At 75, I’m still getting insights about my fathers.
– I never met my biological father, yet I feel his personality rolling around inside of me. His name was Percy George Clifford. That’s a very famous English name. But, his parents ended up calling him Bud. His mother’s name was Molly Brown. Molly was an affectionate term for Mary, and Mary Brown is a famous Irish name.
– Bud worked himself up to be a supervisor over five hundred workers at the Studebaker plant in Los Angeles during the war years. Instead of Studebakers they made military Jeeps.
– Bud was a saloon drinker. Why not. His mother was Irish.
– I feel an urge to make sure my children know that biologically, they are Cliffords.
– I feel uneasy about it because the name I was raised under was Hendrix. That name is seared into me. And I’m proud of that name. Yet by DNA, I’m a Clifford.
– My stepfather, Fred Gooch Hendrix . He did a lot for me. He was an excellent athlete. He was a fast ball pitcher. Not too many people can pitch like that. He went to my baseball games. He helped me with my school projects. I won awards because of his help. He took me on camping trips with church groups. He never called me his stepson. He always called me his son.
– I never once heard my father say one racist remark. Not once. He never commented one way or the other. He only spanked me once. He came in shortly after to make sure I was ok. I was four or five. He never physically disciplined me after that.
– Yet, he never legally changed my name to Hendrix. I don’t hold that against him. He was by nature a quiet man. Kinda like “I’ll mind my business, and I expect you to do the same.” He didn’t brag or exaggerate. He had nice physical features. Dark hair, combed nicely. Thin. Six feet tall. He resembled my biological father’s features. Which meant that my mother probably never got over him, even though he died young (48) from alcohol consumption and heavy smoking. This also was a feature of my stepfather, who died at sixty three.
– Isn’t that a meaningful coincidence? My mother married two men of a very similar type. Dark, handsome, thin, tall. Both were successful in their own right. Yet, both of them were very heavy saloon drinkers, very heavy smokers, and both died young from cancer exacerbated by heavy consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Should I make anything out of that?
– They were different in one very important way. Bud was good with words and getting along with people. Fred fixed things – TVs, motors, construction mistakes, etc.
– Here’s my stab at why they had similar patterns of acutely over indulgent, destructive behavior. Men value themselves according to what they do. If what they do is in any way underwhelming, they have a growing sense of meaningless to their lives. They then set out to destroy their lives. No, It’s not that my two fathers represented a coincidence, it’s that they are so much like most other men. Men are very vulnerable by nature, ever prone to nihilism.
– I know what you are thinking. Not all men drink themselves to death. Not all men feel the sting of underwhelming achievement. You are right. But I would contend that is the exception and not the rule. Actually, this isn’t about drinking and alcoholism. It’s about the pain men feel in their minds about how life has fooled them. For all their doing, the doing wound up not being enough, not nearly enough. They didn’t love their children enough. Didn’t sell enough. Didn’t make their business big enough, weren’t recognized by their bosses for the good work they accomplished, they were unable to do what they set out to do as a young man. Basically, all there is for a man is doing. Tamper with that and you fool with a man’s sense of himself.
– Even the icons men choose as their heroes are those who fell short because they couldn’t do as much as they thought they should have done. When I was growing up Mickey Mantle was the most revered baseball player in America. The Mick was “an every man.” It wasn’t what he did (which was superb) it was what he wasn’t able to do, because of screw ups. Leg injuries, partying with his buds, late night outs finally caught up with him. We loved him for the tragic character he became. We loved him because he admitted it. He was every man. Life was hard, because Mantle said it was hard.
– What’s the solution to this puzzle? Only one: keep pounding rocks and carrying water, until you fall over. Our joy is doing. Don’t stop doing. The harder the doing the better. I keep climbing the hill at the side of my home. I can no longer complete it on foot. At times it’s on my knees. Life is hard. Be hard.