, a story teller, bit of a thrill seeker, fast cars, high-high dives into precarious waters, somewhat of an X-Gamer for the ‘50s. Grew up the youngest of ten on the poor side o the tracks, li’l bro to a long line of bros like stirring sticks to the schools and community they moved and shook as precursors before him, setting precedence & heralding whatever comeuppance the last-in-line might have been deemed worthy of receiving from those who’d like to finally get their shots in---oh jeez it must’ve been somethin for him. But according to mom & an uncle (who kinda idolized him), pop, as a caricature, was kinda like Paul Newman’s portrayal of Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me. But not Italian. A golden gloves boxer but not a felon. Not a conditioned & trained athlete but gangly scrappy & sporty with a penchant for raising a little ‘L bowery boy style (not NYC, but a city that maybe did sleep sometimes). I have pictures of him with me, after the Corps but before his brain surgery, he looks like a loving dad & a heck of a guy, so there’s something also to be said about how well he maintained back in the states after having been a lean green assassin, and that perhaps it took war AND an archaic major medical procedure to fully place the wheels of his loco motives on the crazy train track. & he wasn’t crazy. BUT IT WAS CRAZY. One man, one war, one sawed open and peeled back skull, one beautiful wife, 3 mostly likable kids, life, liberty, & the pursuit of what ..happiness? Jeez, Dad.

You know what though, Heath? I’m crazy now too. Maybe have always been. Maybe even more so then. Or maybe not. & yet I’m not crazy at all. Neither are you. Neither is Mick ..or Brad (well, ..Brad). Neither is David Baerwald, …& you’ve heard his music. His areas of study. None of us are crazy. But we’re crazy. & none of us have been to war. & none of us had brain surgery in a 1966 community hospital. …Long ..strange …trip, ey?

Except for the rare occasions when his soft underbelly was exposed, heart on his sleeve, diligent anti-hero with a K-Mart cape & moth-eaten utility belt, ..giddy like a kid on Christmas morning, my dad-dad-daddio was a short-fused, dangerous, impatient, fast acting corrosive, who knew how to inflict precision pain, behind closed doors and even in public when it came to his wife and kids. Still everyone else on the block thought he was a great guy. Shit, Heath, ..such charisma and so often the good guy, bold guy, brave do the right thing guy, you would've liked 'im, ..even WE believed he was a great guy (& would have thrown down with anyone who said otherwise). Funny, the seventies---at least in our neighborhoods, what our parents got away with..and still had our loyalty and respect. …..I don’t know many teens today who show anything close to the esteem towards their parents that we did ours back then. ..Whatever purveyor of malignant manifesto designed to set out against our family units in order to divide and conquer the American ‘way’ has made a real solid go at it.

I wish I could have another shot at getting to know him. He seemed to calm down quite a bit that last year or so. Heart on his sleeve a lot of the time. But then I was away a lot. I think Maya would've loved him had they had the chance to meet. & his grandsons too. ...I don't know.

Anyway, again, your point is noted & has been (is being) pondered….

~`~

P.S. Having shared all the bad stuff . . . which probably makes me into a bit of a shit betraying his dad’s peace, posthumously, allow me to take a minute and show another side, the kind of heroic side, of this unheralded antagonist of my childhood. The place: A neighbor’s back yard. The setting: 3-on-3 basketball game, six boys all around thirteen yrs. old. The plot: I go up for my staple reverse lay-up, score, land down on a dip in the pavement, and my world turns to fiery pain as my leg twists into a pretzel and I lay on the ground in your basic alarm, shock, & agony. We didn’t have cell phones then (hehe) so I guess one o the guys ran to my house to find my parents. I recall the pain being an 8 or 9 on the handy-dandy emergency room express your pain scale, and it seemed like quite a while, the sun beginning to set, friends standin’round remarking on my awful state & trying to be sympathetic while my remaining sanity went about its peripatetic way ..in search of a happy place.

Then my dad’s face appeared like a mirage in a starburst-highlighted-iris-out as he stepped into the scene, knelt beside me, brushed my longish hair away from my face then lay hands gently on my thigh and calf, and asked, “How you doin’ boy? Let’s have a look at you, okay?” In cut-off shorts, leg exposed, what everyone except my dad gawked at & murmured about was my leg in an abnormal ‘L’, my enflamed and throbbing knee turned in a crazy direction. What my dad so calmly saw was a fully dislocated knee. …Composed and with soothing vocal tones, he began to engage me in talking to him, with a series of easy questions, redirecting my mind away from the agony and onto him, as he made very direct eye to eye contact. I recall feeling him place both hands on my thigh above my knee, gently, still talking to me, asking me about the moments leading up to the accident. I recall being puzzled by his nonchalant conversation while I was in my own little hell. Then he gently worked his hands down my calf as he said something like: Everything’s going to be alright. Then in an assured split-second he grasped my lower calf and foot, jerked leg while turning foot and phlunk, improbability, ……agony jettisoned to the four winds ..replaced by a fraction of the discomfort & a token throb. & he smiled, helped me up and home. At no time did he show confusion, uncertainty, worry, or panic. He simply went into action and TOOK away the pain.