We were allowed to live in the original Gould homestead (Gould, CO) in exchange for my father maintaining the property and regularly haunting trespassers. I don't know how many hunters who snuck onto private land came back to find all of their tires flattened. This was the job and those were the perks. The house had been built in 1880 and had no running water. We heated it with two woodstoves and a good portion of the county's dead timber. The linoleum was worn thin and the plaster between houselogs regularly fell victim to desperate birds trying to build a home away from the high altitude cold. My mom worked at the KOA campground down the road in exchange for some cash and access to the showers. And sometimes we showered at DY's place. DY is Don Young and he was an on-the-run drug dealer who had invited my father over for drinks on the soon-to-be discussed Blue Angel's day. Apparently they were very good drinks.
Disclaimer
Hello. I'm not going to make excuses for behavior, but I'm not going to shield it either. For too long I've kept too many stories at bay in my brain to maintain my dad’s legacy, both when he was alive and now deceased.
Luckily for you, this is a democratic forum. You can choose to partake or not. You could be an audience or not. To put it in rough but rather therapeutic terms, I don't give a fuck what you think of this story. I don't give a fuck what you think of me. And I don't give a fuck what you think of my dad. I don't. I don't. Because there is no planet in this fucking universe–there is no society no matter how deep below the earth, no matter how dependent on human souls and hot magma, that is depraved enough to think that holding a big fucking narrative sneeze is somehow good for you.
For me, this isn't a special coming out. This isn't an indictment or a prosecution. It's just a story. Flawed people fucking up.
I wasn’t going to add a disclaimer until my sister sent me a little video clip talking about why people are the way they are. In thirty seconds this wisp of a woman explained our fight or flight, our suspicion and our heart-pounding fear. It explained why my brother wants to beat up so many strangers for the tiniest of infractions. It explained why my sister can never stop working. Never stop moving. Giving. Gutting yourself to the floor. And it explained why I’m constantly torn between vengeance and generosity. I don't know what it is. One day some asshole is gonna smack his girlfriend in the Target parking lot and I’ll either beat him up or give them all of my money for couples therapy.
Ok. Sorry. That was something I had to say to myself.
Littleton, Colorado
Snowy. Snow on the ground. It's so beautiful outside. I could be in the snow all day. Although enjoying the warmth inside while writing is a pretty solid alternative. So I get cold outside and then come inside to write. One day I'll be dead and the kids will be like, "Jesus, what is all this." I hope they use it to start a fire.
My brother called. I lied. He didn't call. He texted. Modern parlance. And he asked me if I had anything about the Blue Angel ice cream night, which sounds like a fundraiser. But as far as action and a sweet payoff, it does involve both the legendary Navy pilots and frozen confection.
I know I've written about it somewhere. I typed in some search terms on my favorite writing interfaces. Did some Command F on the Mac. But wasn't able to come up with Blue Angel Ice Cream. (Honestly, that sounds like an incredible flavor.)
My writing as of late has been to people. Sometimes even for people; customized, if you will. But mostly just non-consensual text attacks on those who unwittingly inspired me. A coworker I haven't seen in months received a ten-page piece on a series of very poor decisions that trapped me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So you have to be careful. You could say something like, "I sure do enjoy trees," and you'll get a single-spaced treatise on forestry. I grew up in it, so I'm ready.
In this case, my brother asked for it.
A Man’s Brain
I'll start by saying that our dad knew better. I saw him be better. We knew him to be better. But In 1982 and much of the surrounding woods of our timeline, he didn't.
I have written about why the hinges would sometimes come off, but no one ever knows why a tornado blows. Ok, that’s actually bullshit. We know more about clouds than we do our human cumulus. Which makes my father even more of a conundrum. We know why air swallows trailer parks but very little about the hazardous front that could be our dad.
It's taken me a bit to get into the bunker and think about this. I have to wander around and spill words everywhere. Wordsmithing. Alliterating. Part of it is shame. I'm not ashamed of my father and I'm not even ashamed that any of our sordid night’s happened. I'm all-too-often ashamed that I'm even talking about it. Which is probably why guys bottle up and either off themselves or have their colon kill them. Or disappear. Not unlike my dad—into the woods—so you don't have to deal with these things. These retellings. These hassles for memories. For all we know he wandered around and told the trees his stories. Because once they're out of your head, your load is lightened. But getting them out. Getting there. Shawshanking through the shit tunnel of your memories; that's the hard part.
Props to my wife as one day she listened as I started pouring stories out of my face. And I realized that I titled them. Tagged with simple descriptions like labels on canning jars: The soap episode. The playground incident. The wrestler. The stairs. The green telephone. A couple of words that blew out the brick wall of knowing things. Maybe you’re like me and maintain a gentle film flicker of your childhood. Often, perhaps, it’s like the happy part of a romantic comedy. All the onscreen people are in love and going to carnivals and winning the big stuffed animal but, if you sit down and commit to the story, some human frailty is about roll up and wreck things.
Gould, CO 1982
We all had our things. Our sister was lucky. She could pee inside the house on her toddler potty. To be honest, sometimes I did too because I didn't want to go outside. The next morning my mom would think there was something seriously wrong with my little sister. But my brother’s deal was just trying to survive. He knew that he had to abide by the rules more than anyone. More than anyone in the household; more than anyone in the world. He had to toe the line tighter than Walter Mondale currying someone, anyone's vote.
That would come up a lot. How come everyone else appeared to have it easier? How come everyone else doesn't have to stoke a wood stove 20 hours a day? These questions were fuel for a dad’s lecture on gratitude. He’d dance around and mock my brother in a high-pitched voice. “How come everyone else? How come everybody ever!?" And then he'd drop into a growl. He wouldn't even use the more common, "Well, you're not everybody else.” He could have. Props to him. He went the extra effort to go his own way. Pollacks. Dumbshits. Ungrateful Assholes. He'd start off with those proper nouns and then go into some screed that we were lucky we had a roof over our head. Sure. OK. But it's not like we showed up begging for shelter. Our parents had us. That was their thing, not ours. Can't just bring us into the world and then kick us out into space. But whatever. Pete fought that battle. I didn’t. I just escaped. Physically. Mentally. Running through the woods. Getting lost. And that's a bad mix when you're escaping both physically and mentally. It means you're going to wake up at some point and not know where in the hell you are. That was a lot of my childhood. Playing the timeless game of "Where am I?"
One thing I haven’t lost are these stories. I've hung them like carcasses inside my head because I didn't want to vex anyone. Didn't want to hurt anybody; have someone's perception be offended. Didn't want anyone to get upset. Which is ridiculous. But it's what happens when you bring up the side of a man who isn't the one people want to remember. Isn't the one they believe existed. And, hey, trust me I know that side, too. That's an awesome side. The heroic firefighter side. Put that shit on a poster. But is there like a support group for kids who grew up with people who were heroes in their community but assholes at home?
The Bus with Bob, Highway 14
My brother befriended our bus driver--can you be best friends with a bus driver? I don't know. My brother was working on that. This guy retired from the Navy. Bob. He represented everything that Pete dreamed about: getting away and maybe bombing some people. And not just as far away as far as the land was concerned, but apparently as far as the sea could, too. To the edge of another world where you can destroy things and get paid for it.
I think whether my dad had been Ward Cleaver, or the rough and ready, backwoods blueblood that he was, my brother would still have gravitated to Bob. He was at that age when kids become things. Namely, drunk. Everybody had to be cool. And my brother, living on the outskirts of the universe, in the ghost town wilderness of Gould, likely felt that he was not.
He likely felt–and this is a guess, a big one, since I'm writing for the very person about which I'm guessing--I think he felt that he needed to find a new life. A life beyond trailers and borrowed homes. Beyond the harrowing tightrope of doing chores with a volatile father and not existing at all. Bob painted a better picture. Tattoos on his forearms and an old school burly that was just a stocking cap away from being a caricature of a dock worker. He had lived. His Naval career complete, he found partial retirement under the expansive skies just outside Walden. He might have been in the suburbs, if suburbs could comprise about 10 homes separated by several miles in the kind of high plains cold that inspires cannibalism if not just for the warm intermingling with someone’s innards.
The Friendly Skies
Bob had his connections with the Navy and ended up with six tickets to the Blue Angels. My mom insisted she eventually pay him but I’m pretty sure he was content with simply displaying his plumage of free-ticket connections. Not sure about women, but we dudes love showing off our ins.
My dad wasn't gonna go to the city to see the jets, which was good, so my brother and I each got to pick a friend. The two we chose were pretty excited about the opportunity then, but ever since have probably tried to forget it. To them, I'm sorry to bring it all back. Although somehow it makes me laugh; maybe not in a healthy way but the kind of way you do once the adrenaline of a near car accident stops molesting you.
One of the friends still remembers hyperventilating on the floor. That's one cool thing I realized. While I was embarrassed that the internals of our family were all exposed to invited guests, it also kind of made me heroic. Having someone more freaked out than I was turned me into the man I thought I could be. It's ok J–ah shit let’s change their names. It’s OK, James, I'd say to my friend, as he lay terrified on the floor in his sleeping bag. “It’s OK, Paul,” Pete would say. Staring at the ceiling.
Haworth, Colorado
The drink is called a Kamikaze. Vodka, triple sec, and lime juice. And that night that's what had my dad crash into our hopes and dreams. It was DY who'd done the serving. He lived outside of the Gould city limits in between Walden and Gould. Pretty close to Haworth. As kids we didn't know he was a drug dealer--or maybe drug dealer adjacent--until I was eight and found thousands of dollars in a box buried in the woods just outside his house. I mean, sure, a nun could have money buried in a box in the woods, but there were other clues. The To Our Snowman poster above his bed. The fact he never worked but had a TV with a remote control. There was still a cord attached to the TV, but this is 1982 Magnum PI cutting edge tech we’re talking about here.
While we blasted off with the Blue Angels, my dad did with DY. His arrival at the house was grand and terrifying. There was a crash and a yell and my mom admonished him for not using the doorknob. He was in the house and in full effect. A bearded Kool-aid man who had too much of his own juice. We'd just gotten home so my mom still had all the paper sacks of groceries all over the kitchen. When you live that far away from a grocery store, you go big. Any kid that traveled to any other place knew that a portion of that time would be at a grocery store or tractor dealership or both. Often your friends came along with a list of groceries or parts.
Fort Collins, CO
The Blue Angels were everything. First, we were in the city. Fort Collins was pretty small back then but it had stop lights and a McDonalds and that's always meant the city to me. Secondly, I had a friend with me. Why even go do a cool thing if you don't have someone with whom to corroborate at school the next day. That was always my shortcoming as there were no other kids in Gould, so my adventures were my thing and sharing them was pointless to others. That could be why I'm in marketing today because I had to figure out how to make the most lonesome journey compelling to others.
Thirdly, my mom was stoked. It's not like she went through life not being stoked. It was actually quite the contrary, but her kids knew that a lot of her stoked-ness was just her being wildly optimistic in some pretty dark situations. The city trips were always stressful. City traffic was terrifying. My dad would have us in the back of the truck shouting if people were in the lane he wanted to be in. My mom could handle traffic, but it was the budget that oppressed her. We’d be at King Soopers with a month of groceries, each kid with a cart hoping we wouldn't have to do a walk of shame on a luxury purchase like apples. But for this trip, the dream was air show concessions. I stared at this dude who had a hot dog and a fountain drink. He was beautiful. Erotically eating the dog one slow motion bite at a time. Goddamn I wanted a hot dog. We had waters. Before it was cool, my mom was finding a way to pack waters. She'd put it in a washcloth if she couldn't find a canteen. Thank god for my dad’s hand-me-down National Guard canteens. For a seven year old, there’s not a much cooler way to hydrate.
The jets took off. My mom did her thing of repeating everything the announcer said. "That was Captain Abernathy going 1000 miles an hour in an hour in an F-16." My mom: “Kids! Kids! That was Captain Abernathy going 1000 miles an hour!" I miss her. I miss her enthusiasm. Every moment. She could turn a pile of shit into an afternoon of crafts. For her not to have to make something out of nothing; or try to reduce a whole bunch of something into a little bit of nothing. That was special. Those fighter pilots did it all for her. It was cool and loud and went quickly. The late spring sun wobbled off the asphalt.
We loaded up and I couldn't wait to get back home. A canteen of pee pushing out of me would get taken care of on a quiet stretch of road near the Poudre River. Now it was getting over Cameron Pass and to the original Gould homestead.
Gould, CO
I think about how broke everyone was in small-town 80s. It seems like everyone has extra cash now. I see people doing the same jobs now that my parents and their friends did back then, and these modern versions have all kinds of things. Everything got cheap and we're buried in stuff. I'm not sure kids these days would appreciate the cherry ice cream like I did in 1982. Getting a good chunk of cherry and savoring it. Maybe putting it between my cheek and gum like the chew ads recommended and sleeping that way.
We'd get home and unload some groceries and then the ice cream. It had to come first. My mom likely wanted to extinguish my interrogations about where it would take place on our timeline. The rhombus box of dairy and dreams would be unlocked. My mom relinquished two scoops into each bowl. The orphaned icebergs sliding into place as cool things do. Delivered on a tired smile from my mom, who'd lived with the disappointment that a billion dollars of flying machines had lost the war to my sweet tooth. Also winning would be the Fast and Furious slide across the gravel landing strip to our house. Driving drunk was a sport in my childhood and my dad was the champ. He finished with a fantastic fishtail into our ice cream dream.
And let me just say "sorry" to our guests. Paul would one day overcome his fear and visit our house again. Things went well enough until he woke up in a sleep rage and throwing all our stuffed animals around the house. It's as if his primal defense mechanisms sensed danger and reacted appropriately. My aunt had made me a cloth Humpty Dumpty doll. Phillip wielded the poor creature like an ax and beat walls and desks and worried onlookers with the fabric egg.
Loveland, CO. 2019
It's my dad's funeral. In the most fitting tribute possible, people share memories from a flatbed trailer. I do mine and it's exactly what you would expect.
Light fun. A little sad. Altogether heartwarming. A Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for my lumberjack childhood. My sister does hers and it's funny, it's touching and it makes all of us cry. I mean honestly, I think we really crushed those eulogies.
And then my brother gets up there. I don't think I've ever seen my brother with a microphone. Well, okay, my mom's funeral. But other than funerals I don't think I've ever seen my brother on stage and amplified. That’s just something I don’t think does without a life on the line.
He began with two things. He thanked everybody for coming. Solid start.
Just going to interrupt here to say that my sister and I are verbal homemakers. We weave not just details, but also all the people in the room into the story. Everyone will be included. Especially the person who feels the least likely to be a part of this homemade basket we're putting together with our time and experiences. We’ll aggressively Bob Ross them into our feelgood montage.
That’s not my brother’s thing.
The second thing he did was to say that he’d always heard that our dad could be a good guy.
And I was like, oh shit. I kind of blacked out. And then my brother was gone and the mic gently rolled along the flatbed. He was gone. He checked out. He did what he needed to do.
After the obligatory nicetie of saying that he knew our dad was a good guy—as if he'd heard it secondhand—I’m told he simply wished he’d been better.
Gould, CO. 1982.
He threw open the door which bare-assed our kitchen to the mountain elements. About three steps across a creaky floor was a wood cookstove. To the left of that was the living room. We were all set up at the dinner table. It was a nice piece, the dinner table, gifted from my mom's mom. It was a big rectangle that could slide apart for the extra leaf. We didn’t have a lot of visitors so the leaf pretty much stayed hidden behind the trundle bed that was also our couch.
My dad rolled around the kitchen entrance and yelled that we were all going to bed. My mouth was open but not with ice cream. It was that dumb face you make when faced with uncertainty. Like maybe I could taste the future. So I didn't get one single bite. Not one. Except for thinking about it all these years. I've eaten gallons of that stuff every time I smooth out the evening in a hundred different, more positive ways.
All the kids had to go to bed. My friend, my brother's friend, and my sister hurried away on my mom’s encouragement. Our room was the door on the other side of the cookstove. The kitchen was an architectural squid that branched to everything—to the east went directly outside and where we peed. To the north went the stairs up to the attic and where my parents slept. The south: the dining/living area where we'd sit on the trundle and lean into the TV to see whatever the aerial on the buck fence could gather of the Dukes of Hazzard. And to the west was our door. Five kids shot through it, careful not to trip over my sister's kid potty. It was going to get some use tonight.
Instead of a door we had these old accordion-like partitions. I can see them being unveiled in a 1930s World's Fair. By 1982, their function had faded. Twelve or so cardboard and vinyl slats that stood together through time, sideways stacking and unstacking with every open and close. They were splitting along the seams and really didn't do much for sound and light. You know those doors that slide open on Star Trek? These aren't them. But if you make a sound effect when you open their rickety cardboard construction, you'll get a similar feel.
My brother closed it as much as he could and we all scrambled to bedding. I remember one of the guests struggling to get in his sleeping bag. You know how that goes when you're trying too hard to do a thing like saving yourself by crawling into a giant sock?
James’ “Oh my god we're going to die Oh my god we're going to die” coupled with Paul’s breathing made for a ghoulish, off-broadway acapella.
My dad latched the door shut and went nuts. He was upset that the groceries had not been put away yet. My mom who, just hours before, had been admiring the heights of human progress in the grandeur of fighter jets streaking across the sky, would soon get to see produce in much the same way. Except maybe without new heights or any grandeur. My dad shouted over and over, "I'll put the fucking groceries away, Ann!" He sounded less angry than jubilant, like a terrifying clown.
Landing
He launched food from the dining room table into the kitchen. My mom cried and, at first, almost seemed to laugh while she told him to stop. He was howling as he commentated on eggs and milk and apples hitting the fridge and landing in the broken way that things that are unceremoniously tossed tend to do. And then things started rolling under the stupid Venetian door. Hello, milk. An otherwise average plastic jug getting one last shining moment under the kitchen light. Soaring unlike any cow could ever dream and splitting in two on a tired, old floor. Unamused, it simply directed the liquid under the counters and doors.
He yelled and yelled. James was hyperventilating. Actually, it was Paul. It was James locked into his conversation with God about dying. And I got the chance to be the man I wanted to be for fifteen minutes or so. I stepped outside my body and comforted the room. I remember stepping outside of the stepping outside. Like I'd walked out of the front door and then walked out of me. From that vantage point I looked down and wondered "Is this real?" In real life I kept saying “it was ok,” but I sounded so tiny.
There was this thing about the ice cream. My dad was really focused on that. I get it. We were very isolated and produce—even candied frozen cherries—is something to shout about. And he did. The fucking ice cream. I wasn’t sure what fucking meant so saw something like a caterpillar crawling towards the door before my dad could pick up the fucking thing and throw it. My mom pleaded for my dad to stop. The pleading of a young girl turned mom turned pioneer woman who could only sound more exhausted than scared. At some point in the night, it stopped. James’ pronouncements would fade. Paul’s breathing would retreat into sleep. My brother and I would fade away.
I wanted to get up and help my mom but I also kind of hated all adults. With the other kids, I wanted to keep it as natural as possible. "Go to sleep now. It's what we do. Good night!"
Paul's gasping like a white noise machine. I hear he’s a pretty good runner these days.
And, honestly, for the buildup to this story it really wasn't that bad. I guess, as far as the activity goes. Some yelling, screaming and throwing things. Although every time someone says "cherry on top" or any other cherry-related idiom, I think of that ice cream. It's so perfect in my dreams. Except the aftertaste. My dad passed out somewhere. My mom cleaning. Crying. Those angels grounded for the night.