Reading While Blind

There is an anecdote told about Abraham Lincoln rejecting a man suggested for a Cabinet position as Lincoln did not like his face. His advisor remarked that a man is not responsible for his face. To which Lincoln purportedly replied that anyone over 40 is responsible for his own face.

I did a cursory search on the Internet to verify the veracity of this statement.  It may or may not have been said by him.  Similar comments have been attributed to several folks over the years.  It seems to have been a meme current at that time, but I am going with Lincoln.

I have riffed on this anecdote and said something somewhat similar — anyone over the age of 40 is responsible for their life. At some point you need to stop blaming or praising your parents on how your life has turned out.  At some point, how your life is, is your product and not those of your parents. I say this as a 73-year-old man who will still, on occasion, blame my parents for ongoing issues in my life. Epiphany is perhaps too strong a word, but I came to a realization years ago. Given my suboptimal venture into parenting, I really had no right to continue to blame my parents for those issues.  I should be taking ownership of who I am, good, bad or mediocre.

Why Now?

What made this immediate for me, is that I recently posted on Curmudgeon-Alley the autobiography that my father started.  He got a good way through the work, but was unable to complete it before he passed – incidentally, he died doing what he loved to do, he was in the middle of fixing something.   He had been working on his autobiography for a while before his death in February of 2005.  I do not recall ever having seen it while it was a work in progress.  I read it when I first took the file off my father’s computer. I reread it several times as I was formatting it for the printer.  I have since reread parts of it in the ensuing 20 years. Sadly, I never really read it in all those many times.

My answer to the question of why did you not really read it has to do with my relationship with my father.  As I have said elsewhere, my parents would have never won the Ward and June Cleaver Parenting Award. My relationship with my father was especially troublesome.  For the first twelve years of my life, I do not remember him being around very much. Then we had a serious rupture when I was 13, the details of which I will not get into. I spent the next ten years actively hating my father and doing everything I could to avoid him. The situation improved somewhat after I married.  I do feel for my mother as she was doing her damnedest to keep me under my father’s radar lest one of us would do bodily harm to the other.  Things got so bad my sophomore year that she shipped me off to Oklahoma to stay with relatives in the middle of a school semester. I was out there nearly a year. When I did come back to my parents’ house in Rhode Island, we continued to ignore each other as much as possible. In my 30s the relationship did repair itself somewhat.  The primary reason I took up golf was to have something to do with my father.  We avoided most other topics outside of sports as we did not hold many opinions in common. 

My First Readings

When I first read my father’s ultimate project I saw it simply as a litany of places, duty stations and assignments. In fact, I went so far as to place this hubristic comment at the bottom of his autobiography before I had it printed:

“My father passed away February 19, 2005 and thus did not get to complete this autobiography. I do think the important points were touched on, though. I had hoped that he would draw some conclusions and lessons from this long and rich life, but the reader will have to draw their own.

For my own part, I will remember him living life to his fullest ability until his last day. He never sat down and felt sorry for himself for too long. He continued to tackle projects, to try to learn new things, to explore the world around him until his last hours.”

Then I Read It Again

This has been a year of folks passing out of this life which has put me in a very contemplative mood. This prompted me to finally put my father’s autobiography online. I am not quite sure as to why, but as I begin to format his document for posting on the web, I really, really read it for the first time.  There is much more in there than my jaundiced eye first noticed (or more accurately, refused to see).  However, the rereading left even more questions unanswered for me.

On His Religion

First thing that really struck me was the section on his religion.  I always just assumed church was something he did to get along with my mother. While we went to church sporadically when I was young, I have a hard time remembering my father being with us.  This changed after they moved to Muskogee (I was long gone from their house), and he even became a deacon in their church. I had just never thought of him as a religious person, and I still find that difficult. So here was a side of my father, I never really knew.

Jack Rush

While he alluded to problems with his father as the reason he left home shortly before his 17^th birthday to join the Navy, the base issue was never really examined.  No one really has a lot of good to say about my father’s father.  The best they do is avoid negative statements. I do not remember him as ever working, except for a brief stint as a night watchman.  Although my Aunt Jackie did tell me about the time they lived in Tennessee and he drove a dump truck on a road construction project. I always picture my Grandfather Rush as sitting at the kitchen table in his wife beater (not something he did… I hope) t-shirt, smoking his Pall Mall cigarettes, and occasionally running his hand through his thinning hair.

I only remember one time being alone with my grandfather and having any sort of interaction.  I do not recall why, but when I was in my early teens, the two of us drove out to the Collings farm, the Collings being the parents of my grandmother. What I remember most about that afternoon was all his stories about how he had given it to one boss or the other.  Of course, that might explain why he did not work…

As I read the sections of the autobiography that included stories about superiors, a bit of Jack Rush was coming through. Apparently, my father also had a bit of an issue with authority figures which I would think would make a career in the military somewhat difficult. Try as my father might, he could not totally escape the negative influence of his father in certain areas.

Some Insecurities

In that same vein, in discussing his interactions with superiors, co-workers, a bit of insecurity came through.  My father was a high school dropout, but he was also extremely bright.  Had he had a different upbringing, I can see him as having been a good engineer.  He had that type of mind. Perhaps his remorsefulness at his lack of education has something to do with the fact that all five of his sons have college degrees. Although all of us, except the youngest, managed to get ourselves through college. Their circumstances had changed enough that he helped out Mark when he went to the University of Oklahoma.

Rightfully Proud

Another theme that emerged was how proud he was of his technical expertise.  He went into great detail of how he solved various technical issues with helicopters.  My favorite, though, was his fixing his Renault two-seater at midnight with a nail and a cigarette lighter for illumination.

My brother Mike tells a story about another Kaman Tech Rep who praised my father as being able to take apart a helicopter and put it back together… blindfolded.  He was extremely mechanical.  I am not.  I think that frustrated him many times.  It was only after I started programming, with the logical thinking it demanded, that my mechanical ability improved.

Parli italiano?

One of the dangers of telling family stories is that all the participants have different points of views, and they frequently remember the story completely differently. My father seemed to think that we boys learned Italian better than we did.  My mother was conversational, but she had an in-house tutor with our maid Susie.  I do not remember my father speaking the language very much.  We boys essentially learned what Italian we knew by playing with Italian kids. We knew enough to get around places, and not to get cheated too badly in the stores. One of my life regrets is that I did not learn the language better when I had a chance to practice it daily. Perhaps he wanted to believe our learning Italian by osmosis as it provided some justification for the constant uprooting of his brood.

Explains a Childhood Remembrance

There was one section in there about his brief high school football career that explained an incidence of my past that has always bothered me a bit.  The fall before we moved to Italy in the summer, I played Pop Warner football.  I remember having shoulder pads that did not fit me correctly.  One practice session my father was there, and called me over to the fence.  He was very insistent that I ask the coach to give me a better fitting set of pads.  The coach had me totally intimidated (don’t all football coaches operate under that paradigm?).  Add onto that the fact that I was a pathologically shy child with a stammer/stutter. Plus, I felt that if anyone should be asking for better equipment for his son, it should have been my father.  I wish I could remember how it all washed out.  Given his discussion of his ill-fitting football equipage goes a long way to explaining his actions that day.

Then there is my father as a high school cheerleader.  I am still trying to get my mind around that one.

More Involved

Another theme that came through was he was more involved, that is not the right word, cognizant works better, of the goings and comings of his sons.  He was definitely more involved with the younger two.  To me, he always seemed at best indifferent to his sons, beings that he left his wife to deal with.

More Romantic Than I Would Have Guessed

If I am being very generous I would describe my parents relationship as combative.  When I lived in Tulsa, I would visit them in Muskogee, usually leaving with the advice, “y’all need to be nice to each other.” I never understood how, but they managed to stay married for nearly 54 years until his death in 2005.  Stubborn is the word that comes to mind. However, what came across in his writings about my parents early time together was love and passion, something I do not remember their demonstrating later in life.  I am glad that they had that, at least for a period of their marriage.

Discarded Offspring 

Discard may be too harsh a word.  To give you a feeling of our life, I was born in Checotah, OK, Paul was born in Millington, TN, Mike in Patuxent River, MD, Jeff in Fredericksburg, VA, and finally Mark in Naples, Italy. I graduated high school in North Kingstown, RI, Mike in Tehran, Iran and the rest of the gang in Muskogee, by gawd, Oklahoma.

Mike tells the story of his enlistment in the Navy very differently than my father.  To my father this was a mutual decision.  Mike tells the story as if he had no other option, and was marched into the Naval recruiting office in Naples, Italy with an arm, more or less, twisted behind his back. He probably really didn’t have a choice, given the circumstances. My father mentioned feeling he had abandoned Mike watching him fly off to the States to go to Navy boot camp.  He also mentioned having felt like he abandoned Paul in Oklahoma.  He failed to mention leaving me behind in Rhode Island. Truth was that I felt abandoned by my parents long before their flight to Tehran.  I was estranged from both of them at this point in my life, and I was only vaguely aware that they had left the country. They were not anyone I would have expected help or advice from.  I was an whopping old man of 20 years when they left for Iran, and for all practical purposes, had been out of my parents house since my graduation from high school.       

He did address this as one of his failings, that he did not set his three older sons out into life with well-trimmed sails.  None of us sunk completely, but we sure were aboard water logged ships with the bilge pumps being operated at full tilt. 

Alcoholism

He addressed this, and he glossed over it. Undoubtedly, it is not an easy subject to write about. I, for one, try heroically to not think about my failures and foibles. In many ways his alcoholism defined our early life. I am sure it caused money problems; it is not a cheap pastime, especially if you are doing your drinking in bars. Monday through Friday he was good, being dedicated to his job.  But I really do not recall many Friday evenings when he was home. That was his time for going to the bar. Only somewhat sarcastically, I sometimes think of the definition of a Rush boy as being the result of the interactions between my parents around his fondness for fermented beverages.

I remember Mike telling a story about asking our father about a situation from Mike’s childhood.  My father’s response was that he did not look backward, just forward… such things are best left under the carpet. Given that, I am glad that he acknowledged the problems his drinking caused, however in passing. It made for a tough adolescence. I even find his addressing it a little brave on his part.

Chicken Coop

A bit of an aside, my father wrote about two places they lived while he was stationed at Corpus Christi with housing being at a shortage due to the start of the Korean War.  He described one abode as being a converted chicken coop. I upset my mother once, I was teasing her, by asking her if I had been conceived in a chicken coop!  She declined to answer for some reason. The answer is… probably.

Dare Devil  

As I read some of my father’s exploits as a private pilot, I was trying to figure out if he was a bit of a dare devil or perhaps overestimated his abilities in that area. I never did come to a conclusion, but either way I understand a bit where he was coming from. Some of us need vitamin adrenaline from time to time. However, it sounded like he had a real passion for flying…even if he could not get my mother back into a small aircraft. He started to teach me to fly, but that fizzled.  My  brother Jeff did learn to fly and soloed at 16.

Only took 73 Years

One way to look at anyone’s life is as a chain of cause and effects. I prefer the delusional position that we are agents of our own destiny.  The second position brings to mind one of my favorite quotes:

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we are cynical. You’ve got to jump off the cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” ~~ Ray Bradbury

It strikes me that he and my mother both spent a lot of time jumping off cliffs, counting on growing wings as they descended, and they always seemed to have built those wings. In many ways, these two, one the child of sharecroppers, the other the product of unnecessary poverty, had an amazing adventure all around the globe.

It only took me 73 years to see the humanity of my father, I only wish I had read his autobiography more closely, earlier than I did. I spent all of my childhood not knowing him or vilifying him. For most of my adult life he was more of a caricature to than a genuine person. Fault can be found on both sides, but as the punch line goes to an awful joke that I have told way too many times… Better Nate than lever.

And so it goes.

Have a masochistic need for more Rush lore?

Here is the link to my father’s autobiography: From Tompkinsville to Muskogee: A Unique Journey by David Marrs Rush 

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