Reflections on a Father and His Son: A Memoir of my Early Life Ages Five through Eighteen

By James Howard

Reflections on a Father and a Son is a journey that at times is gut wrenching while at other moments pause worthy. As a five year old enduring painful spinal taps in a Polio Ward to an adolescent experimenting with epic classroom disruptions, this collection of deeds maligned by misdeeds appears to have only one possible outcome: reform school.

Readers witness how growing up in the 1950s and 60s was negotiated in small towns with even smaller margins of supervision. Travel along route 9 from Stottville to Rouses Point, a micro village tucked away innocently in the northeast corner of the Lake Champlain Valley basin of New York State.

The early years in the Hudson Valley involve tales of exploration, cruelty, and friendship. After moving just south of the Canadian border, the adventures take on a downward spiral. Crawl through collapsed tunnels in a 19th century deserted fort, rummage the contents of railroad cars for cigarettes or discover how to survive multiple school suspensions.

The odyssey intensifies as consistent threads weave through a contentious relationship between father and son. Their bond is buttressed by an ever increasing repertoire of senseless acts bent on destroying all possibilities of post-high school success. Save for one prescient and observant English teacher, a fruitful future would have been squandered. Participate in the transformation of a non-compliant teenager to a tremulous college applicant; the result of one teacher believing in one outlier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889825104

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Reflections on a Father and His Son

A Memoir of my Early Life Ages Five through Eighteen

James Howard Jr.

Copyright © 2023 James Howard Jr.

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88982-509-8 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-510-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

My sincere gratitude to my wife, Tracey Howard, for her encouragement and trust that my stories are stories that should be shared. She is my rock and most authentic critic. The book would be blank without her faith in my writing journey.

I convey immense gratitude to my children Amanda, Jesse, Kristen, David, and Kealy and their spouses Mark, Marci, Kristen, and Garrett. Should life present a continuum of opportunities for more stories, they will be the stars.

This compilation started as an effort to involve my two oldest grandchildren in the joys of reading. Since then, six other grandchildren have come to hopefully profit from my earlier mission.

Hats off to the entire Champlain Central School class of 1963 for gifting me the fodder for much of this book. I also offer my apologies to this same august group for foisting my atrocious behavior on such unwilling participants.

To my dear friend, Jerry McGovern, who complemented my wife's sagacity and told me to get busy and write.

And finally, an homage to the memory of Mr. Charles Niles who, with his insistent nudges and course corrections, opened an avenue to a blinding ray of inspiration and courage in a boy who at one point had only hoped to make others laugh.

We all impose some coherence—some meaning—on the chaotic events of our existence. We rummage through the raw images of our memories, selecting, burnishing, erasing.

—The Wager, David Grann

We walk through many doors in our lifetime. It is the accumulation of these seemingly minor passages that shape our lives. Most often, it is years after we pass over a threshold before we realize the significance of the moment.

—The Essay, by Robin Yokum

Preface

No memory, categorized as photographic, can be 100 percent perfect 100 percent of the time, at least that is the caveat for the events I have shared here. Cascading events may distort a distinct memory much the way a river changes its course of travel over time. I am no exception to that hastily constructed paradigm. Thus, I offer in good faith the assertion that all stories shared within are written carefully, honestly, and precisely as I remember them. Any deviation to how someone else may remember them is purely within the rights of the reader. I have attempted to not exaggerate or minimize the impact of these stories, my only intent being to recall, report, and entertain events I cannot seem to forget.

Part I

Soda Fountains, Hula-Hoops, and the Slinky

Chapter 1

All Fun and Games Until It Is Not

Stephen King's book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft suggests any good story writer writes for himself, not an audience. My story attempts to relate events I can recount eidetically in spite of them occurring between the ages of five and eighteen. My wife, a staunch critic as well as terrific motivator, suggested my story be knitted together via a vein of something significant. I agreed, yet during the initial stages of this endeavor that unifying piece remained secreted within my fingertips. Ironically, it was the powerfully cogent refrain in a song that quickly became a welcomed earworm, which led me to the solution. Mike and the Mechanics tribute, In the Living Years.

I first heard the song while on a plane headed west. It gyrated its way into my head and pierced my heart; it could not be unheard. Each successive part of the song's journey paralleled my sophomoric lack of insight and understanding.

I know that I'm a prisoner

To all my father held so dear…

It was while rereading a draft of my first five or six stories that the murky became lucid. It was my father, my dad, the unlikely yet inevitable link between every story. As the story collection began to grow, the link between my father and me grew as well.

You just can't get agreement

In this present tense…

I had always imagined my relationship with my father to be primarily contentious and clipped. During the years prior to my leaving for college, there was an endless list of boring chores that seemed to run counter to what my buddies were asking me to do. Baseball vs. garden weeding. Bike riding vs. paint scraping. Fort exploration vs. burying leaves. Many of the stories you are about to read will hopefully prompt you to stop and conclude, James Howard Sr. was a very smart man by keeping a short lease on James Howard Jr.

So we open up a quarrel

Between the present and the past…

The year 1976 was a pivotal year. I was thirty-one years old and the father of a beautiful baby girl—beautiful in every way. My first honest woodworking endeavor had been to build a rounded top cradle to nestle and keep her safe at night. The fact she would learn to toss her head from side to side making adult sleep nearly impossible did not detract from her perfection. In that same year, I learned my parents had sold their Rouses Point home, cashed in all worldly goods, and were moving south! To assume the reins of a forlorn looking KOA campground! In the desert country of west Texas! There was no need to ask why as my father had been extremely unhappy at Ayerst; at nearly fifty years old, it was time to live life better. The moving van departed on a cold rainy spring day; the inescapable irony clearly apparent as their possessions were packed neatly in fiber drums labeled Ayerst Laboratories.

Not long after arriving at their new address in San Angelo, Texas, my mom called with tears in her voice.

Jimmy, I'm afraid your dad bit off more than he can handle.

I asked her what she meant by that as I had never seen my father buckle to a challenge whether it be painting an entire house or putting chains on our car tires while idling on the side of a busy highway.

We, maybe just me I am not sure at this point, never imagined there would be so much work to do. The power line to the water tank is down, we have no picnic tables, our house is now a trailer, and your father refuses to stop and rest. And the weather is too darn hot to not rest once in a while. Do you think maybe you could come and help for a few days?

I couldn't visualize anything quite that dire, and how hot was hot anyway?

Calm down, Mom. When have you ever seen Dad not be able to do anything he wants to do? Besides, Amanda is just a baby. That would be quite the journey.

I'm sorry, she said, but it is just so overwhelming, and the previous owners have left this place a mess. The camp store is almost empty and half of the electric hookups are broken. I wouldn't ask you if I thought there was any way we could manage alone. I feel so helpless.

We will work it out, Mom, I told her and hoped I wasn't too optimistic for the circumstances at hand.

First, I had to convince my then wife the journey was necessary and the baby would love the lull of a car traveling hour after hour over bumpy roads. I recall feeling mystified by my mother's assertion that Dad was overwhelmed. Just seemed so out of character.

We packed under some dark clouds. I resigned from the part-time summer job I had not yet started, and we drove to San Angelo, Texas, in our orange Volvo 240 with no air-conditioning and little excess storage.

Amanda was cradled in a plastic countertop cozy chair, a sturdy seat belt hopefully holding the thin metal legs secure to the rear seat below. At nearly two thousand miles and a new baby not enjoying the stifling heat one bit, it was a long tiresome journey. Upon arriving, it was painfully obvious why my mom had issued an SOS.

The word campground should elicit images of tents, smoke roiling from barbecue grills, and little kids kicking at soccer balls. What we saw was chaos. There were no tents. This was strictly an RV campground. Scattered about a flat sandy expanse were stubby utility poles looking all the world like a deserted drive in movie theater. The only evidence of trees, hence shade, lay behind the iconically shaped KOA main office and camp store. My parents' new home was a forlorn-looking trailer, slouching sadly next to a water tank. The tank was large and loomed over their trailer, casting the only immediate shade to be found on the grounds. After some meandering, I found my dad leaning over a shovel, watching a large excavator preparing the ground for a swimming pool. It was the only evidence of progress I could see.

Hi, son, how was the trip?

My dad never used more words than he thought were necessary to make the point.

It was long and pretty hot. The next car I buy will hopefully have air-conditioning as opening the windows only made the wind in our faces seem worse.

Dad nodded and then turned his attention to the shirtless men working in the hole with only shovels and rakes. The brilliant sun had erased all thoughts of cloud cover and appeared bent on blistering their reddening backs.

Mom said there was a ton of work to be done before the summer campers arrived. Why a swimming pool now? I asked with a certain degree of reticence. It wasn't usually a good idea to challenge my dad's assessment of a situation.

The KOA folks up in Billings told us it's a pool that draws people to stay over more than one night. Guess we'll find out. This darn hole is costing us a big chunk of our emergency money, and your mom is not happy about it.

I couldn't blame her for that opinion. My first reaction to my hasty look-about was I believed my father had lost his marbles.

Mom was excited to see family and wrapped baby Amanda in trembling arms. She had already begun to sport what I would call a Texas tan, dark-brown neck and nose, and looked both happy and relieved at the same time. She whisked us through a campground tour that included the sparsely stocked camp store and the trailer she now called home. It appeared she was going to love this new gambit as much as my dad or because my dad needed her to love his dream. Continuing with our theme of no air-conditioning, their new abode used something called a swamp cooler to stave off the oppressive heat. Cooling was accomplished by coating your skin with a thin layer of water that theoretically evaporated leaving a cooler than cool face but a soaking wet T-shirt.

As a young teacher, I was still working on my masters. Prior to the end of summer, I would be back in the classroom at SUNY Plattsburgh; there was no extra time to be wasted admiring the flat desert terrain.

My dad agreed with that decision, and we sat in the shade of the looming water tank and composed an unwritten list.

First, we need to make some appropriate seating under those mesquite trees. I ordered enough wood for about twenty picnic tables. Can you start there?

I nodded but with some trepidation. He must have sensed my concern and offered a partial solution.

Behind the men's shower room you'll find a couple of templates I made for the two ends. The rest is straightforward construction. But I'll warn you, that cutoff saw will give you some nasty kickbacks in that pressure treated lumber. Be careful.

Turns out he was not wrong about that. In the past, the only building I had ever tackled was with my dad as the supervisor. Now I was being trusted to use a power saw, his new electric drill, and a shiny set of socket wrenches, all by myself. Later that day, as predicted, an angle cut into a pressure treated two-by-six threw that saw up, out, and toward the brass buttoned fly of my Levi's. Slow down, tiger.

One positive note. It rarely rained in west Texas, so there wasn't much worry about leaving his tools unstowed.

Later that day, my dad walked over to observe my progress, or lack thereof, as building a bench by oneself required some creative jigs.

When you want a break from that project, I could use your help in mowing this back area. Hit beneath the trees but be careful of the trunks. They are the only trees we have, the only shade that isn't going to cost me money.

Evidently, even West Texas can grow grass or the facsimile of something green and upright poking out of the sun-baked soil. (Note: one of my least favorite memories of that summer lie in the seat of that mower. Determined to gather a quick Texas tan, I took off my shirt and started the riding mower. Moving forward under the first large Mesquite tree in my path, I bent forward beneath the flowing branches and spindly leaves. As a lifelong resident of northern New York, I did not know nature had armed the Mesquite tree with ridiculously long and hypodermic sharp needles. The swath of pain across my back elicited two responses: embarrassment over my ignorance and the now wearing of my dad's protective slicker. However, once scratched never rescratched.)

My dad was somehow different from the dad I grew up with in Rouses Point. I began to look forward to the lightness of our quotidian routines. We talked more, we shared more, and we began to laugh together. He had an indomitable spirit and did not appear to be overwhelmed by the many tasks that lay before him. Once started, we rarely stopped.

We built all twenty picnic tables, replumbed the bathroom showers, and replaced an underground cable the entire length of its span from the Concho River to a holding tank above the campground. We strengthened and rewired every utility access port, altogether a whopping fifty-two campsites. We worked hard and accomplished more than one should expect under cloudless skies. The summer wore on.

Surprisingly, and early in the process, my dad suggested we take shelter in the house during the hottest part of the day. My mom's recommendation must have hit home. I eschewed that idea and kept right on working…for about two days. Then I too relented and licked my wounds, both a nasty sunburn and the scabs from my losing battle with the Mesquite guardian of the Back 40.

We spent most evenings realigning and reprioritizing tomorrow's to-do list. Amanda had become somewhat acclimatized to the heat and was a wonderful source of ready smiles and baby sounds. She even loved joining us at dusk to watch the entire surface of the campground appear to undulate as thousands of underground residents, tarantulas, emerged from their dens and foraged for food.

Toward the end of summer, uncharacteristically my dad began to rely on me more and more; even simple tasks were shuttled in my direction. At first, I was excited with this newfound trust my dad had seemingly snatched from the ether. Then he began to complain of not feeling quite right, consuming quantities of Tums to quell the acid burning in his throat. He lost weight and eventually handed me the keys to his truck; he loved that truck. After all these years wanting the family keys, I now wished his hand had been empty.

We left near the end of August with promises he would see a doctor as soon as the train of RVs began to wane. They were beginning to see a positive cash flow and new campers promised to return to the much improved and friendlier Concho Valley KOA.

I'm sure I heard his echo

In my baby's newborn tears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years…

In February of the following year, my mom called, her voice unsteady.

Jimmy, I'm afraid your father and I have some very bad news.

After a teary goodbye, I stormed into the shed behind our rented house and slammed the door as hard as I could. I came out with my softball bat in hand and trashed a poor young tree growing peacefully near the back fence. I hit it hard and then harder until I could no longer lift my arms. Life seemed so damn unfair.

A month later, I flew yet again to San Angelo, Texas, to help my mom get Dad's life in order. I was honored to carry his frail essence to the bathroom when needed and horrified I had not taken the time to say all the things that needed to be said. I was about to lose my thirty-one-year battle with the forces of push and pull. I had been too stubborn to see that which was now so clear it burned without salve.

My dad passed away of esophageal cancer on March 21 of 1977. He left so much behind, nothing more precious than his unspoken love for family. While I could have been a better son, I could not have asked for a better dad. Mysteriously, all the things he was as a father, which used to frustrate me to the moon and back, I have embraced today.

Post-thoughts

Should honesty prevail, I have never fully been able to reconcile my early life with what I should or could have had with my father. Maybe that is how it is with every child who experiences the early loss of a parent. We harbor regrets, should-haves, wishes. I have obviously met many people who