My father died on this day in 1997. On the Fourth of July. Does that spoil the holiday for me? Not exactly. I’ll just say it’s complicated.
It wasn’t always. July Fourth was a time to reminisce about Dad, who one of the most patriotic people I ever knew. He was literally buried in a casket with a flag under the lid.
He was a soldier musician – a clarinetist in the National Guard band with a sharpshooter medal .
Independence Day was his holiday.
He liked to celebrate with fireworks, as did I. Mom would send him out to stop us kids from blowing each other up and next thing you knew he’d be tossing them in the air, saying “here’s how you do it.”
He grew up playing with cherry bombs, which can totally blow your hand off, so Black Cats and pennyrockets didn’t faze him in the slightest.
I inherited that from him. I’d be in a firecracker war right now if I could.
But now on the Fourth I just wonder what Dad would make of America if he was still around. I’m kind of glad he didn’t live to see it now.
I used to see myself as a patriot and I guess I still do. I was in Boy Scouts. I learned how to raise and lower the flag, how to fold it, how to display it.
These days I don’t think much about the flag unless I see it in public. I have one in the house somewhere, but I can’t find it.
I know how I used to feel about the American flag, but how am I supposed to feel now that I’ve seen it carried next to Nazi flags and Confederate Battle Flags? Now that I’ve seen someone beaten nearly to death with one on TV?
Now I’m kind of afraid to display the flag. I have to wonder what it will say about me to others who saw those same images. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way.
The year I got married, 2014. Dang I looked young back then.
My wife and I got married the day before my birthday, so we wouldn’t forget our anniversary, but as it turns out, we don’t much care about that. We celebrate Gotcha Day. The day we met.
We don’t do anything too extravagant. We reminisce about our date, which started out as a Craigslist hookup and ended up changing both our lives.
We listened to Violator from Depeche Mode (my pick) and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, by Neko Case (her pick), music we listened to at her old apartment.
Depeche Mode – Policy of Truth. Favorite song from my favorite Depeche Mode album. For a while, I thought Violator was a Greatest Hits album.
Our date started as a Craigslist hookup, back when they still had personals. My previous dates were so awkward and frustrating, I decided I just wanted to have sex with someone I liked.
She had good grammar and spelling. Her ad gave me an idea of her personality and she shared a lot of my interests. She was into sci fi. That was rare.
At the very least I thought she’d be fun to talk to. She was.
Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. I was already a big Neko Case fan, but my wife got me to give this a good listen on our first date.Gorgeous, like most of her music.
We met at a Greek restaurant, near my old neighborhood. I decided to get it out of the way early: “I’m an atheist. I hope you’re OK with that.” I didn’t want to get trapped in that world again.
She surprised me. “Me too.” She was from Austin, but this was still Texas.
The chemistry was pretty obvious even to me, who tended to have a bad read on those situations. We took it to the sports bar next door.
She blushed. I thought it was so cute, I got her to do it again. Finally, she got me to go with her and I followed her home in my car.
The rest is history. At age 47, she became my first girlfriend. I robbed the cradle. She was 36. And yes, she took my virginity. I think I did quite well, thank you very much.
We were both ready for each other. I was ready to stop being alone. She was ready to value herself and quit settling for men who neglected her and took advantage.
I wasn’t in the strictly “hookup” part of the personals – those ads grossed me out – but Craigslist had a reputation.
We’ve been through a lot since then. Our mothers dying, hers while sharing an apartment with us. Covid and the lockdown. Jan. 6. But going through those things together made them bearable.
As long as we have each other we can deal with whatever comes next.
From first grade through about third grade, Tony was my school bully was a skinny little kid, but he ran a gang of kids who were bigger than him. If they caught you they would beat your ass, or they’d hold your arms behind your back and let Tony punch you.
Funny how sometimes Tony and I were on the same side. In 2nd grade, we both hated Susie the class monitor and decided we were gonna get her.
She would tell on you for anything. We were suburban white kids, so we were slow to learn the code of the schoolyard. In 2nd grade, being a tattle tale and getting someone paddled was a pretty common sport.
Sooner or later, most kids learned that nobody wanted to be friends with a rat and in fact, might kick your ass. Being a class monitor and a girl, however, Susie loved telling.
If you talked or got up when Miss Bennett went to the lounge for a smoke, I almost got licks for calling Tony a jackass, which he was, but I got out of that one by crying and claiming I didn’t know what jackass meant.
Most of us didn’t want to behave during Miss Bennett’s smoke breaks, especially us boys. That was our chance to talk, plus Susie was not the boss of us.
One day, Tony and I conspired to teach Susie a lesson. We folded some strips of construction paper into a little accordion shape and told her it was a bomb. Second grade class monitors have great imaginations.
We crawled between the desks all sneaky-like.“We’re gonna put this under teacher’s chair and when she sits down it’s gonna blow up!” Tony said.
“You better not!” said Susie.
We crawled behind Teacher’s desk, put the paper under her chair and snuck back to our seats.
“Don’t sit down!” Susie said when Miss Bennett came in. “Teacher came in and Susie jumped up. “Teacher, teacher! Don’t sit down! There’s a bomb under your chair!”
Second grade teachers don’t have such great imaginations. “Miss Bett said, “What? There’s a wad of paper on the floor. So what? “If you’re going to make up stories, Susie, you can’t be the class monitor.”
Mission accomplished. Nancy, the next class monitor, was a fair civil servant. We got a few shushes, but she wasn’t a narc.
I was a proper editor at my fourth newspaper. Not to say I was good at it, but I supervised a few people: A sports reporter (not really – he had it handled), a lady who wrote about the next town over and whoever was helping us enter copy that came in from the public into the computer.
I had gotten used to being chief cook and bottle washer at my previous paper, but I had my hands full with the front page at this operation, so I had to delegate.
One year we had a high school girl setting type for us.
She was cute, but something about the way she chewed her gum suggested a cow chewing its cuud. She also had a real habit of not following directions.
Back then, if you used the caps lock in MS Word, there was no way to de-capitalize it. Most people in town didn’t have computers, especially the ladies in garden club and the geneology society, so press releases tended to be pretty rough copy.
If an event was important enough, I’d edit the release to read like an actual article. But most realeases were just glorified calendar entries, so as long as folks wrote in complete sentences, we ran them as is.
Small town folks were insecure about what words to capitalize and when, so a lot of times they’d type it in all-caps so nobody would judge. I didn’t. I knew not everybody had gone to college like I did.
Several press days in a row, I’d be on deadline and find the teenager had typed several releases EXACTLY as is, using all-caps just like the old lady who wrote it. I couldn’t fix it in Word, so I had to find retype everything myself when I was still dealing with front page layout. Grrr!
She did turned in copy like that one time too many and I kinda snapped at her. “I’ve told you a million times, don’t do that. No matter what they turn in, DO NOT type in all-caps! Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.” And it finally sank in. I quit having to retype press releases.
So one day I had a little free time and decided to help typeset, since people had turned in a lot of copy that week. High school girl acted like she wanted to get my attention, but wouldn’t say anything.
Finally I asked her what was wrong. She said, “Umm, Mr. LateBloomer, you said not to type in all-caps, but is it OK if I type this in all-caps?” It was an acronym.
Where to even begin? I said, “OK, if if’s an acronym or an abbreviation, you now have my permission to type it in all caps.” I really hope she graduated from high school.
I knew the newspaper was about to sell when my old cigar-chomping boss sent me out to wash the delivery van. We never washed that van. It was supposed to be white, but it was a fairly dark shade of gray.
A few days later we sent the manual typewriters out to be cleaned. They thought would impress the new regime. Pretty ironic as the first thing the new company did was bring in a bunch of Macintosh computers.
Before that I had to bang out all my copy on an old Royal typewriter, then hand it to the typesetter. She entered everything into the big blue machine which converted everything into column-wide strips.
The computers freaked everyone out. I had at least messed around on a TRS-80 before, so I adapted, but others just could not or would not. Classified ads disappeared. A public notice got saved in the utility folders and the Sheriff’s office had to postpone an auction.
Work flow went to shit.
My old publisher and his wife were still there, but they’d been busted down to reporter. They wouldn’t touch their computers. They continued cranking out stories on their manual typewriters and handed them to me.
I then had to retype into the computer. After a few weeks, the new publisher got fed up and had all the typewriters removed from the building.
Did that ever stir up shit. The old guard was not happy. They thought I was a computer nerd because I knew how to do things like save and print. (If only they could see me now – in completely over my head when it comes to tech.)
I can’t remember who went in what order, but one by one the old staff decided to “pursue other opportunities.”
A lady who was struggling to learn bookkeeping on a Mac took charge of the going away parties. An employee would reach their limit and she’d head to the grocery store for cake and punch.
One day I got back from an interview with a coach just in time to see party planner lady peeling out in the parking lot, flipping the bird out the window on her way out.
I came in the back door to find everyone standing around in shock. I said, “So are we gonna have a cake?”
Devo – Jocko Homo. I love that line: “God made man, but the monkeys applied the glue.”
As a young man I accepted evolution AND held onto creationism. it was contradictory, but it worked – until my third year of college.
I grew up in the creationist-friendly Southern Baptist Church, but I loved science. Evolution was a common theme in the science fiction I read, but I could entertain a premise without believing it.
The Cinematic Orchestra – Evolution
I was very good at compartmentalizing. When you’re a Baptist you have to be. I also had common sense. I knew the world wasn’t 8,000 years old or created in six days. I knew there was no way the Noah’s Ark story could be literally true.
But I found loopholes. Maybe creationism was kind of true. A day for God might last a million years, who knew what six days meant to Him. Perhaps Adam and Eve were hairy, but human. My uncle was pretty hairy. Mostly I didn’t worry about it. I was too busy being a young man.
Then I took a college course that changed everything. It was called Human Geography and it was fascinating. I love learning about other lands and cultures. National Geographic helped raise me. I had no idea the course would also shake me to my foundations.
I learned about the Rift Valley of Africa, where the creatures that became us almost certainly originated. I learned about the extremely numerous fossils of pre-human cousins.
Fundamentalist conspiracy theories about “the missing Taung Baby exhibit” weren’t going to cut it. There were a LOT of fossils and they added up.
Studying Lucy by Donald Johanson and Maitland A. Edey sealed it. Lucy tells how Australopithecus afarensis was found (named Lucy after the Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”).
Her skeleton was so complete, there was no denying. She wasn’t human, but she walked on two legs. Obvious relative.
We learned about the other races of human that no longer existed. It wasn’t just us and the Neanderthal anymore.
There was Homo habilis, which made tools, though not with much finesse. There was Homo erectus, much better toolmakers who migrated into Europe and Asia. This was in the late ’80s. I know other species of human have been discovered since.
What I learned shook me up, but it also excited me. The science fiction fan in me wished for a time machine, so I could get a look at some of these creatures.
I wanted to see the waterfall at the Strait of Gibraltar, filling up the Mediterranean basin after a previous Ice Age (It may have been closer to a flood as it turns out). I wanted to see Australopithecus robustus, which I imagined as an upright silverback gorilla that could really take a punch to the jaw. My imagination was on fire.
We learned about Johanson’s argument with fellow paleontologist Richard Leaky over the age of a layer in the rock, which in turn impacted the age of some important fossils. It was striking, because they were quibbling over millions of years, not thousands.
I enjoyed the hell out that class, but it got under my skin. It nagged at me. My version of Baptist doctrine had been a given, part of reality. Suddenly the ground was no longer quite solid.
Budos Band – Origin of Man
How much of what I thought I knew was actually true? I tried to talk about it with my friends at the Baptist Student Union, but they weren’t interested.
“You should read some creation science” didn’t really feel like an answer. My compromise couldn’t last. I wasn’t really interested in what preachers had to say since I’d already been burned over the stupid Rapture thing.
Over time I came to terms with evolution. A lot of things made sense that didn’t before. No point trying to deny it. There was still plenty of mystery in the world.
I didn’t become an atheist. That came later (and I’ve modified that stance). But I had to change. I couldn ‘t call myself a fundamentalist anymore. If I was to remain a Christian, I would have to at least take parts of the Bible with a grain of salt.
I figured it contained a lot of truth, but in a book that old, a lot had to be lost in translation. I still value the Bible, btw, just differently. What makes it important isn’t literal truth, but the wisdom it contains.
My fifth grade teacher wanted to teach us about doodle bugs so she made a terrarium with a doodle bug a stick and some ants.
The doodle bug ate the ants. Then it hatched out and grew wings and climbed up the stick. Then the ants climbed up the stick and ate the doodle bug fly.
Best science lesson ever. The cycle of life…
Doodle bugs are what we called ant lions BTW. An ant lion is the only insect whose adult form is named for its larval stage. I read that somewhere.
Some doodle bug traps I found in the Texas Hill Country. I don’t know if one of them managed to eat that millipede or not.
I grew up in the country and one thing you learned as a kid was how to catch a doodle bug. Just get under them and let the sand run through your fingers and there it’ll be, scooting around in your hand in a circle. It kinda tickled.
There wasn’t much you could do next other than let them go, so they could make another trap. We just wanted to know what they looked like.
I could tell doodlebugs inspired the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi. Which is why I got so annoyed when George Lucas added CGI tentacles in the subsequent release. Doodlebugs do just fine without tentacles.
Now there are videos explaining the anatomy and life cycle of the tentacled version which seems like the movie review version of a bacronym. You know, like the USA PATRIOT Act (“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”).
“There’s a German legend that when you see someone who looks exactly like you walking toward you, it means you’re going to die. Or you just met your identical twin you didn’t know about. Or both!”
Robyn Hitchcock laid that bit about doppelgangers on us at a SXSW show sometime in the early 00’s. You never know what he’s going to say – he also compared his guitar to a javelina.
The movies always play up the scary angle. What if your evil twin takes over? What if YOU’RE the clone? Dun dun dunnnnn.
I met my doppelganger in college and I wasn’t scared. I was insulted – because he was fucking ugly! Met is too strong a word. I never talked to him because the idea of him being in my school made me mad.
Professors who had him in their other classes called me by his name and I snapped back. “That’s not my name!” They were surprised, like “OK then…”
I complained to my mother who was already in the habit of saying, “You were so cute. What happened?”
It didn’t occur to me to ask if there was something she hadn’t told us, because he DID NOT look like me. She said “Maybe he thinks YOU’RE the ugly one.”
Toadstools, berries, dead bugs and cicada shells. Those were some of the many ingredients. I stirred them into a bucket of water and left them next to the fence, as far as I could get from the house. Dad could be a spoil sport.
I wasn’t sure what, but I knew something magical would happen eventually. I’d heard you could put a horse’s hair in water and it would turn into a worm, so I figured anything was possible.
Unfortunately, I never got to find out. Just as my brew was reaching maturity, Dad smelled it from inside the house and said “God what’s that smell?” and tumped it over. I said, “Dad, no! My potion!”
But Dad didn’t believe in magic.
After losing several potions with a lot of potential, I gave up on magic and turned to science.
I mixed household items like Windex, perfume and shampoo and put my “experiments” in the freezer. And in a few days, voila! They disappeared. I never saw it happen, but I was impressed.
Sometimes I got into the medicine cabinet for more scientific looking items. I learned that dropping Dad’s Alka-Seltzer into a sink full of water would make them disappear.
Then I turned to the kitchen. Baking supplies were a goldmine for science.
My biggest discovery: You know how baker’s cocoa floats on top of the milk and refuses to sink? Green food coloring worked like a charm. Add a little sugar and you have green chocolate milk. Red, blue and yellow had no effect. So what if Mom and Dad wouldn’t buy more Hershey’s Quick . We had it covered.
I admit I was unethical. Green chocolate milk looked like it might be poisonous, so I tested it on my little brother. When he liked it and didn’t die, it was Katie bar the door. Green chocolate milk was on the menu.
Mom asked, “What on earth is happening to the green food coloring?” But I never gave up my secret.
Sooner or later it was going to happen. An older boy would ask, “What’s worse than a tornado or a hurricane?”
“I dunno. What?”
Older boy grabs one of your nips. “A Texas titty twister!” That hurt!
You only fell for that once, then started plotting, cuz you had to pull that on some other kid. Nipples were fair game if you were a boy.
There were other variations. A boy might grab your nip unexpectedly and shout, “Whistle or lose it!” Try to do that sometime. Not easy.
That was a classic, like, “Watch me suck my spit back in,” from the boy sitting on your chest.
There was an older kid in Boy Scouts who liked to grab your nipple and not let go until you sang all the words to “Mickey Rat” (Old episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club were still showing in reruns.)
He was one of those semi-bullies who turned cool as he got older. He was driving without a license at 14, that was cool in my book.
My wife didn’t see the humor in that, although I pointed out it was a boy only activity.
Though I once heard Arnold’s ex Maria Shriver say on air that her brother pulled the Texas Titty Twister on her when they were kids.
Happy (?) memories, but stay the hell away from my nipples. I did my time.
Late Boomer's Den 
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