A $20 Check From the Government

My mother died in 1974.... I think I was five years old at the time. It's really kind of vague. Most of what I can remember is fleeting moments of time with her, save of course for a time when she had caught me with a pack of match's. That memory is a long moment... a long moment of pain, as it was her decision to hold my bare hand above the flame of a lite candle.


I'm sure that it didn't burn me to a smoldering degree, but I remember it did scare the hell out of me and it did blister.


I remember being held in closets by my sibling when she wasn't around.... I remember other rough housing as well that was much more fun....


I remember breaking "out" of the house using a broom handle and a chair to reach the lock at the top of the door.

I remember stringing a roll of paper towels from one end of the house to the other... pulling it right off of the spool on the wall.... Laughing with mischief the whole time.


I remember the viewing, the services in Las Vegas.... and I remember falling asleep in the procession on the way to the cemetery lead with what seemed entire legions of motorcycle police, as my mothers brother was a mounted cop in Vegas at the time.


I pissed my pants sometime between leaving the services and waking up after the grave side... at least that's what I remember. That was in a September.


I then remember having to move out of the housing that we were living in, in a different town very near Christmas of that year. It was the place where we had lived before my mother fell ill entirely to cancer. We owned it (my mothers name) and some trailer rentals.


We had to move out because my mothers mother, my Grandmother on her side, was upset that my father won custody of myself and an older sibling. She called in some loans she had made to my mother..... and of course my father both didn't have the money and probably wouldn't have paid her anyway. It was that kind of a relationship in allot of respects... but odd in comparison to our modern day, he never let it effect us (or myself I guess as I can't and won't speak for my brother). I still visited the cousins and other relatives on that side.... he (my father) might not have been stellar, but he did succeed in many areas where it is quite common to see outright failure in our modern day.


My Thanks.


I remember the move because it seems so unique to me. It was my first experience with really saying goodbye in allot of ways... the imagery I can recall really supports that in strangely positive ways. Ways that I can now embrace and even laugh at with warm recall.


It was frightfully near Christmas when we were making the move. It was only from one place to another in the same small town, so it was "entertaining" in many ways from my perspective now.


I can recall, during the last trip of that move.... a rather colorful scene that must have been uproarious to witness.


It has a strange warmth to it, I think because of the circumstance and the way it played out. It was after dark.... everything else had been removed from the place we were leaving except for miscellaneous odds and ends.... a few single socks... lint.... some scattered cards... a few marbles... and a fully decorated, lighted Christmas tree.


It was the last thing to remove from the premises. No one was about to take all of the decorations off and then re-decorate it.... so up into the back of an old GMC pick up it went. Fully trimmed. Myself and older sibling riding in the back with it, to steady it.


It was quite the sight and especially in contrast to the experience of turning from an empty room in the doorway... a room I had known as the only relation to "home" to that date in my life..... I can still remember our four digit telephone number. I turned from that view to the visage of a Christmas tree in the back of a pick up truck. Lite now only from the street light across the gravel way. Shadows..... the chill in the air... the exhaust puffing from the truck as if it were raring to go. I wasn't so sure. It felt strange. It looked strange... but was comfortable in the same strangeness.


I can only imagine now how we must have looked driving through town with a fully decorated Christmas tree in the back of the truck, with myself all of five or six years old, and my older sibling at around fifteen.... Losing ornaments with every corner it seemed, however exaggerated that may be now with the distance from the experience... crashing to gravel and asphalt.


Weird, but I don't really recall moving it into the "new" house... but I know It got there.


I lived with my father for the remainder of my childhood and into my teens. My older sibling moved out at the first chance he had.


It was never decadent in the standard meaning of such a word.... but I wouldn't trade the experiences for anything willingly. It was very near a railroad yard and the river. Both of which I spent what seemed to be endless days playing around.


As soon as I could ride a bicycle (eight or nine years old), I was working, delivering papers. Bringing home what little money a kid could in those days. My allowance was two dollars a day when I got into my early teens... and maybe a few quarters before that. It was definitely enough though, as we had imagination in those days... and you could get decent fish and crawdad bait for free at the local butcher shop.


My father died just after my high school graduation. He had just returned from a vacation around the world. I thought that was kind of odd, as he had already been just about everywhere a person could in his military career.


I was already living on my own so to speak... as I had been since sometime in my senior year... but would find myself dropping in and kind of splitting my time between the old house and where ever I was staying at the time.


I recall getting back into town from the days labor at a mine site working for a construction company, and it was already dark that time of year. I walked into the old house and found the television on but tuned to a static channel... and the old man on the floor face down. The only light in the room was the television.


I stepped over my father laying there thinking it normal at the time... as he had been drinking as of late, and went into the kitchen to grab a sandwich. When I returned to the living area, I began to notice things that weren't quite right.


He would always watch television with a light on behind it, lighting up the wall.
His large plastic cup was overturned on the end table in a manner that had trapped the contents within it... suggesting a very rapid transition of some sort.


Then I looked at his body in the flickering light and noticed splotches. I really didn't even have to get up to look closer, as I already knew at that point with some feeling inside.


He was dead.


When I attempted to check his pulse just to make sure, I didn't even need to touch him before the cold of death was palpable. Inches away from his wrist... it radiated if you can imagine that. Cold radiating.


I called my sister... who then apparently called the local coroner.. who happened also to be with the Sheriffs department. They showed up and went through a series of actions that is a comedy unto itself if you ever witness it. Allot of photographs and "official" hub-ub. I guess just to make sure that he was dead.


"Take a picture! Did the flash make him move? Nope. Yep. He's dead alright." Things of that nature... though perhaps not as pronounced.


The mess that incurred between my siblings is itself yet another sad comedy. I swear, that if I had planted even the most obvious of fake "treasure maps" pointing to some inaccessible area such as under the house, that they all would have stopped at nothing to "get their hands on it." Further while trying to keep the fact that they were from all the other siblings.


I can just see it... "Hey, what are you doing over there?"


"Oh... nothing... just thought I would dig a hole in the middle of the night... I guess I had to go to the bathroom or something. How about you, why do you have a pick and shovel?"


"No special reason... I suppose they just needed to go out for a walk is all."

My cousins would have been no different.

My father was what they call a "lifer" in the military. Over twenty years of service. He served and survived several conflicts. He hardly even ever talked about it. All I really got from him in that respect, was when he was drunk one time (which was INCREDIBLY seldom) and locked in his bedroom.. going through some flash backs of some sort. It wasn't anything all too clear, but I am sure the actual experience was horrific.


"We" chose to bury him in Tucson, Arizona, near his mother and father's graves. Full honors in a big way. Taps, Twenty One Guns and Missing Man. He was Air Force. Air Force from way back.
Much of the next year or so is kind of a blur for a few reasons.... much of which is just a doldrums. I do recall though, a short time after I had returned to the small town I had grown up in, that the U.S. Government sent me a check as some sort of restitution for my fathers passing.
It was a check for Twenty Dollars.


I had to laugh. Twenty Bucks? Why did they bother sending it?


I should have framed it just for the giggle... how ever morbid you may think it... but I cashed it outright and promptly purchased no less than a case of beer, I believe.


A few cold beers was a good little thing to spend it on I think. Kind of fitting in many ways. Twenty Bucks didn't even equate to a dollar for each year of his service.... and the cold beers probably fit the day.



phogoraph; U.S. Government