oh, no

Another Dad story. He also, along with Stockard Channing and Bing Crosby, he hated Sigorny Weaver. I think, I'm struggling to recall, it was something about her father. It was probably something political about him. He also hated George Hamilton for getting out of Vietnam. Then my brother got closer to draft age and Dad planed to send him to Canada. People are strange. Dad was a musician, professional and part of the union. A reactionary republican, he worked for McCarthy in the 50s. I've never been able to put all this together quite. A determined, right-wing Christian, abandoned 4 children essentally, not totally, the first two a two year old and a newborn.

I think he was neurotic. I told Pete, the oldest of Dad's kids, that I'd always thought of them as the lucky ones. He wasn't, however, a racist. My brother had a black friend, there weren't a lot of various races in the area then, and Dad had no problem with Rad. He came over a lot, and they did guy stuff. Dad was afraid of all the crime he saw on the news and was so scared that a black robber would break in that he started sleeping in his chair with a gun everynight. For years. He didn't talk about race. I didn't have an opinion or attitude about it at all. I didn't think about it till I started hearing about elsewhere. Mother, of course, didn't discuss such things. I think she was a racist. She looked sick when she heard that a black family had moved next door. My parents really surprised me. They hit me from behind. I always did hate politics. Dad yelled about it all the time. The black neighbors and my mother? That happened a year or so before she died. I had no idea.

My brother and I played with the Mexican kids down the street for years and nobody ever said anything racial. Mom used to chat with their mom all the time in the front yard. So, see? I never understand anything.