I was named after my father. He was borne on the second day of January, 1949. When he was young, he always dreaded his birthday, as that was the day he was due back to school following the holiday break.

He was the third of four brothers, the first two of whom each had a separate biological father of their own- a family secret which remained unrevealed to all save their mother until only a few years ago. When my father was fifteen, his next eldest sibling- Steven, was very much involved with his high school sweetheart. They felt sorry for my father, as he was an overly well-mannered albeit slightly overweight science fiction fanatic; and as such, tended to be extremely awkward in all social environs. Steven and his girl had a plan, to fix my father up on a blind date with the girl’s sixteen-year old kid sister. On the night of said encounter, something went horrifically wrong. A night of notorious evil that has haunted my family tree to this day and undoubtedly beyond.

Three days after their intended dalliance, the townsfolk were lividly upset at the discovery of the girl’s remains, hidden away underneath the house in which my father and his brothers had grown up in. She had been raped and very brutally murdered, with painfully clear evidence pointing to my father as the monster responsible. He was tried, and sentenced for first degree manslaughter before he was even old enough to drive. Initially he had, despite his crime, been sent to a juvenile detention facility. The inmates, having known of his acts thanks to the small town gossip mill, in turn raped and brutally beat my father so that before the first year of his incarceration was completed, for his safety was he transferred to an adult maximum security prison. He was a prison inmate for 9 years, missing the Vietnam draft while finishing what little remained of his youth bound in an equally incomprehensible setting. In his final year, via a prison penpal service, he met my mother- 5 years his junior and herself from a small town.

Inside a year of his release, they were married. In his adult years he sired three children, while faithfully working as many 100 hour work weeks as was necessary to support his new and growing immediate family; and then just barely as luck was never in our favour. He was never able to pursue any close friendships, choosing instead to read and self-educate, and develop a healthily unrealistic sense of humour with which to entertain his children. What was lacked by the standards of society, we made up for in deadpan survivalism and brutal honesty and glibness. Imagination was taught as the only viable escape from the world, and that only possible through education. My father, in his own way, was a self made man in the highest sense of the phrase. While incarcerated, he had taken up bodybuilding and weightlifting as a means of self punishment. Every act of his adult life was weighed under the guilt and self torture which he deservedly placed upon his own shoulders, never forgetting, never allowing his past to escape from his memory. Mind you- none of this was made known to his children in his own lifetime. He would have killed himself at a very young age were it not for his discovery of the writings of Ayn Rand; whose objectivism philosophy allowed my father the only real window for maintaining his sanity, for keeping his own life in perspective.

In the first week of September, 1998, his body was discovered by the police in a small town in south Texas. I learned of this four months after the fact, and so had to share the discovery with my family. I had been the last to share words with him- two years before. The coroner’s report decries that he had been found in a field behind the grocery store where he had at the time held employ. His remains were so ravaged by the Texas heat and fire ants, that the exact date of expire was inconclusive; pinpointed at best to within a 48-hour window of time.

One of my greatest regrets in my life is never having been given the chance to know him- from one man to another. How should such a soul be judged? Anyone who knew the man but not the deed, would remember his strength and his work ethic, his humour, his baritone singing voice, his expertise in the kitchen. That man could fix anything in the world; and often would fix whatever appliances free of charge for whatever kindred blue-collar families we shared shitty apartment complexes and the like with, back in Tejas. He was a just man as an adult, despite the singular act which granted him a repeat nightmare every night for the 30plus years that followed suit. He was my dad, my pa.

And all of this commands my thoughts now, as these past few days represent the tenth anniversary of when Poor Richard the Senior was found with one shoe missing and surrounded by a few empty pint bottles of cheap vodka, in that otherwise nondescript Texas field. The bastard never made it out of Tex, but I’m sure the fuck did. I miss you, pops, even if no one else remembers you.

(Originally appeared at my jalopy blogger/blogspot: http://nilskidoo.blogspot.com/2008/10/good-is-subjective.html)