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“No more penance

No old books

No more preachers

Dirty crooks”

Kittens when I was a wee lad of 10 years old my dear old pop told me get my ass outside one day because we were going to climb a tree.

We had hundreds to choose from in our back yard as I spent the earlier bits of my life growing up in the countryside so the old man telling me to climb a tree wasn’t so much of a chore, it was deciding which one to climb.

Dad went first. He scurried up the branches like a Galapagos monkey and reached a strong branch to sit on, then told me to follow his path up the tree, so I did. It didn’t take to long and I wasn’t afraid of heights so although I wasn’t as quick as my Dad I got there in reasonable time.

Dad and I sat on the branch for a little while and didn’t say anything.

Then he pushed of off the branch to the ground.

I looked up at him and said “what the fuck?”

He told me not to swear too much and to get back on the branch where he was sitting. I did. I had a few scrapes and a decent bruise appearing and my arm hurt like hell but I climbed back up the tree.

Again we sat there in silence for a short time and then suddenly, he pushed me out of the tree again so that I fell to the ground.

“What the fuck is your problem old man?” I yelled at him now thoroughly pissed off as I stormed away.

He followed me into the garage where I was seething with rage and trying to wipe the dirt and blood off of my arm. He told me I had just learned a few good lessons about life.

“Like what? That my Dad is an asshole?” I asked?

“Yes.” He told me.

He also told me that I had learned how to fearlessly climb a tree that day. He also said I learned to fall out of a tree, and no matter how much I was hurt, to get up and climb right back up that tree.

“Big fucking deal you jerk. You pushed me out of the tree…..twice.” I told him.

“That’s the last part of the lesson son. When somebody pushes you out of a tree once, make sure you get back up no matter how much it hurts and climb that tree until you reach them again. Then, never let them push you out a second time, but make sure you do it to them before they can do it to you again.”

I punched my old man as hard as I could in the gut and walked away.

He was right though my Kittens. I knew it then, and I know it now. Kids need to fall out of trees and they also need to be pushed out of them.

My old man is long dead now, thankfully. I’d like to say I miss him but I really don’t…….mostly. I do at times when I think of the good man he once was, but sadly he became a man I hated and somebody I never wanted any part of. The good man that taught me hard lessons for my own good just became a hard man. For that I will always hate him. When I learned by protracted phone call that he was dead I didn’t weep. I felt nothing except that I should be obligated to feel bad but I didn’t. He was by then a stranger who had not only rejected me because I wanted to grow up to be an artist of sorts, but he also betrayed the lessons he had taught me. The lessons I carry with me today that have protected me ever since they were harshly taught to me.

I had a neighbor of sorts in the way that a kid in the country has a neighbor. That means he lived a mile away from me and his name was Gordie. His family had a bull had Napoleon and I would go visit Gordie and hang out while we did kid stuff.

I’d also hang out with Napoleon from across the fence and feed him, give his loud stinky nose a rub while I was there. He and I got along great. Not Gordie and I, regularly Gordie would hit me in the face because he was the school bully and impossibly short. Short guys are like that. They always have something to prove. One day I punched the shit out of Gordie after he punked me at school when we got of of the bus. Gordie never fucked with me again.

Napoleon was another story though. One day after saying good bye to Gordie I decided to take a short cut through Napoleons field. He and I got along just fine and it was just another field much like the ones I has walked through a jillion times. Then I heard it.

Snort, scruff, snort, scruff.

Napoleon was looking at me, and he wasn’t happy. He looked at me the same way and angry bull sees a bullfighter….like a free meal and trophy for his mantle.

Needless to say I ran my ass off and Napoleon took off after me. I was a kid of 11 being chased by a fully grown angry bull in the dark of an autumn night. I could literally taste his rage with me.

It seemed like a mile until I reached the fence and I dove over it like it was invisible. I remember falling to the ground and tumbling for a while. I eventually got up, dusted my now bruised and dusty self off and looked at my friend Napoleon.

“What the fuck Napoleon?”

He looked at me and moved his head up and down like he always had before when he wanted me to pet his nose. I walked over and did just that. He snorted at me with content.

I went home and told Dad what had happened.

He looked at me rather pissed off that I had ripped my jeans and torn up a jacket diving over the fence and seemed uninterested that a fully grown bull just tried to stomp all over his son.

“You walked through his field?????” He said.

“Yeah….why?”

“That’s why he wanted to kill you. Never walk through a bulls field. It’s his home. Mess with bull and he’ll give you his horns.”

“Hmmmm…..that makes sense because he was nice after.”

“That is because you weren’t messing with his home.”

“I see. I need a shower now….and some band aids.”

“Go get a shower, and pour me another drink while you are up, and one for your mother.”

“Is Jeff herrrrrre?”

“Yeah I’m here Mum.”

“Are you bleeding?”

“Yeah Mum, Napoleon the bull tried to attack me.”

“While you’re up, mix me a drink.”

“Uh huh.”

By now my Kittens you may be asking yourself what this has to do with my re-writing of an Alice Cooper song, not that I really like Alice Cooper anyways.

Well, it’s like this.

Lee, my Dad was a good man……. for a while. He taught me many things and regular readers of the Mighty Keep Your Coins, I Want Change blog may wonder why I am such a bastard. You can thank Lee for much of it. Unlike Lee my dear dead Dad though, I won’t be making a U-Turn.

Again when I was a kid Mum decided to get “Jesus” for a while. By a while I mean a few months…and they were hell on earth as she was determined to save us all, even though as a kid I hadn’t even done anything yet that would require me being saved from except winning at marbles.

Lee was an atheist and one night when I asked him why Mum was acting so fucked up he put his tumbler to his forehead and said with his eyes closed “Son….it is…because Mum is fucking crazy.”

He was right and a few months later Mum found a new fad to latch onto and Jesus had to find a new place to squat. Dad was happy again and I didn’t have to be saved from anything although I still wasn’t doing anything that I needed to be saved from. I was still to young for liquor, whores, gambling and religion anyways, and only the latter seemed like the really big vice anyways.

Dad and I had an interesting relationship. He didn’t like me much and I didn’t like him. We grew apart when my parents divorced and although we tried to keep in touch mostly our visits were unannounced when I would have to show up at his office when I was 15 and kick the hell out of him for not paying child support so we could pay the rent in front of his secretary.

I ended up quitting school and dismissing Lee as a person in my families life and became the man of the house, which to this day I still am.

Lee did as people do and moved on. He found a woman and married her up. He did it at a church and decided to set up shop with her. He and I tried to reconcile over the years with many stops and gaps but we did however to manage to tolerate each other every other weekend for brief visits where we were both civil…..sort of.

By this point Lee and I would sit in the sun room of his house, share a couple of beers and some cigarettes and talk about life, current events, philosophy, engineering and then suddenly religion.

Pop never talked about god.

I can say many things about Lee, but I can never say that he was a dummy. He was and still is the smartest man I have ever met and the greatest critical thinker I reckon I shall ever know.

Once on a visit he showed me how he had built a home sanding machine (and no I am really not kidding about this) out of a sewing machine engine, some skateboard parts, a bit of rubber tubing and a chunk of sandpaper. If lee was alive today he could build an atom smasher out of paper clips, some bubble gum, a door hinge, the lock on a dog collar with a caffinated troop of hamsters running in a series of wheels.

It was when he spoke about god that made me curious. Suddenly this brilliant man who had mercilessly dealt out lessons to me for my own good that I still thank him for, changed his tune.

It wasn’t that he talked about it it much. It was that he started talking about “when he get’s to heaven” and that there was a certain hereafter that he had changed. he had began consulting with a member of the clergy about life choices and was praying daily.

Humpf……and Mum had been the crazy one.

I respected his choices and still do. I just never understood it. He was nearing the end of his life surely so like many people at the tail end of the tether they always look for a soft place to land, but Lee?

My Dad?

He still hated me and was more interested in making peace with god than he was with his own son. I was real. flesh and blood and suddenly he wanted peace with an invisible man in the sky.

We continued our every other weekends together for a while. My first marriage ended and I even ended up living with him briefly looking for my own safe place to land.

He and I fought every day and night to the point of getting our dukes out regularly because he still hated me. He hated my choices in life, the fact that I wasn’t a businessman and didn’t drive a gas guzzling land yacht.

He did however have peace with his god while he did this.

Lee had become all of the things he taught me never to be.

I’m not the age that Lee was when he died. he was still a fairly young man all things considered. He hadn’t reached 70 and if I had any regrets about Lee is that I wish he had lived longer so that I could still be with him, even if it were for those few times we got along.

Life and love no matter what is far to brief and fleeting to waste.

What I can say about Lee though is that I recall that moment when there was nothing else to learn from him. He had taught me his last lesson. He may have been many things, but he was bone dry when it came to lessons for his son that he would happily push out of trees.

He tried to convince me that I was at least partially the sum of his lessons, but he had forgotten that he had betrayed them. he suddenly decided that the tree didn’t have scrapes and bruises when you fall, but a soft cloud to land upon. Life just ain’t like that Kittens. It never has had one and never will have one. Dads and people will always let you hit the ground and allow Napoleon the bull to trample you.

The scars are souvenirs we never loose.

It was when Dad decided that his lessons to me were now suddenly to be revoked and re-written that I knew that for the first time in my life, that school was out for ever.

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