Some are saying the link to my dad story isnt working...here it is...sorry its so long... My dad, William R. Weaver, Sr. was not a particularly well-educated man. Like a lot of men of his generation, he had to quit school at 14 and go to work. He was, however, a smart guy. He had a shed load of common sense and he knew how to fix what was broken and keep stuff going long after it should have been hauled off to the nearest junkyard. Later on in life, I was amazed to find out that he liked to read. Beyond the Playboy that he stashed in his bottom drawer (I just know, OK?), I don’t recall ever seeing him with a book or a magazine around the house. Yet, when he retired from General Motors, along with his uniforms and his tools there was a box full of paperbacks that he read during his breaks in the can. My dad digging “The Exorcist.” Who knew? He worked as a carpenter for a few years before and after my mom and he were married. He liked carpentry, but those long winter layoffs are hell when a man has kids to feed, so he took the job at GM for the steady paycheck and bennies. He worked there for 40 years. Pretty much until the day he died. Dad liked his friends, and loved a good joke, even a dirty one. He had no use for people that used foul language in front of women, but could turn the air navy when he was doing something around the house that wasn’t working out to his satisfaction. The neighbors used to take their kids inside when my dad was working outside. Folks liked my dad, though and called him – as a compliment – a “regular guy”. Like Faulkner, dad knew only one thing about work. When it wasn’t done, it wasn’t done, and when it was, it was. You used whatever means and tools you had to get the work done, and it was a man’s job to turn a buck. No excuses, no matter what. During the carpentry years, when winter and the snow came and there was no work swinging a hammer, he went door-to-door like a 10 year-old kid asking to shovel walks. His kids always came first. I well remember meat on the table for my sisters and I while my folks ate oatmeal. Along with his regular job, dad cleaned wells, shingled roofs, hauled trash, fed hogs…whatever it took to earn a poor man’s dollar. Legend has it that he was out catching chickens on the cold November night I was born. Dad drove my mom to the hospital in his old car with the heat blasting and the windows rolled up to keep her warm. He didn’t realize how rank he was with the smell of what comes out of the back end of a hen. And I don’t mean eggs. He could not understand why the simple act of having a baby was making his young wife so sick to her stomach. Ray Weaver, Senior liked blue crabs, bluegrass and cold beer. He passed the appreciation of those sublime pleasures on to his son. The way mom tells it, dad could rip it up with the best of them in his younger days, but he settled down right quick (with the help of an occasional well-placed shot to the head from her) when his kids started showing up. He didn’t give up without a fight, though… A well-loved Weaver family fable holds that when my sisters and I were still kids and dad was still doing carpentry he would stop by Mollie’s Tavern, a local watering hole, pretty much every day for…let’s call it “lunch”. One day, we drove by Mollie’s while we were all, including dad, out for a ride with Mom’s rather well-off and snooty sister. I pointed at the old roadhouse, and just as cute as a three-year-old button (or so I’m told) squeaked, “That’s where my daddy works.” Hey, that was where we picked him up most nights! I think if a hole had opened up in the earth, dad would have gladly crawled into it, and pulled me in with him. Once he married my mom, my dad’s days as a rounder were pretty much numbered. My mom never took any crap off anyone, including and especially her own husband. One Friday night when she decided that dad’s “lunch break” had now gone on quite long enough, thankyouverymuch, she dressed herself to the nines, grabbed me and my sisters and we all hiked the half mile or so up to Mollies. She plopped us down at a table, got us some Cokes and chips, and said, “Weaver, these are your kids, and, guess what…it’s your night to baby-sit.” Now, my dad may have liked beer and dim taverns, but his kids were by Christ NOT going to be seen in a bar. As I recall, we ALL went home pretty damn skippy. I didn’t even get to finish my Coke. My mom always has these things she calls throw rugs on the floor. Just some little rugs to cover the door jams and in front of the kitchen and bathroom sinks. My dad hated them with a passion, and was forever kicking and cussing at them. One night after a few brews with his buddies, he walked home from the local, and tripped on the throw rug in the kitchen…like he always did. So, he started cussing it and kicking it… like he always did. It didn’t move. Not an inch. No matter how hard he kicked at it, it refused to budge. He had only had a few beers, so he wasn’t 3 sheets, but one sheet was definitely blowin’ in the wind when dad got down on all fours and examined the rug only to discover that mom had nailed that sucker to the floor. My mom is a riot. Then there was the New Years Eve when I was roped into looking after my sisters while the folks went out. My cousin Kenny and I had a mini-New Years party of our own. Cokes, chips, a sip or two of beer and watching Dick Clark drop that stupid ball. We crashed at about one. My folks came in at six am. I know this because my dad starting playing the piano and singing, “It’s Six O’clock in the Morning, it’s Six O’clock in the Morning, oh, it’s Six o’clock in the Morning, wake up, wake up, wake up…” I think he wrote that song himself. And people wonder where I get my talent from. He was apparently unconcerned by the fact that he could neither sing nor play the piano and that his captive audience was imparting that information to him quite loudly. It is little wonder that my mother has never had a drink in her life. She had her hands full. In reading all of the above, I’m afraid that the politically correct (read anal retentive) among you are thinking that my dad sounds like a falling down drunk. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, he sowed a few wild oats in his younger days, but after his kids came along he limited his nights out to a couple of beers on the weekends while he listened to some local band. The man loved his music. So does my mom. There was always a stack of country lps spinning on whatever crappy Montgomery Ward stereo we owned. They drug my sisters and I to endless all-day country and bluegrass festivals when we were kids. I am sure I saw hundreds of classic acts that I was too young and dumb to appreciate at the time. I was the singer in many of those bands my dad would catch on his weekends. A lot of musicians talk about the troubles they had with their folks when they decided on music as a career. I never had, and will never have, a bigger fan than my dad. From the Beatles, Stones and Creedence days, through the Grand Funk and Deep Purple haze, into my Dylan and Donovan phase and finally back home to Hank and Merle and the music he raised me on, he was there almost every weekend I played in town. Ok, he took a little break around the Marc Bolan/David Bowie period. I’m thinking the silver glitter platform shoes and purple eye-shadow may have put him off… I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Somewhere in all of these words, I said that people called my dad a “regular guy.” To me, my dad was anything but regular. He was my hero.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 06:28:31 +0000
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