The Reluctant Leader

Have you ever been asked to fulfill a role that you felt you were not ready for? How about a role you just didn’t want? Worse yet, how about being thrust into a role reluctantly just to find out it was filled with conflicts and complexities you could have never imagined? I know that I have, and not just in my career but in my personal life as well. Many times, the role of a reluctant leader is conflicted at best. Take the leader in this story. As you read, you will clearly see him fulfilling the role of the protagonist, but because of his reluctance, his actions could also be seen as those of the antagonist. I want to share with you the story of this man who was reluctantly thrust into a leadership role—a leader to me. A man who clearly struggled with his role, and made his reluctance clear from the start, but a man whose leadership helped me become the person I am today.  

Chapter 1

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep . . .

Those of you that have read any of my previous stories know that I lost my father in 1969 in a work-related accident, when I was just six months old. This tragic, yet avoidable, event left my mother without a husband, and my sister and me without a father. And as if this loss was not tragic enough, we also suffered in silence for decades as there was no counseling for us. At first it was because we were too young, but as we got older, I believe it was more of a sign of the times, because we lived in an era when people kept their personal lives personal. Those times were so unlike today, when society voluntarily plasters every bit of their personal information all over the internet daily, only to complain when people don’t stay out of their business. Don’t get mad if that last sentence upsets you, just keep on posting and so maybe one day I will have enough research to tackle that topic as well. Anyway, as I got older no one really spoke to me about my father. That was probably because I was just an infant when he died, and they assumed there was no way I could have missed someone I didn’t even know. Well, their assumption was wrong, because I did miss him and desperately needed his leadership in my life. Why did they hold back memories of the man I needed most? This was a question I asked myself many times over the years, but one I really didn’t have an answer to, at least until I was around twenty-five years old. It was with the birth of my first child that I went into a spiraling depression over some crazy childhood thought that my father’s death was some sort of curse and that my children were destined to become fatherless as well. With the help of a local Catholic priest, I learned I was not cursed, but was finally mourning my father’s death. While dealing with these emotions I came to realize that my family didn’t withhold memories of my dad as a way to protect me, but more as a way to protect themselves because those memories were just too painful for them to relive.

Wow! That was a rather depressing first paragraph, but stay with me, as I want all of you to understand just how important it is to have leaders in our lives, even the reluctant ones. Being fatherless was rather tragic for me as I grew up fearing my own death, while being oddly too accepting of the deaths of other people. As if that wasn’t enough for a little boy to handle, I also feared saying the part of my nighttime prayer that went, “if I die before I wake . . .” Furthermore, I regularly wondered where my father was, if he was looking down on me from Heaven, and what it would be like to have him to guide me in my life. Sure, there were memories such as pictures here and there and even a poem that hung in my grandfather’s office explaining why God had taken his son home, but there were never any real conversations about him. Later in life, my mother realized the error of raising us this way, but it wasn’t her fault as we were just a sign of the times. Heck, it was the 1970s, there was no internet, and most of the books on loss and grief had long since been tossed aside to make room for more modern concepts on the subject. It was also a simpler time when everyone was expected to be tough and just suck it up, not only physically, but emotionally as well. Toughness in the 1970s was not only a necessity of everyday life, but more importantly it was a survival trait. We didn’t have things like anti-bullying campaigns. Instead, we had movies that taught us to punch bullies in the nose, even though such an action would most likely end in getting pulverized, no matter if you were one of the brave few who really believed you could get away with something that stupid. Before you disagree with me, you need to remember that bullies were a lot bigger in the 1970s, as they didn’t have the internet to hide behind. We also needed to be tough because we had unsupervised access to dangerous things, like rectangular trampolines that would launch you into a cast before you knew you had landed wrong. Let’s not forget the toys, like the yard darts my Mawmaw Lewis bought for us, which were actually incredibly boring until we changed the rules and learned just how fun playing Yard Dart Chicken with our cousins actually was. Oh, and I dare not forget the nuns in Catholic schools during the 1970s! Today, everyone dreams of sending their children to exclusive Catholic schools, and it does sound glamorous now that the nuns are gone. But back then the nuns were our schoolteachers, and they would crack our knuckles with a wooden paddle ball paddle so hard that the entirety of Generation X Catholic School attendees now suffers from arthritis. Yes, I was part of a tougher generation, one that was also not allowed to show emotions and was most definitely never allowed to cry!

Chapter 2

Something to Cry About

As I continued to grow, I suffered in silence and though my mother was incredible, loving, and very engaged in raising us, she just couldn’t understand the complexities of emotions I hid inside, most probably because I never told her. She never knew I listened to the 45 record of “Last Kiss” by The Cavaliers on my aunt’s record player and imagined that my mom cried out those lyrics on the day my father died. She surely never knew that while I flew to visit my Mawmaw and Pawpaw in Thibodaux one summer, I desperately searched the clouds for my father, because after all, wasn’t that where he was supposed to be if he was looking down on me? And most of all, she never had any idea that I always envied all the other little boys who had fathers. Fathers who could do man stuff, fathers who watched football, fathers who coached little league—the typical all American dad types. To this day, I remember those fathers well. I had one friend in Lake Charles whose father was a bricklayer and took him fishing and hunting all the time, another friend whose father helped him build the many model airplanes that hung from his ceiling—airplanes that soared over me, oblivious of my envy of their majesty and the father who helped build them. And still another friend whose father gave him a Tin Can Alley shooting game at his birthday party. I don’t remember how young I was when I attended that sleepover party, but I couldn’t have been older than five or six. I remember walking into the coolest place I had ever been, a very large property surrounded by a chain-link fence and covered in towering pines. There was a large brick home that overlooked a lake with a dock. Even more impressive was that down by the lake was another house where the party was being held. I never knew people could have two houses, one to live in and a separate one for parties. This was so very different from my existence, especially since their party house dwarfed the small two-bedroom apartment we lived in. As I walked toward the party in amazement, I couldn’t help but notice the large, well-manicured lawn dotted with majestic pines that were nestled into a landscape filled with bushes and flower beds. And as I strolled across this virtual Garden of Eden to where all the other boys were playing, I felt a little sad because I knew that only a father could provide a home as incredible as this.

This party was the best I had ever been to, and not because somehow the usual hot dogs, cake, and gifts were better. It was so much more than that. All of us boys played outside in the yard, fished from the dock, played kickball, and even took turns skipping rocks across the stillness of the lake. And when it was time to settle down, we were all invited into the party house, where we took turns playing Tin Can Alley. Now I do not remember what the catalyst was, whether I lost a game, wanted another turn, or whether I just missed my mom, but all of a sudden I became very emotional and began to cry. I know, it was the 1970s and we were supposed to be tough, and I was. I also knew that I was not allowed to cry, and if I did, it better not be in front of anyone, except my Mawmaw Lewis or my mother. Now me not being able to cry was not just some recommendation but a law of nature that was strictly enforced by my mother’s three younger brothers. Crying around my uncles always came with swift rebukes, name-calling, and the ever-famous, “keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about!” That’s right, it was the 1970s, and there was always someone around who was willing and able to help give you something to cry about! To make matters worse, here I was crying in front of my peers, and my uncles who were normally my judge, jury, and executioners were nowhere around to stop me. Yet here I was crying, and the one time I needed them the most, they were not around to threaten to give me something to cry about! And without them, my crying continued, along with my humiliation, and as all the little boys continued to stare, my tears continued pouring out with an increasing intensity until I just couldn’t stop myself, no matter how hard I tried. It got so bad I began hyperventilating, even progressing to the point where snot bubbles started popping from my nostrils, and as crying fits went, this one was truly an epic event! Let me tell you something—while I have made some really bad decisions over my lifetime, crying in a room full of boys will probably go down as one of my worst.

Now some of you who knew me in the navy may doubt my last statement, and considering your intricate knowledge of the layers of ignorant choices I made at the different duty stations I was assigned to, I generally would agree with you. However, let me reiterate that this epic crying fit happened in an age before someone would soothe you by telling you to keep crying because it released good endorphins that made all the stress go away and everything better. Yeah, the only endorphins we had back then were the ones that helped you with flight after you stupidly punched a bully in the nose because you saw it in some stupid movie!  Anyway, I got what I deserved for crying that night. I got complete humiliation that only caused the waterworks to open up more, as if that was even possible. The birthday boy’s mother tried to calm me down, but it wasn’t helping, so she took me out of the party house and back to the main house where her husband was watching television in the den. He looked curiously at the sad wretch of a boy that was bawling in front of him and said, “Stop your damn crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” No, I am just joking. Actually, he calmly sat me down on the ottoman in front of his chair and talked to me in a deep yet soothing voice, and he assured me everything would be OK. I am not sure how long it took, but I calmed down, and after I watched television with him for a while, he led me back to the party where I joined the boys who were still playing Tin Can Alley. And although I was still cloaked in complete humiliation, I somehow had a new sense of self-confidence that only a father could give you. This was truly the first time in my life that I realized just how much I needed a father to lead me!

Chapter 3

Not All Dads Are Nice

Again, my desire to have a father wasn’t because my mom didn’t do a great job raising me, because she did, even ensuring I got to spend a whole lot of time around male role models like her father and brothers. She also made sure I had all the cool boy stuff including a record player with records and read-along books about American Indians and such, a talking Batman and Robin alarm clock, and my most valued possession of all, an Evel Knievel action figure, along with his motorcycle and even his Scramble Van. The next day, once back at our apartment, the horror and humiliation of the previous night faded, and I went back to doing one of my favorite things, playing with my Evel Knievel on the sidewalk outside of our apartment. I can still remember the joy I felt as I cranked the handle as fast as I could to launch Evel Knievel on his motorcycle down the sidewalk, and I watched in amazement as he hit the ramp and flew over the Scramble Van! If he was lined up right and there was no debris on the sidewalk to throw him off balance, he always landed straight. But that was until the loss of power caused the back end to wobble side to side which led to his inevitable crash. It was OK because he was Evel Knievel, and while an entire nation loved his stunts, most of us thought his crashes were the best part of his television specials. Thinking back, my life was much like the instability of that Evel Knievel toy, because I, too, seemed to be able to cruise straight until something happened that caused me to lose power and with that my confidence. And because of that birthday party I knew that the confidence I needed could only come from the leadership of a father.   

Life went on for our little family of three in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and other than not having a father we were able to live a pretty normal American life, especially since my mother was pretty normal, at least up to that point. However, our lives were about to change because the Bohemian lifestyle of the 1970s seemed to interest my mother. Maybe interest is too weak of a word to use because our life seemed to change drastically one day almost as if my mother had become possessed by a Bohemian spirit. And it was a powerful possession because soon afterward my mom seemed to sprout wings, and we began to move quite often, back and forth between Louisiana and Texas, never settling in the same place for more than a year. And with each new move I made a whole new set of friends—friends who had fathers. And just like before, I found myself feeling sad because I didn’t have one of my own. That all changed one night while we were living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I realized that not all fathers were nice, like the “Tin Can Alley Dad”who comforted me at the birthday party. One night, I was sleeping over at my friend’s apartment, when a loud knock came from the front door. While my friend and I sat on the living room floor eating snacks and watching television, we barely paid attention as his mother talked to his father through the still closed door, having a conversation that quickly grew louder and louder until without any warning the door exploded inward. My friend’s dad was a very big man whose anger and wrath caused us to scramble across the floor to get as far away from him as possible. Still, it was not quick enough, and to this day I remember looking up in terror as the shadow of his large frame came through the door toward us. He was so enraged he didn’t even notice us cowering on the floor, not eight feet from where the door laid, broken at its hinges. I experienced two emotions that night; the first was a fear like I had never felt before, and the second was doubt that I ever wanted to have a father in my life if that is what fathers did!

Chapter 4

The Paratrooper, the Athlete, and the Cowboy

After about a year in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that Bohemian spirit took hold of my mother again and deposited the three of us in Georgetown, Texas, where we moved into an actual house in a subdivision! I was around eight at the time and quickly realized that the cool thing about living in a subdivision was there were plenty of other boys around—boys who had fathers, and not angry ones like in Baton Rouge. I had friends who were twin brothers just a couple of blocks away, and their father was a former Army paratrooper. I liked their dad even though he never really interacted with us other than when he stopped us from jumping off his roof with parachutes we made out of bedsheets. I also had a friend whose parents didn’t live together, and I thought this was odd because why would someone have a dad who didn’t live with them? Another friend of mine had a dad who let us explore a cave they had in their backyard. Well, maybe let us is a little too liberal of a phrase, as we had to peek into the den window to make sure he wasn’t looking, and as soon as we were sure that the coast was clear we would slip down into a small opening in the ground located about twenty feet behind the swing set. We wiggled down into the small opening in the ground and eased our way into one of the three tiny chambers. Yes, it was small, but it was a good way to get out of the Texas heat, especially since kids in the 1970s were not allowed inside during the day. The last father I remember from our neighborhood was the one who I thought was the coolest. He and his wife were our next-door neighbors, and although their son was only about five years old, we still often played outside together. I was particularly fascinated with his father because he was so different from all the other dads I had met. He was not the typical beer-drinking, television-watching kind of dad. Nope, he was actually the only person I met in the entire decade who actively worked out and ate healthy.

Then it happened. My first chance at a father since my dad had passed away came along when my mom invited me on a camping trip with a man she said she was dating, a man who even had a son my age. Now, later in life, I realized my mother must have dated before this time, but it was never evident as I was never introduced to any of her dates. The four of us went camping on the river where we played in the water and cooked over a campfire. I felt like a real cowboy that evening when I learned that you could cook beans in the can simply by opening them and putting them next to the fire. Sadly, my hopes for a father were quickly dashed as I never saw him or his son after that night. I am not sure what happened, but I know for certain it wasn’t me because I didn’t cry that night, not one tear! Still, the experience only supported my dream about a time when I might have a father in my life. Our time in Georgetown reinforced something I had learned over the years and that was that none of these fathers were meant to lead me as I grew into a man. And as the long, hot Texas Hill Country summer turned to fall, and fall to winter, that Bohemian spirit once again blew into town. I remember it clear as day. My mom woke us up one Saturday and said, “Pick your most favorite thing in the world, because we are selling everything else and moving to Spain!” To this day I don’t remember what my most favorite thing in the world was, but I do remember the garage sale at our house, and she was true to her word as she sold everything, even my bed! There was a short trip to spend Christmas at my Mawmaw and Pawpaw’s house and then a flight to New York City, then another flight to Barcelona, Spain, and a boat trip that took us to the island of Ibiza. After the boat docked, we all piled into a taxi in the middle of the night and rode the thirty or so minutes from the port to our new home in Santa Eulalia del Rio, Spain!

Chapter 5

Norman Rockwell and the German

Ibiza was an amazing place to live, and years later I would explain my experiences there as something similar to the innocence of a Norman Rockwell painting, but with European football instead of American. I made a lot of friends in that little town, and as an adult I have to admit it was the best time of my life, at least until I met a particularly pretty little blond lady about twelve years later. The one thing this little Spanish Mayberry-like town seemed to be absent of was fathers. Oh, they had to be around because my friends talked about theirs, but you really didn’t see them. Maybe it was because most people lived in two- to three-story apartment blocks, and without yards to take care of, the fathers were able to stay out of site. It took a few months before I finally found the fathers, as they all seemed to hang out in one of the many little bars that dotted the neighborhoods of Santa Eulalia. As a matter of fact, they only seemed to return home in time for dinner, which in Spain was around ten o’clock at night and well after we Americans shut ourselves in for the night. And while I didn’t find anything wrong with it, this just wouldn’t work for me, as I needed a father who would be more active in my life, especially since I was nine years behind in fatherly experiences. With the absence of my friends’ fathers, I didn’t have much of a male influence in my life other than the teachers at school, who were really nice but very harsh disciplinarians. This made it very easy to stay well behaved at this school, because they made the nuns, and their paddle ball paddles, look compassionate by comparison!

The exception to the missing male role models in my life was my mom’s friend’s husband, Luchiano, who owned a windsurfing shop up the road from our apartment. They were a nice couple—she was Dutch, and he was Italian—and I would often drop by his shop to say hello on my way to the little store that catered to the boys and girls in town, with ice cream, sodas, and foosball tables. However, I think Luchiano was more interested in our American decimation of the English language than being a father figure to me, as he would often curiously ask what certain words meant, words like “What-ya-get.” Then just like the camping trip in Georgetown, it happened again, when my mom invited me on a day trip to Pebble Beach with a man she said she had been dating. This average-sized, balding German guy pulled up to our apartment block in the biggest green car I had ever seen in my life, at least by European standards. And after a brief introduction, we all climbed in and headed off to Pebble Beach. Now I must admit that when I climbed into that big green car I felt a little excited. It was not at the chance of meeting another potential father figure. I was excited because I had not ridden in any sort of motor vehicle, including back and forth to school, in the eight or so months we had lived in Spain, because Santa Eulalia was a walking town. That’s right, if you wanted to get anywhere, you walked. Anyway, after a short drive, we arrived at Pebble Beach where we played and swam in the crystal blue Mediterranean Sea before cleaning up in the fresh water of a farmer’s stone water tank located not far from the beach. Like I said, Ibiza was a really cool place to live! Yet, besides initial introductions, that German man never really interacted with me for the entire day. It was OK, because I never got the whole fatherly vibe thing from him and other than him giving me a corkwood model of an Ibizan finca (typical farmhouse) he had made, I don’t remember any other interactions with him for the rest of our time there.

Just one year after landing on the shores of that amazing little Spanish island, that Bohemian spirit blew in with winter’s cold chill, and the three of us were off again, this time to London, England. But this lasted for only a few months, as my mother decided it was time to go home. And not home in some random apartment complex in a new city. No, we were going home to Thibodaux, Louisiana, and family! I was ten years old now, and we were finally going home where we would be around both sets of my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, and all my cousins. It was great being home. You would have thought that having so many male role models around would have quenched my thirst to have a father in my life, and although it most certainly helped, I still found myself looking admiringly at my aunts’ husbands and wondering why my mom couldn’t find someone like them to lead me! Thibodaux was stable for us, especially me, and I settled into elementary and then middle school. I hunted and fished with my cousins and uncles, and Pawpaw Boudreaux always seemed to be around to help me build school projects. In my free time, I loved working alongside him in his diesel engine shop where he taught me how to use power tools, a cutting torch, a welding machine, and how to drink beer. However, the rule was only one Miller Pony a day and only if I didn’t have a Coke. I’d like to say I was fast becoming a young man who loved to drink a beer with his Pawpaw at the end of a hot day in the shop, but the truth was I rarely chose beer over an ice-cold Coca-Cola. Even with all the happiness I was experiencing and all the male role models I had in my life, I still didn’t have a dad to lead me, and you know what, I still not only wanted one, but I needed one.

Chapter 6

Captain Evil and His Dagger Tattoo

 Then I found hope on the horizon when my mom reconnected with her friend from Baton Rouge, you know the one whose husband had kicked the door in on me and her son. By now they were divorced, and she and her son were living in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana. One weekend, my mom and I went to Metairie to visit them in the duplex they lived in. My mom’s friend took our visit as an opportunity to introduce my mom to the man who lived on the other side of the duplex and said he was not only her friend but her landlord. Upon seeing him, I remember thinking he looked a lot like Jim Croce. And Jim Croce was somehow like the Cowboy and the German, in that he, too, didn’t seem to notice me as he was obviously immediately smitten by my mom and why wouldn’t he be, she was a looker! Still, there was something different about this guy. He was about a decade older than my mom, about six feet tall, and lean with thick black curly hair. He wore faded blue jeans and a T-shirt with a pocket on the front. I never knew T-shirts came with pockets. I studied this man up and down, and that is when I noticed the dagger tattoo he had on his forearm, which hinted that he was a little bit dangerous. Jim Croce introduced himself as Lyle, and not long after their introduction he and my mom started dating.

Other than being smitten with my mom, Lyle was very different from the other two men my mom had dated as he almost immediately started coming around. Not only did we see him more than once, but he would regularly drive from Metairie to Thibodaux to take part in our rather large family’s gatherings at Pawpaw Boudreaux’s. You would think that he would have run from the chaos of dating a woman with two preteen children, three brothers and two sisters along with their husbands and wives, and a slew of cousins, but he didn’t. You think he would have known better than getting involved with a woman a decade younger than him whose family was full of complexities and conflicts, but he didn’t. And I know why he didn’t, because like I said before, my mom was a looker. And not just any looker, my mother also looked like a famous musician, and he simply couldn’t resist that Carly Simon-looking Bohemian even if she still had hairy legs and armpits left over from her European experience! Because of that, this tattooed Jim Croce-looking, Union Steamfitter kept coming around weekend after weekend, driving from Metairie to Thibodaux where he fit right in with my mostly blue-collar family. Years later, after I married that particularly pretty little blond lady, I realized that the way Lyle fit into our family unit so quickly was not normal. No, usually it takes time to develop bonds with other people, but not him. He just strolled into the family, like he had always been part of it. Again, I had never met anyone like him before. He was handsome, brimmed with confidence, had a sharp tongue and quick wit about him, and was immediately best of friends with my Pawpaw and uncles. Actually, his relationship with my uncles quickly proved very problematic for me, as rather than joining in with my kind and soft-spoken Pawpaw, he quickly allied himself with my uncles and their endless desires to give me something to cry about. He even had the nerve to show up to a family gathering wearing an airbrushed shirt he had made with some demon-like creature on it that said “Captain Evil.” Yep, when he drove up to my Pawpaw’s pool party in his old black F150 pickup truck and climbed out wearing that shirt, all the adults roared in laughter, but us boys, we looked upon their laughter cautiously because we knew that with the encouragement of that damn T-shirt and all that ice-cold beer the end was near for us!

Overall, I liked him, but I never really looked at him as a father figure, maybe because my Pawpaw and uncles had finally fulfilled that need in my life. Or maybe it was that he had made it clear that it was my mother whom he wanted to be around, not me. Still, he was different from the Georgetown Cowboy and the German with the big green car, because I was regularly invited to go places with him and my mother. I remember trips to some neat places he knew from growing up in and around New Orleans. Odd hole-in-the-wall eateries, the French Quarter, the horse track where he taught us how to handicap horses, perch jerking at a honey hole he knew of, but one we had to keep secret, and one very memorable trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Yes, I had finally made it to the big time, even if I had to admit that I was little more than an eleven-year-old tagalong. Oh, there was no doubt about my tagalong status, because those two not only lost me in a sea of people at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, but I am certain they either didn’t realize or care I was gone until a couple of hours after I got lost! There I was crying yet again when a New Orleans police officer found me, and you know what he told me? “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” No, just kidding, that was a saying mostly reserved for my uncles. He just looked down at me and said, “Stop crying, your mom will probably look for you at the lost child area, and I am going to take you there. But that will have to wait, so stay close to me and don’t get lost again because I am going to watch the Chuck Berry concert.” And just like a scene from Forrest Gump that is how I got the best seat at the concert as he helped me up on the sound booth scaffolding, where I sat for the entirety of the concert, watching a sea of people dance and sing to the live performance of Chuck Berry, including the crowd favorites of “Johnny B. Goode” and “My Ding-A-Ling”!

After the concert, he took me to the lost kid corral and shockingly, my mom was relieved when she found me, though I again am not sure how much time had passed before she realized I was missing. I know it was longer than it should have been because she showed up at the lost child corral after I did, and I had just watched the entire Chuck Berry concert with a very nice NOPD officer! Maybe it was out of guilt, or maybe it was because they wanted to get me out of the crowds, but she and Lyle took me to get a bite to eat and then to some of the vendor booths where I bought a homemade wooden blowgun with darts and a really cool bamboo flute that was about three feet long and two inches in diameter. Remember the size of the flute as it is important and will come into play later in this story. Looking back, I am not sure how guilty they felt, because other than the food, I had to buy the blowgun and flute with my own money I had made from running an afternoon bicycle paper route for Thibodaux’s local newspaper, the Daily Comet.

Chapter 7

Lead Paint and Eloquent Verbiage

Mom and Lyle continued to date for a while before I began noticing that something strange was happening. Not only was he coming to Thibodaux, but somewhere along the way he started spending the night in the house we were renting. I had never seen anything like this before and found it rather strange to have a man around the house. Yet no matter how strange I found it, weekend after weekend he would come like it was some adult sleepover party. Now I must admit that when I met that one particularly pretty little blond lady, my mind opened up and it became immediately clear to me the level of infatuation he must have felt for my mother, and why they kept having sleepovers! And while he seemed to be around more and more, he still was no father to me, and strangely I still didn’t feel any desire for him to be one. Then one day as my mother was getting on to me about painting my bedroom, I found yet another reason why I didn’t want him to be my father. You see we had lived in apartments most of our lives, so living in an actual house was quite a treat for us. Still, to be within our budget, it had to be a pretty old house, you know the kind with high ceilings, transom windows above the doors, and a padlock and hasp on the front door over the original skeleton key lock that had never been upgraded. You know, the type of house that kids were warned not to chew on the windowsills because of lead paint. The fear of lead paint and the condition of the house was probably why the first thing my mom did when we moved in was to have my sister paint her bedroom and me paint mine. Now, who in their right mind allows an eleven-year-old to paint their own bedroom? The first thing you need before you start making poor choices like that is to be some sort of a Bohemian Green Peace Mother of Earth type of person. The second thing you need is an Aunt Margaret who volunteers to oversee the forced child labor while you run off to New Orleans for the weekend with your Jim Croce-looking boyfriend. My sister got her room painted first and disappeared for the weekend without any harassment from our Great Aunt Margaret, and as for me, well I was lucky enough to have one of my cousins come help me. That was because the sooner we finished, the sooner we could go hunting! The problem seemed to be that our painting skills required significantly more oversite than my sister’s which Aunt Margaret saw to by acting as if she was a Japanese prison guard overseeing the construction of the Bridge on the River Kwai. And much like those prisoners, my cousin and I fought back against her inhumane treatment of us, treatment akin to her continually bothering us under the guise of making sure we were working and telling us to hurry up and finish and stop messing around so she could go home. She even was so callous to remind us she didn’t have any kids, and we were proof that she was right in her decision of never wanting any! Still, very much like those British prisoners in the movie, we continued to fight back against her tyranny, even painting several colorful words on the walls with Aunt Margaret’s name either in front of or behind the rather eloquent verbiage we two prepubescent boys chose to use.

After our poetic license had dried, and before she followed through on her threat to call one of our uncles, we painted over it, completed the job, and rode back with Aunt Margaret to go hunting in the swamps behind Pawpaw’s house. Now at that point in my life I had no idea paint thickness was measured in mils and the fact that the mils of our poetic license were thicker than the mils of the surrounding wall paint would later come back to haunt me. At first, it was all good as my mom came home from a weekend at Lyle’s, thanked us for painting our rooms, and we all went into the next week like normal. I rode my bike to school while my sister complained loudly until someone drove her to the exact same school. After school, I rode my bike home, folded the newspapers, secured them with rubber bands, loaded them in the canvas newspaper bag that hung over my handlebars, and peddled my paper route for the next hour or so. Then it was homework and bouncing between listening to music and reading a book as we still did not have a television, nor had we had one since mom sold everything and moved us to Spain. Mom would cook dinner when she came home from college, and the three of us would discuss our day before heading off to bed, just to wake up and start the day all over again like any other normal family, except ours didn’t have a dad to lead us. Our normalcy continued until one day midweek when my mom was putting something up in my room. She walked in at the perfect time to see our poetic license lit up by the afternoon sun which shone through my bedroom window at a perfect angle. That is right, the sunlight had just exposed the differences in the mils of paint, and with it our eloquent verbiage now beamed through the otherwise beautifully completed paint job. As there were no cell phones back then, I had no warning of what was coming for me when I got home. I really wish we had cell phones back then because getting prewarned that death was coming your way would have been much better than being ambushed and trying to lie your way out of it. I lied because by the time I got home, the sun had continued its track across the sky and the difference in the mils of my painted literary genius were no longer visible. Needless to say, Mom didn’t believe me when I said she was just seeing things and promised me I would be painting my room again on Saturday and also on Sunday. It was as if she couldn’t understand that the eloquent verbiage my cousin and I had used was justified as it was in protest of Great Aunt Margaret’s cruel treatment of us!

And as Saturday came around, did I paint? Nope, I spent most of the day protesting and telling Mom time and time again that you couldn’t see anything. But that was until the sun hit the wall at just the right time, at just the right angle, and my eloquent verbiage of poetic profanity once again shone through clear as day. Damn those mils! I painted my room into the night, but when Sunday came around I refused to paint another coat as I clearly could see that my poetic license was covered up. Instead, I asked to go to my Pawpaw’s, and Mom replied that she would take me later as she and Lyle would be heading out there to visit in the afternoon. Then, by some freak cosmic force, the sunlight came through the window at the same angle, at the same time of day as before, and though slightly less obvious, my poetic profanity shone through again. In my defense, it was now barely legible, and because of this I protested that if she would just stay out of my room at that time of the day, she would never have to see it again! I am not sure what came over me as I was usually not the discipline problem, but I demanded to go to my Pawpaw’s house to go hunting. Yet, regardless of me standing up like the man I was growing into, she was not impressed, and she and Lyle took off leaving me interned in a prison of my own making with only paint, a paintbrush, and a roller to entertain myself with. This was ridiculous, and I was having no part in this child abuse, so out of protest I chose not to paint. I am unsure what I did for the rest of the day, but one thing was for certain and that was I didn’t paint, and I wasn’t going to paint that room a third time! Mom came home later in the afternoon, well after the sun had moved past its police informant position in the sky and asked me if I had finished painting. I mustered all the courage I could and said, “Yes, I am done, and it is dry,” fairly confident that my lie was now undetectable.

Evidently part of being a parent in the 1980s meant not believing your children, because she immediately asked to see the roller and paintbrush. You know the roller and paintbrush I wasn’t smart enough to get wet! There they sat, in the same place she had left them, and they were dry. “Paint this room right now,” she told me! Now fully defiant and full of preteen testosterone I said, “No!” There, how bad could it be. After all, even though it was a word I seldom used to adults, it was one my sister regularly used and one she often got away with, because honestly my mom was a little scared of her, and I must admit, so was I. I mean I was getting older; I was bigger than my sister, and I needed to stand up for myself, especially against this sort of tyranny. As a fire swept across my mother’s eyes, I instantly knew I had messed up and she was not afraid of me. I just stood there frozen in fear, unable to break eye contact with her as she continued to glare in my direction. Then, without warning and just like a leopard, she pounced, claws out, reaching for me. But much like a gazelle I was smaller and more agile, and right at the last moment I leapt from her grasp before taking off running through the house. I think we did two laps when I started laughing at her as she was getting winded and couldn’t catch me. And I continued to laugh at her, knowing I could keep this up all night, but as I was turning the corner back into my bedroom to start my third lap, I was ambushed! Was there a second leopard? No, this one was bigger, so it had to be a lion! And out of nowhere a giant paw lifted me up and slammed me onto my bed.

I looked up in terror and saw it, that damned dagger tattoo attached to the hand that had me pinned to my bed, and it was at that moment that I knew this forth person was upsetting the balance of power! “Don’t you dare whip me,” I blurted out. Followed by, “You’re not my daddy!” There it was, my saving grace, the well-known rule that no man, who was not your father, your uncles, your Pawpaw, your principal, your coach, your guidance counselor, your assistant principal, or some random war veteran in the grocery store, was ever allowed to whip you! And definitely no boyfriend was ever allowed to touch you, at least that is what I had heard from my friend whose parents were divorced. However, as there were never any boyfriends allowed around us to test my knowledge of this subject, I was not completely certain it was the truth. Luckily, Captain Evil had also heard of this rule as he immediately said, “Don’t worry, I know I’m not your daddy and I am not going to hit you.” Thank God he had common sense, and in my mind I was free and clear. However, as my winded mother angrily stormed into my room, a little out of breath, he said, “But I am going to hold you down while she beats the hell out of you!” Oh no, I didn’t see Option B, and as I thrashed back and forth trying to break free, I could see my mom’s hand draw back, yet out of some sort of undeserved mercy Captain Evil left and Jim Croce came in as he said, “Don’t hit him with your hand.” Thank goodness, and though I was still being held down by Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown, I wasn’t going to get a whipping. They were probably going to take me to my Pawpaw’s for one of his infamous long talks, and I was sure I deserved one. I could handle another one of them especially since my aunt had taught me that when offered a choice between a whipping or a lecture, always take the lecture. She then added for good measure that I should never say “Just get it over faster and whip me, because I have places to go.” You see, by that point I was still certain I didn’t need Lyle to be a father figure to me, as by this time even my aunts were sharing fatherly advice with me. Anyway, as I thought about the ride, the lecture, and the guilt I would feel for disappointing my Pawpaw, I knew it would still be better than a spanking from my mom, especially at eleven! Then he spoke again and said, “Use that bamboo flute over there, that way it won’t hurt your hand.” Not only did he say it, but he said it with the coolness and callousness of a Japanese prison guard—who knew he and Aunt Margaret had served together in the war? As Mom grabbed the flute my life passed before my eyes and in one last act of desperation I shouted out, “You don’t have my permission to use that. I bought it with my own money!” The best example I can share about what came next would not be recognized by American society until 1994 when an American teenager made national news for being caned in Singapore for vandalism. I am not sure how many American teenagers had been caned before or after that, but I assure you both me and the one from the news know that caning is one of the most painful forms of discipline known to humankind, especially if yours came from your own flute! I for one will never set foot in Singapore, as I do not want any potential slipup or bad decision to lead to another caning. And with real crocodile tears flowing from my eyes and quite a few muddled expletives about my treatment exiting my lips, I painted my room into the night while Mom and Captain Evil enjoyed the remainder of the evening in callous disregard of the permanent damage they had done to my rear end, damage that would not be fully realized until years later when I thought about becoming a professional cyclist.

Chapter 8

Civility and Fried Chicken

The summer before my eighth-grade year my mom told my sister and me we were moving to Metairie where we would be living with Lyle. I was actually excited as we would be living in a nice brick home, and my best friend’s mom was still renting the other side of Lyle’s duplex. We had moved often enough by now that moving had become easy for me, and I looked forward to life in a new city with new friends and new adventures. This move didn’t disappoint me, and I quickly realized that I loved living in Metairie, especially being able to attend Haynes Middle School. Haynes was an incredible school in an affluent area called Old Metairie, and it offered me a lot of opportunities in education that I never had before. My grades improved as many of the kids I attended classes with were in gifted and talented programs. Heck, they even had a speech therapist who immediately began helping me get rid of a pesky lisp I had developed while living in Ibiza. And it was my speech therapist who taught me to love short stories. As I read them to her, one after another, she listened and she taught me how to place my tongue and form my mouth to rid myself of that rather intrusive hitchhiker I had brought back from Spain, that Castilian lisp.

Things were going really good for me, or so I thought until a few tragic events happened that shook our new little family unit to its core. The first tragedy struck one day without notice when Lyle was folding his clothes in the laundry room and realized he had lost a sock! He was devastated and insisted each one of us search our clothing to ensure we didn’t have the missing sock. And so the search began, as he impatiently stood in the laundry room holding one sock, not angry, but highly disappointed in us. No matter how hard we looked, it just wasn’t enough effort for him, so after minutes of searching we realized there was no more we could do and I went back to my room. I sat in my room unsure how to process the level of disgust he had in us, and even though I was a little upset that all this was over one sock, I somehow still felt his loss; after all, how couldn’t I as he was so serious about it. On the other hand, my mother was much less sympathetic to his plight and sarcastically said, “I can’t believe you have never lost a sock before; I have been losing them my whole life!” And while I don’t remember much after my mom’s rather callous comment mocking the great loss he was suffering, the Great Sock Caper definitely was strike one for our little family unit.

It wasn’t like Mom wasn’t aware that a strike had just been called on us, and she did pull us aside and tell us that we needed to remember that Lyle had been living as a bachelor most of his life and liked things a particular way. She then told us to be careful as he was very observant, especially about his stuff. Well, him being very observant was a massive understatement. He may have looked a lot like Jim Croce, but he was probably more observant than Sherlock Holmes. And when this curly headed, union steam fitting, Sherlock Holmes suspected that a crime was afoot he did not let up on us at all until he had an answer to the criminal chaos that had invaded his otherwise civilized home. One particular observation led to the next great tragedy in our new family unit, and it began with what I mistakenly thought was just Lyle asking an innocent question. Though we always sat down at the kitchen table to eat because Lyle said, “That is what civilized people do,” this night was a rare treat, and we were all invited to sit down for homemade fried chicken in front of the television. Yes, we had an actual television for the first time since we lived in Georgetown, Texas, and this one even had cable, cable that Lyle had to go up on the pole and get himself! He said it was because the cable guy never showed up, but Mom said it was because Lyle always had a little larceny in his heart. As we settled in, I quickly realized the couch was taken by people of a higher social caste than me; thus, I was relegated to the floor. Now my relegation to the lower caste of television watching didn’t matter to me, because after years of uncles not sharing the couch with me, I was as comfortable on the floor as any dog. And as I sat on the floor to enjoy my fried chicken and a television program, Lyle asked, “Where’s your napkin?” I looked up at him and seeing his face I realized he, too, had forgotten to get me one, so I just replied, “I don’t have one, but don’t worry because I always wash my hands right after I eat.” He grumbled something that I didn’t quite understand, but I didn’t ask him to repeat himself as I brushed it off as part of his local New Orleanian dialect. His dialect was strange because up until meeting Lyle I had never even heard of the local Yat dialect, which was named after the local saying of “Where y’at?”whichyou know is similar to“How are you doing?” Then the pitcher released the pitch, because after eating the most delicious homemade fried chicken I had ever had, and not wanting to miss any of the television program, I stretched out my hands like I was yawning and accidentally wiped them on the living room carpet. “Stop wiping your hands on the carpet. What are you? Some kind of animal!” was the logical deduction shared by Mr. Holmes. Lyle was never harsh with us, he never yelled, and he was never mean. Any comments he made toward us were made in more of a disgusted tone as to why he had allowed this band of uncivilized Mowglis into his house. Knowing I wasn’t really in trouble, because he was so enamored by my momma, I just replied, “I didn’t do that.” “You’re not only disgusting, but you’re a liar too,” he replied, and a little too callously I thought. Man was Mom right when she said he was very observant, and The Great Carpet Incident was now strike two for us.

Then it happened, and a lot sooner than I thought, strike three came across home plate when none of us Mowglis were looking. Lyle accused someone of stealing some of his change. He actually accused us of taking some quarters from his five-gallon glass Kentwood Springs water change jar that he kept in his bedroom. Even though he was observant and hadn’t missed my sly moves in The Great Carpet Incident, I wondered how he knew about the quarters. How could anyone miss a few quarters taken by a teenage boy to play video games at the local arcade? After all, that jug was three-quarters full of change! I wouldn’t have missed them, and this was proven decades later when my own adult children confessed to robbing me blind for years to attend the local high school football games when they were teenagers. I must confess that I was a little disappointed in Lyle overreacting, as he really could afford to share a few quarters with someone less fortunate, as I was. But that didn’t matter to Sherlock as there was crime afoot and he had to solve it. And how did Mr. Sherlock find out about the missing change in an age before home security cameras? Well, it was simply elementary, my dear Watson, because as his change jar was on the carpet, and I never put it back in the same place because it was too heavy, the rings made from the bottom of the jar didn’t line up! Years later I would learn I had prematurely confessed to The Great Quarter Caper, while my mom and sister sat back with disgust in their eyes, knowing full well they were as guilty as I was!

Normally American society’s three strike rule is set in stone, but not with us! It was like the Great Umpire of Life had given the three of us a little leniency with the strike count, probably because Mother was incredibly beautiful, and Lyle was thoroughly twitterpated by this point. And because of this we lived to disappoint him another day, though we did learn some valuable lessons along the way. Take what you want, but eat what you take; don’t put ketchup on a steak; all steaks don’t come with a round bone in them; if you don’t peel shrimp, you can’t eat shrimp etouffee for dinner; and if you’re not allowed to eat shrimp etouffee for dinner, then the leftovers are not fair game. Oh, and I learned the one exception to the you can’t hit me if you’re not my father rule. And that was cherry picking the biggest and heaviest blue crabs will get you hit on the hand by a flyswatter, because you are supposed to take what is in front of you.

These were all simple lessons of life that we should have known long before our teenage years, at least according to Lyle. And with each lesson our strike count continued to grow and grow, and those were just the simple lessons. Don’t wake up late and eat the leftover bacon sitting on a plate on the kitchen counter; nope, because that is where Lyle put roach poison to kill the roaches he didn’t have in his house. That was a particularly cruel lesson for me to learn, as evidently you can’t taste roach poison through the yummy goodness of bacon! Actually, I remember that lesson clear as day; “Scott, did you eat the leftover bacon without permission?” “Uh, I thought the leftovers rule was only for shrimp etouffee,” I thought to myself. “Scott, that is how I poison the roaches. Please don’t tell me that you ate that bacon,” Lyle said, before continuing with “How are you feeling?” Oh, my goodness, I hadn’t even noticed how bad I was feeling until he said that, and I immediately began gagging and choking while asking him, “Am I going to die?” And even with death staring me in the eye, I am proud to say that I didn’t cry, not even with the gut-wrenching pain in my stomach I developed all of a sudden! Probably curious about the gagging and heaving going on, my mom appeared from the bedroom where she was studying and asked what was going on. “I’m dying!” I said, curious about what took her so long to come check on me. She didn’t seem too concerned about my pending mortality, even as my symptoms were getting worse! It was as if she didn’t even realize just how little time she had left to spend with me before I died. One thing that was good about my mom studying instead of protecting me from roach poison was that she was in college to become a nurse, and I am glad because she saved my life right then when she shot Lyle a rather nasty look. And as he laughed, she told me that the bacon didn’t have roach poison on it because Lyle was too cheap to waste it! “Stop eating things that are not yours,” Lyle said as he walked back outside still callously laughing at me. You would think that our lessons ended there, but the ways of civilized man kept coming at me, one after another. You shouldn’t wash your Mawmaw’s car with a good washcloth, even if you wanted it to look good for them when they went to the Saint’s game the next day. And if you did do that, and regardless of how nice the gesture was, you would have to buy another washcloth from Maison Blanche which was way over on Cleary Boulevard. Now some of you may not know what Maison Blanche was, but you probably can deduce that it sounds expensive and for a young teenager who no longer had a paper route or access to a jar of quarters, it was. This was a two-for-one lesson; the second part was that if you only had enough money for a washcloth or the bus fare, you would need to walk miles each way as Lyle wasn’t giving you a ride. This one prepared me for life as a construction manager because I was not at all shocked when I heard the saying, “You can’t expense report stupidity” after someone submitted an expense report for a locksmith after locking their keys in a company truck. Yes, just like when Mowgli was brought out of the jungle, the lessons of civilized man continued, as did the strikes we racked up. Don’t play on the roof of the house as it will damage the shingles. Don’t touch my tools. If you want to go fishing, you have to buy your own fishing pole. Lesson upon lesson, strike after strike, and still I felt happier than ever as here we were living together like a real family. And what was Lyle to me by this point? He definitely was not a father or a father figure, but much to his disbelief, he had become our leader, all be it a reluctant one.

Chapter 9

The Lobster Shack and the Queen

I think back to that time in my life, and I am amazed by just how much he must have loved my mother to put up with us. He didn’t want to be our father. He definitely didn’t want to deal with all the complexities and conflicts of her two teenagers. However, his love for my mother thrust him into a role he did not want; a role he was obviously ill prepared for, the role of leadership. So, our family continued with Lyle leading the way and not liking it at all, and with the end of school right around the corner and the idea of the four of us spending the whole summer in Lyle’s house being about as intelligent as wiping one’s greasy hands on the living room carpet, a plan was devised to keep the peace. My sister went to spend the summer with a friend of hers and their family, and Lyle, my mom, and I headed out on a camping trip up the entire length of the Blue Ridge Parkway and on into Nova Scotia, Canada. We left Metairie in my mom’s car, which had a newly installed roof rack on it filled with all the necessities of camping, except for two pieces of foam padding for Mom and Lyle that they bought after the first night of sleeping in sleeping bags. I didn’t get a foam pad because that would have negated my next life lesson which Lyle shared with me when he said, “You don’t need one, you have a young back.” Even with that bit of advice, I was unsure why they got the foam because everywhere we camped those two always got the nice flat tent site, flat because the many campers that preceded us all the way back to Davy Crockett had removed every single rock and pebble, so the two of them could one day sleep comfortably on their precious foam pads. As for me, I was living some odd fairy tale version of the Princess and the Pea every night when I set up my little orange pup tent on the edges of the campsite. If you sit back and clear your mind, you can probably visualize what my spot was like—imagine the edge of the campsite, sloped slightly downhill, within range of all sorts of dangerous animals, and scattered with countless rocks and pebbles that had been tossed there year after year, decade after decade, by campers clearing a nice flat spot for themselves and future campers with foam pads. Yep, and it was a good thing my back was young because if not, I would have probably been uncomfortable sleeping in what was little more than the bottom of a quarry.

As a boy of thirteen I must admit that camping out every night was about as cool a thing as I had ever experienced in my life, even if the campgrounds had showers and my mom still felt the need to make me shower every night. And this is what happened, day after day, week after week. We drove northeast and visited state and national parks, saw Ruby Falls, and enjoyed the breathtaking views from Lookout Mountain, along with all the beauty the Blue Ridge Parkway had to offer. What was more amazing to me was that the two of them did all this just for me. Just joking, they were in love, and ever since Chuck Berry closed out his concert with “My Ding-A-Ling,” I was 100 percent certain I was no more than a third wheel. But I didn’t mind, as I was thirteen and thirteen-year-olds are well known to be opportunists. Onward we pressed, through Boston and more traffic than I had seen in my life, and finally into Maine, the last state before we reached our destination, Canada, which held all the things I looked forward to doing. However, Lyle was enamored with the majesty of Maine, and we ended up staying there a little over a week. Was it that beautiful that we just couldn’t leave? Well, it was beautiful. Did we visit a lot of museums, monuments, and attractions? Yes, my mother and I did. However, what Lyle was enamored with more than the beauty of Maine and what caused us to extend our stay was the beer-drinking owner of a lobster shack on the beach that Lyle met our second day there. I told you before that he would just walk into a place like he owned it, and the entire state of Maine was no different. That old lobster shack guy would swing by the campground and pick Lyle up early every morning, and they would go to his shack where they would drink beer, swap sea stories, and Lyle would cook for free! Now you may all think that this friendship was just indicative of men liking drinking buddies, especially when your drinking buddy was a man as unique as Lyle, but that wasn’t the only reason. Nope, that old guy had found something out and that was Lyle was a phenomenal cook. Growing up I always thought my mom to be a good cook, my Pawpaw Boudreaux to be a really good cook, and my Mawmaw Lewis to be a great cook, but truth was it was the 1970s and ‘80s, and sadly the bar on what constituted good cooking was never set that high by society, except for maybe some of the Cajun staples. However, when we moved in with Lyle it quickly became evident that he was the most amazing cook I had met up to that time in my life, and I still think he would be today. Maybe it was the Italian/Cajun heritage in his family’s lineage. Maybe it was that he picked the best ingredients, like real Italian olive oil and steaks without round bones in them, or maybe it was his meticulous nature and attention to detail. No matter what it was, Lyle could cook and just because we were in Maine that fact didn’t change.

So, as Mom and I explored the surrounding area, Lyle cooked and drank and at the end of each day, with the sun setting, we would drive down to the ocean and pick him up drunk as a skunk, but with plenty of fresh lobster for all of us to enjoy. Then one day, just like when Forrest Gump finished jogging across America, Lyle had his fill of the lobster shack and said it was time we went to Nova Scotia! After another day of driving, we finally made it, pitched our tents, and ate dinner which consisted of leftover lobster, and I drifted off to sleep with rocks in my back and dreams of the next day in my head. I eagerly woke up before the sun, and as we ate breakfast, I shared that I was overjoyed with the adventures that lay before us. I told my mom that I just knew Nova Scotia was going to be as amazing as the tales I had read in all the travel guides. Driving into town I looked around at all the shops, because it was the shops I wanted to go to first, as I had been waiting the entire trip to taste the local delicacy of seaweed candy! However, our little delay in Maine caused a small chain reaction that Lyle didn’t realize, and as we drove into town, we noticed it was eerily quiet. Maybe these Nova Scotians were late risers? Maybe they were hiding and waiting to surprise us Cajuns from South Louisiana and welcome us home? Nope, neither of these were it; we just so happened to arrive in Nova Scotia on the queen’s birthday weekend, Victoria Day, and everything was closed. I don’t mean like Fourth of July in America weekend closed, I mean like southern United States in the 1970s blue law, nothing is open closed. The sites, the attractions, the shops, and all the seaweed candy were safely locked away from me, as my people, our kinfolk of the former French colony of Nova Scotia, celebrated the queen of England’s birthday! I must admit, we were all a little bit disappointed, so we just packed up our disappointment and headed south, back to America, a land where the reverence of rulers was celebrated with furniture sales, not the destruction of a young boy’s dreams. Defeated, I sat in the back of the car thinking of what could have been. My mom had always been a good mom and could read the disappointment on my face, and Lyle, my leader, well he never even noticed as he was not my father, and I was not his son.

Chapter 10

Jackson Pollock Put Me in Jail

We all came back together at the end of the summer—my sister, my mother, Lyle, and me—and though we lasted for another few months, the magic of the summer had worn off and things had gotten a little tense. We had finally hit that mysterious number of strikes, and even the Great Umpire of Life couldn’t help us anymore. It was just too much, even for a laid-back guy like Lyle. Looking back, I realize that the pressures of leadership were too much strain on their still young romance, and it wasn’t all his fault because he had tried to lead us into his vision of civility, even if he was reluctant about it. And much like in my career, the stress of leadership also affected Lyle. That stress caused just enough of a crack in their relationship to allow that old Bohemian spirit in, and just like that we were off again. This time it was to Barcelona, Spain, where we stayed for only about a month, and then it was back to Ibiza, Spain.  

It was great! I was fourteen now and was having the time of my life, although this time Ibiza was more like the chaos of a Jackson Pollock painting and less like the innocence depicted by Norman Rockwell. It didn’t take long for my mom to notice the difference in me, and she sat me down, stating she was getting concerned at the effect Ibiza was having on me. I told her not to worry, that it was all in her head and I was still her innocent little boy. Maybe it was the time I lied about painting my room or maybe it was my prominent role in The Great Carpet Caper, but it quickly became evident that Lyle had taught my mother a few of his mad crazy detective skills as she started paying a little closer attention to where I was and what I was doing. And Lyle, what happened to him? Well, all of a sudden having enough of us seemed a little rash as he wrote to my mom telling her just how much he missed her and wanted her back in his home. I remember one night she was reading a letter from Lyle to one of her friends in which he explained what he missed about her. I sat in my room, probably punished, and listened as his words flowed from the paper. Now I wasn’t being creepy, and it wasn’t like I intended to listen, but once again we didn’t have a television! Normally I found that old Union Steamfitter’s words a little harsh and sarcastic, but these words he was using to speak to my mom were somehow different. They seemed eloquent and poetic, very sweet, very loving, and I must admit pretty damned smooth and a little risqué. Actually, I found them so impressive that I stole a line or two from his letter and used them in one or more letters I wrote to a particularly pretty little blond lady I met six years later. The longer we stayed on Ibiza the more obvious it became to me that Mom missed him too, and maybe I understood this and knew I had to be the catalyst to bring them back together. Yeah, looking back, I had to make stupid teenage choices and enjoy all Ibiza had to offer so I could save their love. You see Momma finally realized she had to be back in Lyle’s arms when she came and got me out of a Spanish jail cell where I had sat for about four hours after getting in a fight. I tried to protest, explaining that the cops even said I was OK because the boy I got in a fight with was a foreigner and not a Spaniard, but she seemed unfazed. I then told her that sitting in that jail cell for hours was no big deal because the cop and I watched a Pitufo (Smurf) marathon on television, because evidently even Spanish jails had a television! She relented just a little bit, but I felt the rope getting shorter and tighter, and just a few weeks later she yanked back hard on it, not because I was caught doing anything wrong, but because my sister narced me out by saying she didn’t think Ibiza was a good environment for me at fourteen.

Chapter 11

Finding Safety in a Father Figure

And just like that the Bohemian Winds picked us back up and landed us not only back in Metairie, but back in the home of a lanky Union Steamfitter with a dagger tattoo who missed my mom so very much. Things seemed a little different this time around, and we all melded a little bit better, even if the lessons in civility continued for all of us. And although he was once again our reluctant leader, he still was not a father figure to me, and that didn’t bother me because I never really desired for him to be one. Here I was with the closest thing I ever had to a father, and I just didn’t get the feeling that I needed him to be that for me. He was my mother’s boyfriend, the leader of our home, and he was nice to us, but that was about as far as it went. Then one day something changed, and I began to look at Lyle in a different light. I had just gotten off the school bus about a block from the house, and like most other days I was pushed in the back by the neighborhood bully, a rather large and nasty-looking Ginger. However, this time was different. I had finally had enough, and just like those little guys in the 1970s movies I knew the time had come for me to fight my way out of this. Now being of a much smaller frame and a lot shorter, I knew I had to hit him as hard as possible so I reared back as far as I could and brought a sucker punch from somewhere in Alabama that hit my gargantuan red-headed bully squarely in the nose, just like in those 1970s movies! Oh yeah, and just like in those movies he fell to the ground. Unfortunately, my 1970s movie moment came and went really fast because as Red Kong was getting up out of the grass, he looked over at me, and he looked really mad! And did I hit him again? Did I do the classic Superman punch on his chin as he crawled up off of the ground? I’d had enough, and I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I did what any sane smaller-framed fatherless boy would do and something my Pawpaw Boudreaux had told me to do for years—I ran like hell. Now with Red Kong being on the larger side in both height and weight, he didn’t have the gazellelike speed and dexterity I exhibited as I successfully fled from his outreached arm! I ran toward the safety of home, rounding the corner of our duplex only to see Lyle standing there watering the Crimson King Maple tree he had brought from our summer camping trip, and as I ran past him, he snatched me up and asked, “What did you do?” In a scared voice I replied, “I am tired of him messing with me so I hit him as hard as I could, but it wasn’t hard enough!” I have to admit that in that moment I was as scared of Red Kong as the sailors on Skull Island were of King Kong after they took his woman, but I wasn’t crying! I desperately tried to wiggle free from Lyle’s grasp, because him holding onto me was really killing the lead I had on that giant red ape. My wiggling turned to thrashing when I realized just how close Red Kong was getting as ripples appeared in the water puddles at the base of the Crimson King Maple. And I was right because just then Red Kong rounded the corner and made a beeline for me. Just in the nick of time Lyle let go of me, causing me to fall backward, and as I caught myself, I scrambled away looking back to see Lyle snatch up Red Kong by the arm with enough force to stop him in his tracks. “What are you doing to my boy?” Lyle said with a glare in his eye. “He hit me, he hit me,” Red Kong replied. And as Lyle held him up by his arm, I could see that old, faded dagger tattoo pointed menacingly at Red Kong’s throat and heard Lyle say, “Don’t you ever touch my boy again. You hear me? I know where you live.” Then he closed out his conversation with Red Kong by adding, “Oh and I know your father and he doesn’t want any of me either!” After Lyle released him, Red Kong sulked on back home, looking more like the Ginger I had hit than the raging beast that wanted to rip me in two. “Go inside, and good job standing up for yourself,” Lyle told me with a slight grin as he turned back to watering his prize tree. And you know what, Red Kong’s father must have known Lyle, because although I walked around cautiously for the next couple of days, I was able to finish eighth grade without being torn in two because of bad advice given in some 1970s movie.

Things were different between Lyle and me after that. There were lots of fishing trips in the canals around Manchac, trawling for shrimp in Lake Pontchartrain, crawfishing, and even a dove-hunting trip in the soybean fields along the Mississippi River. And although we never talked about Lyle taking a fatherly role in my life, in his own reluctant way he did, and I appreciated it. And my lessons in civility continued while dove hunting, because as the doves were scarce that day some guys started shooting Purple Martins and I joined in. Lyle came over to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “This is not why we hunt.” And with that we left, and on the ride home he didn’t chastise me or even speak about it. He simply said, “Those guys shooting birds they weren’t going to eat was just wrong.” Another lesson came while he, my mom, and I were trawling in Lake Pontchartrain and the trawl got hung up on something on the bottom of the lake. As Lyle worked to free the trawl, a blow came up and our situation quickly turned from one of misfortune to one of imminent danger. His little boat roared up and down with the waves, as the wind and rain continuously battered us. I am proud to say I cried loudly as my mom held me, all the while telling Lyle to cut the trawl loose and get us out of there. And as we panicked, he never did. He just quietly continued leaning over the back of the boat, working the trawl with his hands, all the while struggling to stay upright as the storm continued to not only rage but strengthen. Our predicament worsened along with the storm until it seemed imminent that the boat was going to be swamped by a wave, causing all of us to possibly drown. Just then, when it seemed that no hope was in sight, the tension on the ropes miraculously slackened, and Lyle feverishly began pulling the trawl back in the boat. It was so bad of an experience that to this day one of my greatest fears, other than a great white shark being in my Pawpaw’s swimming pool at night because my mom let me watch Jaws at far too young of age, is being on anything smaller than a cruise ship in a storm. About twenty years later, as my mom and I recounted the story, Lyle admitted he was extremely scared and was actually about to cut the trawl loose. He then added that he didn’t need to panic because the two of us were already handling that part of the job rather well, which allowed him to be able to concentrate on freeing the trawl.

Chapter 12

Don’t Bleed on the Carpet!

Like I said, Lyle was cool and could do just about anything, so one day when he decided to build a large Lafitte Skiff shrimp boat in his yard, we thought nothing of it even if it was very odd to do in a subdivision located in the heart of Metairie. He made the ribs out of wood and the bottom out of marine-grade plywood. Then he began to put sheets of fiberglass and resin over everything, and in no time, it started coming together and looking like the hull of an actual Lafitte Skiff. Although I had been around boats my whole life and had even helped my Pawpaw patch the cracks in his boat with fiberglass, I had never thought anyone could build one from scratch, especially in their yard! Yet here she sat, keel up, propped up on plastic drums of resin and scaffolding Lyle had liberated from whatever companies he had worked for. And when I asked him where he got all that stuff, he would simply say, “Those big companies have more than enough.” Mom always said even though she didn’t like it, her man had a little larceny in his heart.

With our new father-son relationship still being shallow and somewhat precarious at best, I decided I would have to be the one to take it to the next level. I remember that moment clear as day. I came out of the house and into “the shipyard,” where Lyle and a few of his friends were sitting around drinking beer after applying the latest layer of fiberglass and resin to the hull. It was fall and most American males were excited, because fall meant football and even growing up without a father it was no different for me. Ever since our time in Georgetown, Texas, I knew that fathers loved football because Athlete Dad had tossed around the old pigskin with his son and me, and now I was going to give Lyle the same opportunity. Confidently I called out, “Hey Lyle, let’s throw the ball around!” Lyle glanced my way and as a slight smile formed in the corner of his mouth, he turned toward his friends and said, “I got this pretty little woman, and she got a son, so I guess now I’m Daddy Lyle.” And while I never considered Lyle much of a sports fan, at least outside of horse racing and a good card game, his smile told me he was feeling receptive in partaking in this father and son ritual. “Yeah, one second, while I finish my beer. In the meantime, show your Daddy Lyle how high you can throw it,” Lyle said. And boy did I! After all, I finally had a father figure to impress with my mad crazy football skills, and as I caught each throw and in between sips of beer, he’d tell his friends, “That’s my boy” and then say, “Higher! Throw it higher!” This repeated itself over and over again until I threw it straight up in the air as high and as hard as I could and as it was coming down, I heard Lyle crudely say, “Hey, Scott, are you having fun playing with yourself?” It was with that very embarrassing question that any hopes of Lyle being a kind and loving father figure to me quickly vanished, and I realized that he was more like my uncles than the Tin Can Alley Father I was hoping for. You all need to hear one more story about my uncles to truly understand that they were a special breed, because when I was seven years old, they dragged me around by my feet on my Pawpaw’s carport because I didn’t want to dive for the football and get my brand-new Minnesota Vikings uniform dirty, especially on Christmas Day. And although I cried all those years before while standing on my Pawpaw’s carport covered in dirt and mud, holding my brand-new helmet with its horn decal peeling off, I am proud to say that I didn’t cry after what happened when I tried to bond with Lyle over football. You see, as I heard those embarrassing words, I turned to glare at Lyle and as I did, I lost focus, and the ball came down hitting me squarely in the nose. Nope, I didn’t cry at all. I may have cursed him a little, especially since he just sat there hysterically laughing along with his friends, as blood poured out of my nose. He didn’t ask if I was OK, and he didn’t console me. He simply took another sip of his beer and said, “Always keep your eye on the ball son, always keep your eye on the ball,” and then he followed that life lesson up with another one when he said, “Don’t get any blood on the carpet when you go get cleaned up, after all it already has grease on it.” I stood in the bathroom, with my head tilted back, pinching my nose as I looked around for something to clean up with. I decided on toilet paper because I knew better than to use a washcloth as the Batan Death March I took to Maison Blanche was still fresh in my mind. And as I sat on the seat of the toilet, I realized that maybe Lyle wasn’t the best father figure out there, but he was still the only one I had.

Chapter 13

What Strike Was That?

In my mind I finally had a complete family like all those little boys I knew growing up, and although I still didn’t have a dad, I did have a Daddy Lyle who was there to lead me. That was until something happened, and we struck out as a family. To this day I do not know what the catalyst was, but it had to be a death by a thousand cuts. I didn’t even see it coming, as I had long lost track of the strike count, but just like that, one day it was over and our little family unit of three had to move out. It hurt leaving Lyle, and even though we moved into a small two-bedroom apartment only a few miles away, the distance between us seemed greater than ever. Daddy Lyle loved my momma with all his heart and tolerated me and my sister, but truthfully, he was not ready to be our leader, much less a full-time dad. I will never know whether it was that he simply didn’t want the job or that he couldn’t handle the conflicts and complexities of his pretty little woman’s teenage kids. What I do remember was that my mom and he broke up, and although he was not my dad, I didn’t think it was very fair how he could have spent so much time around me and just walked away!

Being back in a little apartment complex and out of our neighborhood suffocated me, and I was bored senseless. Once again not having a television meant I listened to the radio and read a lot of books. Luckily, my tortured life of apartment living somewhat subsided when my Uncle Brett gave me his ten-speed Fuji bicycle, and with that gift I spent every afternoon riding the lakefront bike path thirteen miles one way and thirteen miles the other. And like I said in Chapter 7, who knows if my daily rides would have led me to the Tour de France one day if it had not been for my still sore rump caused by the caning I had received years earlier. Still, Mom was aware of my boredom and knew it wasn’t the best thing for a teenage boy. And remembering my behavior in Spain, she stepped up and helped keep me busy with guitar lessons at the University of New Orleans and weekend Greyhound bus trips to Thibodaux where I once again fished and hunted at my Pawpaw’s and ran a paper route with my Uncle Brett on Sunday mornings for extra money. Still, I missed Lyle. He and Mom were still sort of dating, and I saw him from time to time, but it wasn’t the same, and each day as my school bus passed Orion Street on the way to Grace King High School, I found my eyes drifting off to the right, looking fondly in the direction of his house.

After my sophomore year of high school, we moved again, but this time it was not because of the Bohemian Winds, it was because of financial necessity. My mom and I moved into my Mawmaw and Pawpaw Boudreaux’s upstairs, and my sister moved out. I really enjoyed living around my family again, and even though Thibodaux’s schools couldn’t compare to Metairie’s, I was back with my Pawpaw, who had always been a constant in my life. With my mother still in college, and my junior year behind me, we moved for what would be the last time, and at least it wasn’t that far. We moved into some Fonzie garage apartment behind some wealthy lady’s house, and though bored again and once again with no television, my Uncle Brett came through when he brought me to get a motorcycle I was buying and with it came my freedom. Yes, Lyle still came around from time to time and he and Mom continued to date off and on, but my Uncle Brett had replaced Lyle as the father figure leading me. Sure, he still sarcastically called himself Daddy Lyle, but it didn’t hold the same meaning for me. He was once again just my mom’s boyfriend, and that is how he wanted it.

Chapter 14

The Union

After high school I joined the navy and went off to see the world, my mom moved back to New Orleans to finish her degree, and Lyle, well Mom said she and Lyle were over as she had to concentrate on her studies. I found it ironic that when he finally had a chance to get the one thing he wanted in life, my mother all to himself, he lost her. Had he just allowed us a hundred or so more strikes, we may have eventually reached his perceived level of civility. If he had only remained the Daddy Lyle I needed him to be, just a little while longer, he would have gotten everything he ever wanted, the pretty little woman without the kids! After attending bootcamp in Florida, and navy schools in California, Illinois, and New Jersey, I finally landed my first permanent duty station, and it was on an island. Having lived on the island of Ibiza twice, I knew all about island life, but since it was still pre-internet there wasn’t much information on this particular island other than it was in Alaska. And while it was slightly colder than Ibiza, I thoroughly enjoyed my time stationed at Naval Air Station Adak, Alaska, even though I did regret one thing most of all. I should have taken leave and been at my mom’s marriage to Daddy Lyle. You see when she graduated college and started working at a hospital in New Orleans she realized just how much she missed him, so she reached out through her old friend who had introduced them. But by this time, he was living in Slidell, Louisiana, on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain with another woman. However, he didn’t let that stop him from running to his prize, because he immediately asked his girlfriend to leave and threw open his home to my mother. I know he didn’t throw open his heart because he had always kept it open to her. I called them on the day of their wedding from a pay phone at about a million dollars a minute and shared how happy I was for them. Truthfully, I was really happy for my mom, because although I still liked Lyle and was glad they were getting married, I no longer needed him or his leadership.

Still, this didn’t stop him from giving me more advice in the ways of civility, and before I hung up the phone, he told me not to come home with some woman full of puppies. Wow, even thousands of miles away he was still somehow Daddy Lyle to me, though he had walked away from being a leader to me years before. Remember, my Uncle Brett had filled that role, and ever since I joined the navy I had found myself surrounded by so many other leaders, amazing men and women with outstanding leadership skills, even though most were still in their twenties.

I would love to take a moment to share with all of you how emulating the way the US military develops young leaders would help our industries reach our goals in safety, quality, and leadership, but that is not what this story is about. Nope, this one is about one particular reluctant leader who, by marrying my mom, chose to fulfill a role he had been running away from for a very long time. A role he initially did not want, but a role he was made for. Sure, our little family of three still came with plenty of conflicts and complexities, but here he was finally willing to help us address them. He became Daddy Lyle through a sarcastic comment he made to his friends, but in time he became the father we all needed. He was the only father my sister and I ever remember, and even though we were adults when he finally fulfilled that role, we still had plenty of conflicts and complexities for him to guide us through. When my sister had her first child, he affectionally became Daddy Lyle to her. When my mom introduced him to my fiancé’s sweet little daughter, she introduced him as Daddy Lyle. When our daughter was born, he was her Daddy Lyle and drove my mom and my Mawmaw and Pawpaw to Northeast Texas to see her. When my son was born, he was Daddy Lyle, and so very proud to have a grandson. When my sister’s second child came into this world, he, too, was welcomed lovingly by his Daddy Lyle. And when my sister met and married the love of her life, he, too, picked up on calling him Daddy Lyle. Daddy Lyle has been a constant in my life since the early 1980s, and although fate and a work-related tragedy took my real father from me, I could not have asked for a better substitute. I used to think that he spent eight years of his life teaching us to be civilized while fighting the inevitable, but the more I think about it, the more I am sure he spent those eight years honing the skills it took to be Daddy Lyle.

Chapter 15

Majestic Cypress Trees

A few years back Daddy Lyle told me he was sick and couldn’t remember things as well as he used to. I told him it couldn’t be that bad and asked him, “Do you remember your granddaughter, Erica?” He replied, “Of course I remember Ka Ka.” I asked, “Do you remember your granddaughter, Alex?” To which he replied, “Of course I remember little Alex from the Galex.” “OK, then do you remember your grandson, Nick?” I asked. “Who could forget the Little Nickel, The Pipe Cutter from Chisolm Trail,” he said excitedly! “And what about Joe? Do you remember your grandson, Joe?” I asked. A confused look fell over his face as he studied me like the old card player he was and then in an irritated voice he replied, “I ain’t got no damned grandson name Joe and stop messing with me!” “Well, that was for the football to the nose,” I replied. He laughed, proving his long-term memory was still fine, at least for the time being. And as the years passed his illness progressed, and although his mind gradually left him, the one thing he never forgot was any of his family, not one of us. And more importantly, he never forgot the love he had for his wife for life, my mother.

We lost Daddy Lyle this year, and as that pretty little blond lady and I drove to Louisiana to be with my mother we reminisced about the good times we had with him. My wife laughed about the time her side view mirror fell off of her car, and because I was working in Africa, she took it to Lyle to get it fixed. She said that he didn’t seem too upset that he couldn’t help her because he didn’t have the special tool he needed to fix it. She continued to laugh as she reminisced about the shocked look on his face when she showed back up fifteen minutes later with the tool. She said that my mother had told her, “He came inside thrilled that he didn’t have to fix the mirror because it was so hot outside, but he was crushed and defeated when you showed back up with the tool.” And just like a father would do, he fixed her mirror and never once complained, at least not to my wife.  

As we drove up to the house that he built for them, I couldn’t help but be flooded with the fond memories of a once reluctant father. I looked at all of the towering cypress trees that lined one side of his house. Cypress trees that I helped him pull in the swamp behind my Pawpaw’s place. They were no bigger than pencils when he planted them, but much like his love for us they grew big and strong, but like us, not without problems. You see, cypress trees put out a root system that contains cypress knees, and his yard had these trip hazards tucked away in the grass here and there, as if they were some sort of reminders of the conflicts and complexities that came with the strong blended family we had grown into. As we all sat in the Orchid Room and visited, I couldn’t help but notice all his orchids in full bloom, reminding me of the softer and more gentle side of him. Walking around their home was a constant reminder of the attention to detail he possessed, and the books on his bookshelf spoke to the layers of civility he had shared with us Mowglis over the years. And though a grown man, I still felt very much like that little greasy-handed boy when I turned down the thermostat at night, acting like I paid the electric bill! My memories of him and his lessons in civility continued as I cooked my mom breakfast each day, just like he used to do before sprinkling the leftover bacon with roach poison. The difference in our cooking styles is I use a steel spatula in cast-iron pans, because regardless of this lesson in civility, plastic spatulas don’t flip eggs as good as steel ones do!

About the third day I was there, I did muster the energy to fill his bird feeders, which hadn’t been filled in weeks. It didn’t take long for the birds to come around, probably wondering where he was. First there was a big blue jay, then a cardinal, and many finches that fluttered in and out of the well-established bushes and flower beds that surrounded a beautiful and loving home that only a father could provide. And the flood of memories continued as we stayed with my mom a little while longer, too many memories for even a novella like this. The morning we left, my mother, sitting in his favorite chair, looked over to me and said, “I miss him so much!” And I understand why, because he knew he was going to miss her too. It was evident the way he clung to life saying, “I don’t want to go anywhere my dear, not without you!”

We all have choices in our lives, and some of them are difficult ones. Looking back, I realize the choices Daddy Lyle had to make were difficult because of the conflicts and complexities we brought along with us. While writing this I thought about how he was still leading me, because as I thought of my pretty little blond lady and the devout love I have for her, I, too, realized the conflicts and complexities in our own lives that we had to overcome throughout our years together. No, he was not the perfect father for me and neither have I been for my children. No, he wasn’t a perfect husband for my mother and neither have I been for that pretty little blond lady. Sure, he had a little larceny in his heart, and as I write this, I find myself wondering if he still has that old power pony that belongs to the company I work for. In my defense, I told my superintendent not to loan anything to him because he wouldn’t get it back. Funny thing is about a year after loaning him that power pony, the superintendent called me and said, “Your father invited me and my family over for a crawfish boil,” and afterward Lyle said, “I’ll be keeping the power pony, especially with the cost of crawfish and the amount y’all ate.” I believe my mom was right when she said he always had a little larceny in his heart because in his own unique way he stole mine. Even though I know in my heart that goodbye is not forever, I will still miss him. So this is not goodbye, it is me saying “until we meet again Daddy Lyle!”

End