Dad

What a cheery guy.

Veteran, biker, grower, truck driver, marine. Mechanic. Rebuilt his Buick's engine. Didn't teach any of it to me. Touch Dad's tools, lose a hand. Not just the empty threat of a father who's trying to convey he means business, but the threat of a father who will pick up that hammer and hit with it. I didn't cross my father; I held to the rules as a child. My friends thought I was a wimp until I was around 12. They always wanted me to do crazy shit. They didn't understand that you don't cross Robert Alfred Tannahill Jr., and if any of the neighborhood parents called him to complain, holy fuck. 

We'd go to the Rockford Speedway sometimes. We didn't always go alone. Sometimes friends came, ours and his. Most of his friends had children of their own and we played with them a bit. April and I, or at least I, liked the tiny playground there. I liked the iron rocking horse on a spring in the center of its giant sandbox. Beer and soda cans crushed and stuffed into the wrought spirals. Half-cigarettes flicked into the sand like decorative garnish. Back in those days it seemed like all I could smell was oil and beer. Faint image of swings and benches with sundry names carved into the wood. The roar of the cars hauling ass around the track, excited children waiting for front fenders to shred and fires to start, crashes into the guard fence. Machines grinding against each other. Industrial press crunch of the demolition derby, which ended in a towering pile of masticated metal.  

He'd go on the booze kick and attend New Beginnings meetings at the First Evangelical Free Church, and that may have been where he met the Zaugs. My sister April (pictured) and I would lay down on the cheap carpet in the Zaug's spare bedroom watching movies while Dad and the adults did...well, whatever they did. Hiding their habits so they could pretend to be quit, perhaps. Let them. I was busy watching Stripes and Porky's and Clint Eastwood films. Sometimes when he'd take us to the Zaug's, he was meeting a lady named Jan and we got left in the car. He didn't want us snitching to Mom, after all. That shit sucked. Waiting in the car in the 80's isn't the same as it is now. Devices? Hell, there wasn't even A/C. 

My friends loved my dad. When I'd tell them Dad would beat me for say, kicking over the rich people's track lights (we lived on the proverbial wrong side of town), or stealing candy, or picking on girls, they'd call me a wimp for backing down. This didn't help me get a star on my belly. But they didn't know I'd caught a sprained arm for knocking the Lewis' headlight out with a baseball, did they? Nope, Dad made me lie, like he always did when he did lasting damage. When I was 12 I forgot all that tripe and just took my lumps if they were coming. By then I wanted to smoke and raise hell. 

He taught me a few good things. How to plant corn. How to throw a baseball and a football. How to wash dishes and how to work a lawnmower. The importance of bed making and homework. How to take a whipping. A punch. And how to throw one. He taught me how to look over my shoulder and not to trust anyone, or anything. The bottom can always drop out, someone is always waiting to attack you, and most of all you never know when your old man is going haul off and knock in you in the head for a laugh. Then take you to the church potluck and play Model Father. It was a game we all got good at. 

The old man also had a hobby. He liked to catch animals, usually possums, and toss them into a corrugated trash can. While they scrambled in fear, seeking a way out but finding none, he'd take a baseball bat to the trash can. Hold one cylindrical end of the can, use the baseball bat like a stir stick. A cacophony of animal screams and wood against metal, and Dad's high-pitched laugh. Slam the can against the garage floor. Beat the sides of the can until the animal soils itself in panic. "Well, sheyit," he'd say, and sometimes that was it--he'd let the animal loose. But not always. In his highest jollies, the animal had to die, and we got to watch. 

Unless the animal in question was a family pet. They were allowed to live. But this was also their punishment for shitting on the floor. 

He took us to Six Flags. Bought long licorice strips. He liked to grill in the backyard and built a DIY pool in the backyard. My grandmother must have bought it, Dad didn't have money like that. He didn't believe in credit, hated horror movies, and used to whip me for watching the Ernest movies. If I mimicked the loveably childish redneck, his hammer fist would collide with the top of my head. I tried not to do it but sometimes I'd forget. Once I developed a cyst under my eye and he and his girlfriend Eileen cut it off with a butcher's knife. She was a nurse. So, you know. That's cool. And maybe it is. 

When he'd take us to Eileen's, we were forgotten but forbidden to leave the living room and the kitchen area. When Dad was done with her, we'd leave, unless we were staying for dinner. Eating dinner at her house was like something out of a goddamn Victorian era nightmare--she was rich, see, so it was manners and etiquette, and I don't know what the hell we ate--quiche comes to mind. A far cry from the TV dinners and frozen pizza and mac and cheese on a TV tray we were used to. Eileen had a sand pendulum doohickey in the living room that I liked to make designs with. I remember the first time I saw the trailer for Hellraiser 2 was on her TV. 

Before I left, Dad said, "If you leave here, Robert, you won't have anything when you're eighteen, and it'll take you until you're in your forties to do anything with yourself." I asked him why, and he said, "You'll see. Don't think I got something for you. I got nothing for you. You just won't have anything."

Even though he was pretty much right, he didn't know that when he said it. Just spouting vengeful shit. I tried not to do that here, but if I did, tough titty. It happened. Zo es het.