I've always been fascinated by stories. My son Jay's girlfriend said yesterday that she is considering a graduate school thesis on how different cultures interpret stories. Jesus used parables to teach those around him with such impact that they remain firmly embedded in many of the world's great religions. Aesop's Fables were at the heart of one of my favorite cartoons as a child, "Aesop and Son," which along with "Fractured Fairy Tells" was a regular segment in the "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show." Good stories stand the test of time, and in fact many of the best movies are based on the works of William Shakespeare, including dozens of teen movies. Then there are the stories we find in the headlines, whether that is the disaster of the BP oil leak or the rescue of the miners in Chile.
Of course, there are also the stories within our own lives about people close to us. A few years back, I read that the stories we choose to repeat regularly say a great deal about ourselves. We should always ask ourselves why we choose to repeat those stories. Usually, it is because they say something we consider essential about ourselves, or to communicate what we admire. Most of us seem quite heroic in our own tales about our lives, but in re-telling the stories, we may diminish others unintentionally. I realized that I had a few stories like that, and I decided to drop them. As I thought more about it, I realized the people I love to be around may kid me about my feet of clay, because with long friendships come memories of intermittent silliness, but primarily they cast me in a favorable light, the light of love.
This morning as I lay awake in bed wondering if I should get up way too early or try to fall back asleep, I thought about a heroic story my Mom used to tell about my Dad.
My dad was a hair dresser, not usually considered the most manly of professions. He and Mom built the salon in Belmont Shores with their bare hands, and against all odds, he found a way to earn a good living off women paying to have their hair cut, colored, shampooed and set. He usually had a couple of operators working for him, including Emory, a man who was gay before that term existed, from whom my Dad bought a pastoral picture Emory painted which hangs in my dining room. There was also Romaine, a dapper, Ricardo Montalban-like Mexican who inexplicably decided to uproot his family and move back to Mexico, a decision my dad found shocking when he visited and found they had dirt floors in their casa. Before Romaine moved, he taught my Mom to make what we called "layers" of fried tortillas with meat, beans, lettuce and cheese piled high. My sister Darlene used to "race" Mark Abel, who lived down the street, to see who could eat the most layers. Darlene won, with seven, a pretty remarkable feat, if you know that even now Darlene is 5 feet tall and weighs about 100 pounds.
On many Saturday evenings, my dad would bring someone he would introduce as an artist, but was more likely a transient, for dinner, and we would learn about another way of life. One guy was named Lebeditz, and he told a funny story about driving a Volkswagon in a race through the desert, breaking off the front tire and somehow finishing the race by tying a rope from the front bumper over the roof to the back bumper. He painted an amazing picture of an old Russian on a whale's tooth (or whatever that thing in a whale's mouth is called), and I have that stored away in a closet somewhere, because it doesn't fit our decor.
On one Saturday night every summer, usually in July or August, my dad would come home from work and say we would be leaving the next morning on vacation. He had looked at his appointment book and realized how slow it would be, and rather than lamenting how bad business was, he would make a few changes and take a couple of weeks off.
As to how my mom could get us all packed and out the door the next morning remains something of a mystery, but she did a great job. However, one time, and this was a story oft repeated in my household, we reached the Mississippi River, and I said, "We have to go back. I forgot my fishing pole." For those of you not geographically inclined, the Mississippi River is a long way from Orange County, California.
At the pond on my Granddaddy's farm, I didn't need a store-bought fishing pole anyway. We would use bamboo poles with a string but no reel, bait a hook with some cornbread and just drop it in the water. Granddaddy or Uncle Edwin would throw some more cornbread out in the water, and before long, catfish would be hooked. I remember once my line got caught in some reeds, and my Uncle Edwin took off his pants and waded out in the water to untangle it for me. That was about the funniest thing an eight year-old boy could imagine, and that was another story I retold often.
Once when walking back from the pond through the cornfields with my granddaddy when I was about five, I said we should tell everyone that we saw lions and bears in the "jungle" and had fought them off with his shotgun, which he often carried. He just laughed. When we got back to the old farmhouse, he let me try to deliver the tall tale, but in the end, that became a story about me being a funny little boy instead of the hero I imagined. Almost as funny as when I stepped in a bucket of pig slop, which was truly disgusting, being all the food scraps from various meals that would eventually be fed to the pigs.
As you see, my family vacations created lots of happy memories. I'll tell more another time, but the one I meant to tell you about today was about my dad, the hero. When World War II ended, my dad and mom lived with my grandparents at their house. This was the same Antebellum farmhouse my mother had literally been born in, a rickety old place where the floors creaked and canned fruit jars rattled in the pantry whenever anyone walked, with no indoor plumbing, a wood-burning stove for cooking and no electricity beyond a few light bulbs strung together. More to the point of this story, there was no phone.
My grandmother, who I remember as being the sweetest woman I ever knew --- although my mother certainly deserved to share that crown --- was bitten by a black widow spider. Had she been alone, she would have died, based on the severity of her reaction. My granddaddy had the car with him at work, so my dad grabbed an old bike and rode down the bumpy dirt driveway to the red dirt country road. He peddled as hard as he could, going up the hill past the old cemetery to the country store, where they had a phone. He called the doctor, who came out and saved my grandmother's life.
Every time we went back on vacation, my mom would proudly re-tell that story about the man she loved, my grandmother looking on with an angelic smile. Hearing that story remains a warm memory from my childhood.
What's the moral of the story? Or should I ask, what does that have to do with travel, since this is a travel blog? I don't know. I just felt like sharing it with you.
"Better service leads to better trips."
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