A Vagabond Life: A Memoir of Father Hunger

By Michael Byron Smith

A Vagabond Life is a true story of a family lost. Told by Michael, the oldest son, it chronicles the challenges that arise from a lack of nurturing and a deep hunger for fatherly attention. His father is a man with demons, no paternal instinct, and no desire to improve. Michael, however, longs for the tender, intelligent father often exposed when demons allow it. His mother means well, but her youth and lack of education or marketable skills leaves her struggling to keep a roof over her family's heads. The births of six siblings over the course of nine years combine with ongoing evictions, neglect, and cyclical despair to form the backdrop for Michael's childhood and coming of age. With resilience, determination, and some glimmers of good fortune, Michael ultimately rises above his circumstances. Rich with both heartache and inspiration, A Vagabond Life digs deep to untangle the elements of his upbringing and make meaning of the factors impacting not only his life but those of his siblings and future generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888514924

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Childhood

Chapter 1: Innocence and Ignorance

Chapter 2: The Redhead and the Sailor

Chapter 3: A Summer of Bliss and the Beginning of Hireath

Chapter 4: My Father: the Poet, the Devil

Chapter 5: The Oregon Fail

Chapter 6: Back in Missouri

Chapter 7: Coming of Age

Chapter 8: Making Do

Chapter 9: Breaking the Bonds

Chapter 10: Transitions

Chapter 11: A New World Ahead

Chapter 12: So you think you can fly jets?

Chapter 13: Into the Blue, Out of the Blue

Epilogue

About the Author

cover.jpg

A Vagabond Life

A Memoir of Father Hunger

Michael Byron Smith

ISBN 979-8-88851-491-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88851-492-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Michael Byron Smith

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

To my loving wife, Kathy, who passed away just months before I finished writing this book. She truly was a force in my life, making me a better man and supporting me in all my struggles and efforts. Also to my childhood family, who had their own father hungers.

Preface

This memoir is for people not blessed with a nurturing father. This includes missing, lazy, uninterested, or callous fathers. Some of us with father hunger fail, others succeed, with all measures in between. But I contend none of us, even the successful, reach the potential we are born with. Without a male mentor, a child's struggle could be seen as making them stronger. While true in some respects, it is often a strength not in balance with the whole body. This is a story of one child's life experiences in what was a virtual vacuum, the experiences of a boy growing like an unattended weed.

While my first book, The Power of Dadhood, attempts to help fathers to be the best dads they can be through introspection, mentoring, and discussion, this memoir tells why I wrote it. Unlike that book, this memoir is not instructional; it is revealing. Like all memoirs, it is incomplete. The snippets that can be recalled are true. Having seen both sides—as a son and as a father myself—I hope to provide fathers the knowledge of the depth of their influence and the incentive to help their children with every intent and ability in their power. My mother is my hero, but mothers cannot do it all—as hard as they try.

Part 1

Childhood

Chapter 1

Innocence and Ignorance

One October evening in 1997, I found myself standing alone on the stern of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. On board as a civilian engineer, I was supporting the Navy's F/A-18 aircraft program, cruising the Pacific Ocean during sea trials for this remarkable fighter jet. It was the darkest of moonless nights, and before me were millions of stars, as bright and sparkling as diamonds thrown wildly on black velvet. I was mesmerized watching the stars kiss the sea, then dipping behind the waves, rhythmically reappearing as the huge ship rolled gently on the swells of the ocean. The scene alone was surreal but was soon to become a profound moment in my life.

The churning, bluish-silver wake of this aircraft carrier revealed we were making a slow starboard turn as I thought about Dad lying in a hospice hospital back home. What better place than the high seas to try to understand him in this, his environment? He had seen this exact humbling view countless times. I thought Dad had exaggerated when he told us he could see ten times as many stars over the ocean than could be seen above the dark Illinois cornfield where he'd taken his family when I was eight years old. There had to be a hundred times more stars.

An enlisted crewmember interrupted my reverie, asking if I was Mike Smith. He informed me I had a message in the radio room. I was alarmed because communication from the bridge for anyone at sea only occurs for emergencies. My mind was blank as I followed the sailor, not wanting to think awful things. When I arrived at the radio room, a radio operator handed me a phone as I mentally braced myself.

It was my wife, Kathy's voice. Mike, she said, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but your father passed away this evening. Before I could say anything, knots formed in my throat. Kathy continued, Your aunt Jane and I were with him. He died peacefully.

I broke down emotionally. I had just lost my father, a man I hated and loved. But it could have been my wife or one of my kids. Tears of both sadness and thankful relief rolled down my cheeks. Thanks for letting me know, hon…and thanks for being there with him, I said, swallowing my emotions as best I could. I'll get home as soon as I can. Tell the kids I love and miss them!

Dad died from cirrhosis of the liver, his lifestyle finally catching up to him. He was seventy-two years old, a tribute to his toughness given the harsh choices he imposed on himself. Maybe he was too afraid to die, too afraid of what could come next. Here I was, on a ship as he had been so much of his life, cruising the ocean just as he was dying. The irony of admiring the stars above the ocean, and thinking of Dad as he passed away, was not lost on me. Finally, we had connected. It was only that touch on my shoulder by the crewmember that woke me from thinking of him. The next day, I boarded a helicopter, leaving to attend to his affairs.

*****

Forty-six years prior, I was being spoiled as a baby by my mother, Charlotte, carrying me around on a soft pillow, not just dressing me but dressing me up as best she could. She was a proud young mother at the tender age of seventeen, wanting to prove herself capable of this great responsibility. Mom's dream as a little girl was to help people as a nurse, practicing her bedside manner on her dolls. Her gentle nature would have made her the perfect person to soothe the sick and healing. But nursing requires a bit more education—something she didn't consider when quitting school after the tenth grade. However, Charlotte was now the nurse she had dreamed of being. For a couple of years, I was her only patient. Curiously, unlike nursing, parenting does not require an education. Mom was learning on the fly and took her new role in life seriously.

While my mother doted, I'm not sure what my father thought of me in those first years of his fatherhood. Nine years her senior, he was not too interested in parenting, but Mom was up to the task while he could support the family financially. According to my mother, I was easy to care for being her only child. It wasn't unusual in the 1950s for mothers to do all the dirty, hands-on work of parenting.

Before fatherhood, Dad had lived his life as a vagabond, having left his boyhood home at the implausible age of eleven, never returning permanently. This act of defiance became a lifestyle of choice—a boy, then a man on the run, following his own schedule and not answering to anyone. Dad's story after running away is a mystery, only picking up after he became a US Merchant Mariner. Until marriage, his only adult home was at sea. Neither home life nor responsibility for others was an easy transition for him.

*****

My earliest vivid memory occurred as a four-year-old. It was a rare visit to the southeast Missouri farm of my maternal grandfather. My father was likely at sea, so Mom decided it was time for my brother, Steve, and me to get to know her father, our grandpa Clyde. Mom had dressed us for the occasion, but during the long car trip, Steve, a towheaded two-year-old, became disheveled while I remained buttoned up. It was a bright day of hard shadows with puffy white clouds floating by slowly, as if they were enjoying the view. Driving on a parched dirt road, Mom was raising a cloud of dust behind us, creating a dull coating on the nearest leaves of corn. When we topped a gentle hill, rolling fields of green stretched out farther than I could see.

As we approached his farmhouse, my grandfather and his second wife came out to greet us, our dust cloud acting as an early warning system. Both were virtual strangers to Steve and me. After a few hugs, Mom talked with my grandfather's new wife while she tucked Steve's shirt back into his shorts. Our grandfather then called for Steve and me to follow him to the barn area, where all sorts of contraptions caught my eye. There was an old-looking green tractor I hoped to climb on, with tires much taller than me, and rusty objects that looked like large circling combs, weeds growing among them. This was a curious place for Steve and me, city kids mostly.

A few chickens were randomly searching for anything interesting to eat in the dirt around the dull red barn, clucking and jerking their heads forward. My grandfather randomly grabbed one, taking it to the side of the barn as the chicken fought, trying to get away. Steve and I watched wide-eyed, wondering what he was doing. There, on top of a tree stump, the corner of a short-handled axe blade was buried ever so slightly, its handle pointing at about the two o'clock position.

What are you doing, Grandpa? I asked. That's what Mom told us to call him.

Well, this here chicken is going to be our dinner, he answered matter-of-factly. Steve and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, wondering what he meant.

He lay the chicken's neck on the stump, holding the chicken as it struggled. Wiggling the axe free from the stump, he raised it and then swung it down on the doomed hen. With that, the headless animal flew into a raging dance, running around wildly, feathers flying every which way. I stood motionless, my eyes bulging and my mouth wide open. I thought to myself in total shock and amazement, That chicken should be dead! How is it running around dead—without a head?

When the dance of the headless chicken was over, Clyde picked it up by the legs, blood dripping, and delivered it to his wife, who plopped it in a pot. I was prepared for none of this. It was unsettling to me—the blood, the unanticipated rampage of the headless chicken, the casual acceptance of the scene by my grandfather, and the assumption I would eat it later. Chickens are bought in stores, already deanimated in my little world. As we sat down to eat, I looked at the fried chicken leg before me. I could not eat something I saw running around frantically headless just hours before. I filled myself with mashed potatoes, gravy, and corn. We stayed the night, and I tried not to see the headless chicken as I closed my eyes to sleep. It was a few years before I saw my grandfather again. But I eventually returned to eating the delicious fried chicken Mom cooked after the chopping block trauma had subsided, but only the kind that comes wrapped up in a store—with no feathers.

*****

A few months later, Dad was back from sea duty. Waking one morning, I overheard my parents discussing their need for some item, something like milk, bread, soap, or cigarettes. The problem seemed to be the money to pay for it. I decided they needed my help. I don't know what possessed me, but I thought I could make appear what they needed by magic. Never had I given magic much thought. It came to me from nowhere.

Instinctively, I found a large towel or small blanket and lay it on the floor.

So, Mike, what are you doing? asked Mom.

Mom's soft voice was encouraging. Her flaming red hair, round cheeks, and soft hazel eyes were always comforting. She was as polite and gentle as a baby lamb, rarely showing anger, except sometimes when Dad was home.

Maybe I can use magic to help you, I responded seriously. And I need this blanket to do magic.

Oh! Mom said.

I smoothed the blanket out very flat with my small hands, then as I walked around it several times, I bowed and chanted over and over, Maaagic…maaagic…maaagic. My arms were stretched out, palms down, concentrating on this needed item in my head. I then instructed my parents to leave the room with me so the magic could work. Although I didn't see their reaction, I can imagine them snickering with smiling glances toward each other.

A youthful feat like this is no small miracle. I knew that. It would take a little patience before it could succeed. But when my parents weren't looking, or so I thought, I peeked in the room to see if the magic had worked, but, alas, the blanket was still flat, just as I had left it. Feeling somewhat discouraged, I exited the room to give it more time. Meanwhile, my father had left, unbeknownst to me, for one of the corner markets, which were common in the mid-1950s St. Louis neighborhoods. My magic had motivated my parents to bite the bullet and purchase, or more likely place on credit, the item they had been discussing. My father walked past me upon his return and asked for a status report on my magic trick. My lips winced, serving as my negative reply. While I was distracted, he quietly placed the desired purchase under the magician's blanket.

I desperately wanted this to work, trying to be patient, but the anticipation was killing me. Yet I knew I couldn't expect this extraordinary magic to work too quickly. Eventually I asked my parents if we should check to see if I had been successful. They said yes, so I ran to open the door. My eyes opened like the drapes on a world premiere, slowly, but dramatically, with saucer-size eyes. A bump in the middle of the blanket! I ran to it, yanked up the blanket, and grabbed the item, possibly some bread or milk that I had prayed for in my magical performance.

Look, Mom! Look, Dad! Here it is! I got it for you! I screamed.

You did it, Mike! Thank you so much! cried my mother as she clasped her hands together near her chest. My father just smiled.

I had never stood so erect—my chest pumped out, my shoulders back. The greatest achievement of my short life had just occurred. But while my parents had contributed to the joy of their little boy, they had also created a monster.

Mom, just let me know what you want next. Do you want a Coke? Do you think I could magic a Hostess CupCake for me?

Fortunately, my youthful view of life limited my magical powers, even in my imagination, to items you could pick up at the local confectionary. My mother convinced me to slow down, explaining that we couldn't take advantage of my magic. There may be only so much of it. For the next couple of days, my performance became less successful and only for smaller supernatural requests. Even small acts of power for humanity can't last forever. I found I had to wait longer and longer for my magic to work, and soon, there would be no more bumps in the middle of the blanket.

These moments of family interaction were not typical. With Dad being away months at a time, how could they? But even when he was home between voyages, and even when he had jobs locally, there were few moments like these. I never expected our family life to be what I saw on early television, kids kneeling on their sofa, dog barking, looking out the window, expecting their father to arrive from work, then having dinner together with Mom washing dishes and Dad drying them. That was a fantasy world, no different from The Lone Ranger or Gunsmoke episodes. Our dad would come home randomly when in town, sometimes after we were in bed, if he came home at all. Occasionally I heard shouting through the haziness of my sleep, then I rolled over with hopes it would all be over by morning.

Chapter 2

The Redhead and the Sailor

Do not complain about life's unfairness. It is never fair—at best it is impartial.

—David Gemmell, Lion of Macedon

My mother was born to Clyde and Capitola Pearl Elfrank (her legal name was Pearl Capitola, disliking the name Pearl) in 1932 during the Great Depression. She was a freckle-faced little girl, her red hair always the topic people commented on. Short in stature and a little chubby as a child, Charlotte was the firstborn of three children—two girls and a boy raised in the tiny southeast Missouri town of Perkins, just north of an area that protrudes into northeast Arkansas known as the Bootheel. In 1907, over one million acres of swampland were drained in the area, creating some of the most fertile farmland in the world. The cost of an acre of land multiplied three hundred times the previous price. Cotton agriculture boomed in that area during the 1920s. As the local economy and population expanded, the daily lives and fortunes of farmers, farmworkers, cotton ginners, day laborers, and many others became tied to the annual cotton crop. Charlotte was of that world, recalling dirt roads that were dusty in the hot summers and muddy in the spring. Horse-pulled wagons full of cotton bales were as familiar as trucks and more reliable when the mud was as deep as a tall boot.

Charlotte's family lived in a humble home on a small farm, raising pigs and a few crops. My grandfather Clyde, a strict, Bible-toting farmer, carried the gene that gave Charlotte her signature ginger look. He was stocky, with short reddish hair atop a square face. Denim overalls were his standard wardrobe by necessity and choice. Raised in a large rural family, Clyde had four brothers and five sisters rhythmically named Dora, Flora, Lora, Cora, and Kathleen (wasn't Nora still available?). Although all farmed in the area, rarely as adults did Clyde's parents and siblings get together, except annually for the week put aside to butcher hogs.

Charlotte's mother, Pearl Capitola Willett, went by the nickname Cappie. She was named after her mother, who died tragically of heart failure eight days after the younger one's birth. Cappie's father, Claude Willett, blamed his wife's death on his daughter's delivery and paid little attention to her as a child. He had been married twice before and had many other children he could show affection to. Because her father wasn't interested in raising her, Cappie lived with another family until she was five years old. Later, she lived with an uncle, earning her keep as a nanny for her cousins, never knowing a real childhood.

Claude Willett owned the general store in Perkins, serving the surrounding countryside. It was a typical 1940s country store. Customers were greeted by a wooden porch where a small red cooler stocked with six-ounce bottles of Coca-Cola enticed customers. Raising the lid of the cooler, you would have to thrust your hand into the ice-cold water for the coldest, most submerged bottle of Coke, causing your hand to cramp if you searched too long. A flange of red metal housed the bottle opener, allowing room to catch the metal caps. Customers would go inside to pay my great-grandfather a nickel, the price it had been for more than fifty years. For Charlotte, few pleasures matched a chilled six-ounce Coke, wet from the iced water that kept it cool on a hot summer's day. When unoccupied, she would sit on seats made of tree stumps on the store's porch. The only male relative that showed genuine kindness was her mother's brother, Uncle Bob Willet. He would occasionally give Charlotte a nickel for that special treat. Sadly, her grandfather would accept her nickel, and she expected