Come Blow Your Horn

Another story about dear old Dad.

 Come Blow Your Horn

Written by: T. L. O’Neal

 

    When we lived in California back in the mid-sixties, our father was still living with us at the time. We never did see him very much. He was in the Air Force and was working another job or off drinking with his buddies or something or other. It could have been worse; he could have been home all of the time. We did see a lot of hippies walking around the city though, since it was the sixties after all. Not that they were father figures or anything like that but they did look kind of cool, plus I wasn’t too hip on buzz-cuts either. So I patterned my look after them later in life, they always seemed so peaceful, a lot different than the way Dad was.

 

      Anyways, he came home one night with a woman’s name tattooed on his ankle. Boy he must have gotten really drunk that night, or stupid, or just didn’t give a s**t. I like to think it was a combination of all three. When we saw it and asked about it, he had a look in his eyes like he could kill us.

 

We would ask, “Whose Nelly Daddy?”

 

(That’s the w***e’s name on his ankle) and he’d give us a look that made our blood turn to ice and he would respond with his teeth clinched,

 

“Shut-up boy!”

 

Dad told my brother Alan one time that he wrote it on with a pen. But after a while and it never wore off, so Alan asked him why it didn’t. He just told him to shut the f**k up, Dad always did have a way with words.

 

    He was teaching Alan to play chess at one time; I think it was because he thought it would be fun to beat a kid at it. Alan was pretty smart as a kid, real smart as an adult; anyways, once he beat him at his own game. Dad never did play chess with him again after that. I wouldn’t play, I never cared for the game and it was just too slow. But I did enjoy drawing; Dad was taking a correspondence course in art through the G.I. Bill, I believe it was. I couldn’t tell you if I would draw to emulate him or just to get some positive attention, it’s been so long ago now. Whatever the case it didn’t work on either account, he still wouldn’t have s**t to do with me. And to tell you the truth, I think it made him a bit mad too. I was very good at it for my age and he wasn’t so good at his, so we were about equal in ability. And that didn’t sit very well with him either, actually nothing ever sat very well with him but liquor.

 

    But the one thing that I do remember the most about him was his temper. He seemed to yell and cuss at or about anything and everything, and I mean everything. No one was safe from his verbal assaults, except for the puppy I think. He got ran over, I guess he just didn’t want to hear the s**t either, so he just did himself in by suicide via auto. He was a smart little pup. We pure hated for Dad to come home in the evenings because we knew we were going to hear a verbal assault of words that we never heard of or even knew what they meant. We could always tell by the tone of his voice that they weren’t good words or that the meaning behind them wasn’t either. He called us names too. Hell, I didn’t know till I went to school that my name wasn’t “Dufus.” I knew then that it wasn’t my real name after I saw the nametag that they put on my shirt, better on my shirt than my ankle I guess.

 

    When he would get drunk, which seemed like a lot of the time, he would like to shave my brother’s and my head for some damn reason or other. He thought it was fun I guess to torment us.  Anyways, he would hold us down and with those clippers just cut away and laughing the whole time too. Unfortunately he would take a little ear and scalp to boot. We were the original skinheads you could say before there was such a thing, without the tattoos, goose step, and the combat boots of course. It could have been worse; one of his drinking buddies would cut his son’s hair into a Mohawk and make him wear it like that to school. I guess he had a little feeling for us, or the fact that he just never mastered the art of cutting Mohawks. I suppose that’s another reason that I always wear my hair long even now, as an act of defiance against the old b*****d, that and the fact that the hippie-look always seemed kind of cool too.

 

    Of course at other times when he would drink, he would want to have something to do with us, believe it or not. We were constantly starved for attention from him, so I guess that’s why I never gained much weight because we never got that much. But I’m not holding out for it anymore, I’ll just have to eat a little more. Why drinking changes people’s emotions back and forth I couldn’t tell you, it was pretty much a crapshoot when it came to him. Sometimes he acted like he really gave a damn, but that was when he was so drunk that he was just about passed out. He would want me to sit in his lap for some reason. This was fine I guess but he was so drunk that he would burn me with his cigarette. After four or five times I would have had enough of it. I know that love hurts but I didn’t know that it burned and left scars too. I guess that would have been a little too much to put into that Nazareth song “Love Hurts.” Maybe I’ll write to them and suggest it though.

 

    Every now and then when he would get drunk and listen to that old twangy country music, you know those like Hank Williams, Buck Owens and those from that period. He would either get moody which was usually the case, whether he was sober or drunk, but when he was a happy drunk he would like to get out his guitar and play with the music on the record, in his boxer shorts of course. He didn’t know how to play by the way but he did try to with a lot of gusto and he always would swing to the beat too if you get my meaning since he was in boxers, but I rather not think about that. I suspect to those drunken ears he was a real maestro at it but he did enjoy himself anyhow. If that wasn’t bad enough he would try to sing too, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket and definitely had a tin ear too, but at least he tried I guess. This was always fun for us kids because he let us play along with him sometimes, we didn’t know how to play either but it didn’t really matter. It all sounded the same anyways. I don’t remember if Mama liked all this or not but I can’t see how she could had, she was probably just glad when we all wore ourselves out and went to sleep.

 

     Heaven help us if we had done anything wrong that day, which was usually me by the way.

 

Mama would say, “Wait till your father gets home.”

 

and it would scare the living begeebers out of us, especially me. Not because of all the yelling or the mean look on his face but because of that military canvas belt of his. He would grab me by the wrist and pull me off of the floor and he would start slinging that thing, he would use the buckle end of it too and go for the back of the legs. The whole time he was doing this, I just kept going around in circles. There really wasn’t anywhere else for me to go at the time but I did try to get away. After a while you just stopped trying and just stood there and took it. He would beat me till the blood ran and he would keep saying, “Dry it up, boy! Dry it up!” It was his way of saying not to cry or make a sound and just take it, his ideal of being a real man. How can a little kid learn to take it like a man when he wouldn’t even take his responsibilities like one?

 

   But I did learn to take it like a man; he trained me very well. To this day if I get injured or whatever, all I can do is let out a little squeak at the most. No more, no less… just a squeak. Gee thanks Dad, you trained me well.  But on the plus side we were the only kids with zebra striped legs at school that I knew of, so that made us pretty unique. My kids would laugh if I stubbed my toe or something and I would let out that little squeak.

 

They would say, “Daddy made that puppy noise again.” and laugh.

 

If they only knew why they probably wouldn’t laugh, but let them have their fun; you’re only a kid once.

 

    I suspect that his father probably treated him the same way, not really knowing him myself but I did meet him on several occasions. I do remember that I didn’t care for him that much or the way he acted. When he died, I was 18 and Dad had me drive him and his two brothers around after the funeral while they drank and talked about what an a*****e he was. I think my brothers and I will probably do the same thing, without all the drinking just for tradition’s sake. He was still that way well after we were grown and still is for that matter. I’ve given up on him changing along time ago, some people never do. When he came to my house once, my dog “Max” would growl at him and hem him up in his truck. He couldn’t understand why, but I could. That dog was always a damn good judge of character.

 

     My brothers and I have broken the chain, how far back it goes no one could really say. We all turned out pretty decent and are good fathers and mates. It seems I’m getting off the path of the story a bit, but I did need some of the background laid out to make the story a little more understandable and interesting.

 

    Anyways, my older brother Alan and me were riding with him from somewhere; where the place was escapes me now but that’s not really important. With Dad’s regular road rage self and his head hanging out of the window like a dog sniffing air, he was shaking his fist and cussing at everyone that did the slightest infraction or was even driving too slow. He would also occasionally shoot the bird, which at the time we didn’t know exactly what it meant and his favorite of all-time, blowing on the horn relentlessly. I seriously believe it was invented especially for him because he sure liked to use it a lot.

 

    On this particular occasion he was beating on the horn and yelling cusswords at the same time, he really could multi-task. His face was red and veins popping out all over it and he looked like he was about to blow a gasket. We were scared to death of him, which wasn’t anything new and if it couldn’t get any worse…it did. All that banging on that horn made it get stuck and it was blowing a continuous loud sound now, and boy he really got mad then. He sped up and headed for home with that horn blaring, him cussing and Alan and me shrinking in the seat to stay out of his wrath.

 

   After a while of this, Dad started to simmer down somewhat and all we heard was a loud “S**t!” which we didn’t quite understand till we saw those blue lights flashing behind us. We didn’t hear the siren because the horn was still blaring as hard as it could go. Dad kept on driving till he pulled into the driveway of our house with the cop falling right in behind us. With that, Dad being all manly and stuff and needing to vent his rage on something besides us, he ripped that horn right off of the steering wheel. His face was still red but he was relatively quiet and gritting his teeth to the point of breaking them. The officer came over and we hurriedly got out of the car while Dad talked to him. What was said, I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that Dad didn’t yell or cuss the whole time that police officer was there.

 

     It’s funny in a way I guess, I used to always associate Dad’s uniform with fear, but it was nice to have a uniform come along that did some good for us for a change.

 

  

Reviews

[David P. Eckert]

This was a sadder story than most of the stories about your father. He is always the same good-for-nothing man who did little useful as a father, and in other stories he seems always to get his comeuppance. In this one, despite his drunken abusiveness, nothing much seems to happen to him, other than being humbled before a police officer. Perhaps this is written more as autobiography than story, and as such it's sadder. Like always I am amused by the country dialect, but it's a little tamer in this one, as if it's an in-betweener. I suspect it would work better being more country or not country, rather than in between. As for my comment on sadness vs. humor, you certainly have some funny lines in here. The comment about learning your name was not "Doofus" when you saw your name tag in kindergarten was quite amusing. It's just overall this story has a sadder feel.

David

[Kchung]

A story is a story, but when you had honesty and a person's perspective on it all, it really makes it a lot more interesting. A very captivating story you've got here sir. Write on.

[Blue Bard]

Very open and revealing. I love the line, "we were starved for Dad's attention. I guess that was why I never gained weight." Again your eye for detail is what makes the story. The car incident sums up both the comedy and tragedy of that kind of upbringing. I was reminded in spots of "The Great Santini," which is a complement. Good writing T.

[Tom G]

If your sitting across the room or using cyber-speak, your voice is authenticly you, through sorrow or pain, humor and wit, childhood abuse, you emerge, PROUDLY. Bringing us along into your life experiences. Thank you for the depth of your sharing the color and drama of this live portrait. Paint on Terry! TomG

[Taja B.]

I really like this story. This is well written and quite interesting. Eventhough your father seemed kind of wrong of how he treated you and your brother, I really liked the ending when when the officer kind of put him in his place!!lol...

Well anyways, this is a great story. Great job!

[James Conrad]

I like this very much. It does need tightening up as far as some of the grammar is concerned, but your storytelling is becoming more and more fluid with everything you send me. Ye Gods, but you are prolific. I think it's nice that you can look back on the way your father treated you with more than a little humor, be it ever so jaundiced.

The way you tell the stories, not only do I see the Irish stream of consciousness, but it also reminds me of the radio program This American Life on NPR. You should be on that one of these days, man!

[Kevin Connolly]

He just told him to shut the f**k up, dad always did have a way with words.
He was teaching Alan to play chess at one time; I think it was because he thought it would be fun to beat a kid at it. Alan was pretty smart as a kid, real smart as an adult; anyways once he beat him at his own game. Dad never did play chess with him again.
I was very good at my age and he wasn�t so good at his, so we were about equal in ability. That didn�t sit very well with him, actually nothing ever sat very well with him.
He called us names too; hell, I didn�t know till I went to school that my name wasn�t �Dufus.� I knew then that it wasn�t my real name after I saw the nametag that they put on my shirt. Better on my shirt than my ankle I guess.

Sorry Terry, I laughed out loud there. That's a wonderful line - hell, they're all wonderful lines. At times, you'd wonder how so many of us manage to grow up so fine, with such pieces of s**t for role models.

It could have been worse; one of his drinking buddies would cut his son�s hair in a Mohawk and make him wear it like that. I guess he had a little feeling for us or he just never mastered the art of cutting Mohawks. I guess that�s another reason that I always wear my hair long now as an act of defiance to the old b*****d.
I know that love hurts, but didn�t know that it burned and left scars.
His favorite of all-time was blowing on the horn relentlessly. I seriously believe it was invented especially for him because he sure liked to use it a lot. All that banging on that horn made it get stuck and it was blowing a continuous loud sound, and boy he really got mad then. He sped up and headed for home with that horn blaring, him cussing and Alan and me shrinking in the seat to stay out of his wrath.
All I know is that dad didn�t yell or cuss the whole time that officer was there. I used to always associate dad�s uniform with fear, but it was nice to have a uniform come along that did some good for us for a change.

Ezxcellent story, Terry. At a guess (judging by his meekness in front of the policeman, among other things), I'd say your dad was bullied all his life, even as an adult - and he took it out on the only people he knew he'd get away with taking it out on, his own children.

[Everyday Is Just Anothe..]

This was a very moving piece and different than your normal, which is good. It shows that you can write various types of writing. This is perhaps the best piece or work I have read of yours yet! Great job :)

[Pamela]

I am so disappointed - the story has finished!!!

It's a wonderful piece of writing, I love the pace of it. I don't know whether you have a southern American accent but that's the way I read your work and this is first class. It's funny and sad, and above all, triumphant over all odds. You should be proud on all counts.

[Michael Carr]

Very different piece from you T, moving and wonderfully written. Reminds me of my grandfather who I never met but heard of, he was a good man, but he had his heart in the bottle at too many times. Love the last lines. great job T, this is a favorites.