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| The Hateful Yazoo Racer from 1961 |
There is a landscape that so often
fails to measure up to the expectations that rise from the pure hearts of
children. I learned from my parents that it is possible to spend one’s whole
existence in a backwater, safe from the currents of change and the eddies of
whim and never fear for the unknown results of unintended consequences. Heaven
forbid that the river of life might send them swirling, not quite in control,
headlong toward their destiny. My parents studiously avoided that journey. I
watched them retreat from the rushing waters of new experiences as if they were
afraid that the river, by some mischievous calling, would overflow its banks,
sweep them up, and transport them to…to…where?
They lied to each other about their dreams for themselves and for their
marriage.
They lied by not talking plainly of their plans and concerns. They
didn’t talk of them at all. In their unwittingly complicit silence, they
avoided the possibility of being caught in a rising tide of unattainable goals,
choosing to believe that they would just be disappointed when the waters
receded and left them on the banks of a distant and untried life. Their lies
were sandbags of denied hopes, piled up to keep the river at bay, and to divert
it from the doorstep of their failed aspirations. And they lied to me whenever
my dreams exceeded their expectations. How many lectures about setting
attainable goals did I endure; how many times were my youthful fantasies slowly
submerged in the stagnant pool of my parents’ status quo? Enough times to
convince me that lying to avoid jumping into the mainstream of life was the
only form of protection against the pain of taking the plunge. What I didn’t
know then is that the plunge is painless; it is the anticipation of the plunge
that stirs up the fear.
But my folks never got past that part – for them,
taking a chance that life might be better than what the military offered, that
life outside the gates of every base we ever lived on might not be nearly as
secure, was too much to contemplate, and way too much to act on. “Keep your
expectations to a minimum and you will never be disappointed,” was their
mantra. What that meant for me was having to suppress my disappointment rather
than upset their theory. Kids do that for their parents; we hate to hear that
awful phrase, “I’m disappointed in you.”
But when I was boy, I couldn’t keep my
expectations to a minimum, hard as I tried – I was filled with all the boyish
visions of new worlds to conquer, great adventures to be had, lofty spires to
climb and from whose pinnacles I could soar to the edge of the universe. No
idea was too big not to be considered, no dream too unlikely not to be dreamed.
“Ad astra per aspera,” would have been my mantra if I’d known the phase then –
“To the stars through difficulties.” But
I grew up with a mother and a father who had stopped dreaming for themselves,
for each other, and for me. It made no difference to them how I expressed my
hopes; they were bound and determined to fall short of my expectations. I
suppose many kids rebel against such parental denial.
My own children are quick
to let me know when they are upset with me or with their mother when we have
not hit the mark they had hoped we would. Their expectations for us are high,
but not unreasonable, and they know that we will take their observations in
stride. Their expectations for themselves are coming along fine. But that was
not how it was with my folks. They never seemed to understand how important
dreams are to a young boy. They couldn’t imagine that not only was I dreaming
of jumping feet first into life’s tumbling surf, I also was dreaming that one
day they would too. It was unlikely, to their way of thinking, that I might
have expectations for them.
When I was three or four, my father
literally dropped me headfirst into our swimming pool, figuring, I guess, that
I’d swim. Holding me by my ankles, he said he wouldn’t drop me until I was ready,
but when I showed some reluctance to tell him to let go, he let go anyway. Did
he lie to me? I suppose. But I did swim. I met his expectation. To explain
this, here is the story about the Yazoo Racer and how it came to symbolize the
futility of all of my youthful expectations.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
go-carts were a must-have item for pre-teen and pre-drivers’ licensed teen
boys. I cannot begin to recall the times I mooned over a magazine featuring the
hot new go-carts burning up the tracks in places like Covina and Pasadena California Ohio , California
was perceived as a dreamland, and anything that happened or just existed there
automatically attached to our mid-American dreams. I relied on the savvy of my
dad – a former fighter pilot, and, in 1961, a base commander in the Strategic
Air Command – to intuitively understand my longing, to appreciate as only a guy
can how important a go-cart really was and what its potential was to forge a
new direction in my life.
Now wouldn’t you think that a man who had risked life
and limb over Germany, facing an onslaught of Messerschmitts, splitting the
skies at 400 miles per hour in the God-Chariot that was known as the P-51
Mustang, ratatattatting at German flak trains, and blowing up factories
and bridges would have at least an iota of interest in zooming across the face
of the earth in a really bitchin’ little cart? Me too.
Apparently, though, the zest for speed
and the devil-may-care lifestyle of a West Coast Karter, resided in a different
father – the one down the street who had, in fact, ponied up sufficient bucks
to make his son’s California
dreamin’ a reality. That son’s go-cart was delivered, (get this) on a flat-bed
truck, and was rolled down a ramp in front of all the neighbors and half the
kids in town. It was a GoKart model 800 made by the GoKart Manufacturing
Company, with a 250cc Villiers Mark 33A English motorcycle engine putting out
about 25 horsepower on pure alcohol). This was the very same model of the carts
which were competing in the National Championships in Rockford , Illinois Wilmington , Ohio
Failing to ignite my father’s inner
Indy-500 heart with sparks of testosterone, I ratcheted up my hint campaign as
subtly as I could. I deposited clue-like articles about go-carts throughout the
house (how subtle could The Karter Magazine be, draped over the
hamper in the bathroom, page open to the pictures captioned, “Karts for all
Pocketbooks,” eh?). It was not to be.
I also slipped my copy of the Evans
Supply Company’s May, 1961 Kompetition Kart Catalog, in among my
parents’ Time, Life, and National Geographic magazines,
with a page turned to the absolute ultimate in karting, the Evans Special.
Evans, an Illinois
company, tricked out the Evans Special with armrests, rack and pinion steering
(whatever the hell that was; at the time we pitched those phrases around with
no real clues), and a bay behind the driver’s seat for an engine of mythic
proportions. The Evans motto, “Track Tested, Trophy Proved,” carried a lot of
weight, and when they said their karts were “the finest, fastest, best-handling
karts ever built,” they had bankable bragging rights.
While the visual campaign was doing its
subliminal thing, I backed it up by commenting in almost reverent tones on the
latest trends in cart construction or cart powerplants (“Can you believe that
some go-carts have jet engines on them?” I’d ask with feigned incredulity. My
parents would respond with somewhat less impressive credulity, “Oh, really?” or
“Imagine that.” The worst was when they combined the two phrases, “Oh, really,
imagine that,” with no question mark whatsoever in their inflection.) I was
getting nowhere, and I was getting there as fast as the go-cart down the street
was hurtling my neighbor around the local carting track.
As much as I am noted for my lack of
memory, I am even more famous for my sheer persistence and ability to hold out
for what I want. Whining is not my forte; wearing down the opposition, laying
siege to the gates, starving out the warriors behind the walls, sending flaming
pleas for surrender into the highest ramparts – now that’s where I shine.
My campaign for a go-cart began in the
fall of 1960, with a target of May, 1961. I was willing to let the cart slide
off my Christmas list if taking my time and plotting a successful assault on my
folk’s bank account would yield the desired results. This is as good an opportunity as any to talk
about Christmas let-downs since I have come to realize that the seeds of the Yazoo fiasco were sown several Christmases prior to the
1960 holiday. I just failed to connect
the dots of disappointment until later.
I have a theory about parents and gift
selections. The level of detail with which a child describes a desired present
is in inverse proportion to the actual characteristics of the gift that is laid
under the tree on Christmas Eve. It
doesn’t matter if you tape a picture of the exact item you seek to the
refrigerator door, or place it at eye level on the mirror in the bathroom or
actually, coherently – when prompted by the parent in question – describe the
desired item in terms that include product name, manufacturer, color, cost,
store from which it can be purchased, and how many batteries (and what size) it
will need before it can be successfully operated. What the parent apparently hears is only a
dull humming noise emanating from their child’s flapping lips. They translate
this noise into instructions to buy a gift that resembles the child’s version
only insomuch as it is a present to be opened. For proof, I beg your indulgence
while I digress and offer the story of the machine gun that wasn’t.
We were still living in Germany , on an
Army and Air Force base that was overflowing with soldiers with guns. Tanks
abounded, as did large artillery pieces and very exotic airplanes that sported
bombs and guns of many sizes. Playing war was a common…even daily…routine among
the male dependents of the military personnel assigned to Wiesbaden . I would join up with half a dozen
other kids, and we would spend hours in combat, pitching ourselves down ravines
and over stone walls reprising those fierce World War II battles our fathers
had only recently survived. Verisimilitude was important to us; shooting at one
another, or at the imagined Nazi’s hiding amongst the trees, required
believable weaponry. You can understand this, I’m sure, with very little
explanation. So why is this a difficult concept for a parent to grasp?
“Chris, have you given any thought to
your Christmas present?”
My mother asked me this question about
three weeks before the holiday. Up to that moment, I think I’d mentioned at
least a gazillion times my desire to own a full-sized model of a Thompson M1A1
– a submachine gun with a working action and a very loud ‘brrrrrrrmmmppppppp, brrrrrrrmmpppppp,
brrrrrrmmmppppppp’ whenever the trigger was squeezed. I’d seen such an animal
in the post exchange catalogue and I was pretty sure I’d shared details of the
Thompson look-a-like with my folks well beyond the point of distraction.
“I’ve been looking at that real-action
M1A1 at the PX. It sure would be fun to have that.”
“And what is an M1…whatever?”
“It’s a machine gun. A model of one.”
I watched her face, waiting for some
sign of recognition. Nothing.
“Actually, it’s in the catalogue, but
maybe if you ordered it now it might be delivered before Christmas…if you think
you might do that.”
Still nothing…no…no…wait, she seemed to
be mulling it over. She turned away and walked over to the pantry, opened it,
looked for something, then turned back to me, having put some distance between
us. I can still see her grey-blue eyes sizing me up from her side of the
kitchen.
Then the most dreaded words.
“We’ll think about it.”
That was the kiss of death for the
Thompson as far as I was concerned. “We’ll think about it” was tantamount to
“Either think of something more appropriate or consider this a wasted wish.”
The next three weeks crawled by. I
offered up a few lame ideas – plastic model planes, a magic set, a chemistry
set – but nothing that eclipsed the M1A1 in real desire.
On the days leading up to Christmas
Eve, presents piled up beneath the tree, but there certainly was no package as
long as the Thompson should have been. I
picked up each wrapped box and gave it the heft and shake test. No sign of a
machine gun. I thought I discerned a
chemistry set…a weighty box that had a metallic rattle when tipped or gently
rocked. A couple of boxes certainly felt like plastic models. But the Thompson
was just not showing itself.
On Christmas morning the chemistry set
turned out to be a make-it-yourself crystal radio kit. A good present, sure,
and one that I would later come to enjoy more than almost any present I’ve
gotten since; it just wasn’t going to go ‘brrrrrrrmmmppppppp’ like the M1A1
would have. As the pile of boxes diminished and the pile of discarded wrapping
paper increased, I resigned myself to another year without a really good prop
for war games.
I sat a bit disconsolately among the
remains of the morning, fiddling with the contents of the crystal radio kit,
itching under the newness of a gaudy and fuzzy sweater sent by my paternal
grandmother. My dad was experimenting with a pipe and its accessories, trying
to tamp a small load of tobacco into the bowl with a silver tamping tool. The
gift was from my mother’s father, the Hollywood producer who would always refer
to my father as “the General.” As Pop
worked the tobacco into his new pipe, he looked over at me. I must have presented a pretty sad figure
there, a skinny 9-year-old with a burr haircut and crooked teeth, uncomfortable
in my new sweater, uncertainly poking at the radio parts. My father got up and
left the room for a moment, and I heard the front hall closet snick open and
click shut. There was a brief rustle of paper, then he came back into the room
carrying an oblong box which was maybe 18 inches long, six inches wide, and a
few inches deep.
“Heard you might be able to use this,”
he said, handing the box to me. He had that dad smile on his face – not a full
out, open-mouthed smile, but a gently-pursed-lip, wry sort of affair that I
later learned transmitted bemusement more than tenderness. I inherited my
father’s smile gene, and I know I’ve been guilty of casting equally ambiguous
grins. That smile has often been the
trigger for heated arguments between me and my wife when she has sensed, quite
rightly, that when I employ this particular smile over some comment or event, I
actually am facially exploring the margins of dismissal or derision. My only defense, albeit a weak one, is that for
too many years I watched, and tried to copy, the face of a master of benign
deception. Little did I know that what I was attempting to emulate was not
derisive; it was protective. My father was, after all, engaged in spy craft for
the government. I didn’t know that at the time of this story – and I didn’t
learn of the broad scope of his work in military intelligence until many, many
years later. In retrospect, his enigmatic smile was a cover for much more than
just a father’s love.
I took the proffered box from my father
and felt its weight – or more accurately, its lightness – and knew right away
it was not the Thompson. What to say?
“Hey, thanks, Pop!”
“Hope you like it, old buddy.”
Now, that phrase, ‘old buddy’ should
have been a dead giveaway that my father, in a genuine attempt at tenderness,
really believed that what was in the box would be welcome. ‘Old buddy’ evoked a
collegiality that transcended the father-son relationship. It had a whisper of
conspiracy to it that was a little thrilling, hearing it from my dad, whose
day-to-day activities, I would learn much, much later in life, were centered
around life-and-death, cat-and-mouse games with the Soviet Union.
I peeled off the wrapping paper, hoping
against hope that whatever was inside was so completely different from my other
expectation that I would not risk showing any dissatisfaction with the present.
Under the colored paper was only a brown box – no picture to warn me, no bold
lettering screaming out that this was, indeed, not a nearly perfect replica of
the Thompson M1A1 submachine gun with a 30-round clip.
With nothing else to do, I pried open
the box. And there it was. A machine gun. Resting on a cushion of crumpled
paper. It was fashioned out of brown, injection molded plastic, in the style of
another popular machine gun, the M3 Grease Gun. The key phrase here is “in the
style of” since the plastic gun I was looking at bore only a general
resemblance to a real Grease Gun. It was
little more than a hollow shell, about half the size of the real thing, and
with almost no moving parts. Well…there were the pink bullets. A small clip
held ten little lozenge-shaped bullets, molded in bright pink. The bullets were
shot out of the gun by the spring action of the trigger; they didn’t go very
far and, in any event, and, pink or not, they’d be lost immediately in the
woods and fields that were our areas of combat operations. A pull-back bolt on
the right side of the gun also activated when the trigger was pulled, resulting
in an abrupt raspy, ratcheting noise, far removed from the “brrrrrrrmmmppppppp”
of the Thompson’s real-action bolt. But,
really, for a nine-year-old boy, it was the bright pink bullets which made this
well-intentioned gift a virtual untouchable as a weapon in my adolescent
arsenal.
“Your mother said this was on your wish
list.”
Pop sat down in his arm chair and
leaned over to look at the gun. I was still sitting on the floor next to him
and I watched his eyes scan the present.
I had the distinct feeling that he was seeing the gun for the first
time, and I don’t think he had given it much thought up to this moment.
“Umm….well, I was looking at the one
down at the PX, and I told Mom about that.”
I was on dangerous ground here; I
didn’t want to hurt my dad’s feelings and I didn’t want to discredit my mom by
suggesting that she didn’t get my hint.
“Will it do?”
An easy and a tough question. The easy
answer would be a lie: “Sure, it’s great.” The hard answer would be the truth:
“It’s not really what I had in mind, Pop. Pink bullets and all, it’s not the
one I told Mom about.”
In my family, the lie was a common
device to circumvent confrontation; the truth, whenever it was employed,
inevitably led to arguments or, worse, long nights of silence between my mom
and dad, followed by dawns of false civility. Lies, as morally corrupt as they
were, provided a seamless, albeit a thin weave to daily life. I learned early to swallow the truth and spit
out the lie.
“Oh, it’s neat, Pop. Thanks.” I put the bastard toy back in its box and
picked up the crystal radio kit. “Do you think we can start on this today?”
With that, the matter of the improper
gun was dismissed and I was left with the embarrassing task of actually taking
it out for my friends to see and, predictably, to ridicule. For the moment, I was
struck, not for the first time, with the reality that my parents were inured to
my desires; their interpretations of what I wanted, of what was best for me,
despite every indication to the contrary, would dominate their gift-giving
opportunities well into the future. For
a nine-year-old, it couldn’t get any worse than the brown machine gun with the
bright pink bullets. But it could get worse for a 12-year-old who longed for a
go-cart.
By sunrise on May 5, 1961, in
Wilmington, Ohio, I’d already been up for hours, following the exploits of Alan
Shepard, America’s first astronaut, and wondering if this would be the day I’d
get a go-cart of my own; nothing on a scale of the Corvettes all the astronauts
were driving, but something at least as wonderful as the go-cart down the
street. How I wanted to drive past that kid’s house in my own speedster
To be both brief and kind, Wilmington was a
backwater. Not the kind of fetid, dank,
brackish backwater so popular in novels today – backwaters from which noble
characters emerge to overcome the clutches of mediocrity and succeed against
the odds of obscurity. No. Wilmington ,
the county seat of Clinton
County
Shortly after we arrived in Wilmington,
in the fall of 1959, I was encouraged by my parents to take up a paper route, a
time-honored job for many boys in small-town America as a way of instilling in
us the discipline of responsible work, the appreciation of personal income, and
the ability to balance an overloaded bike while being chased by angry dogs or
sideswiped by neglectful drivers. Every morning, I delivered forty copies of
the Cincinnati Times to various houses in Wilmington .
One house was noteworthy for the charms of the woman who often waited
for her paper on her front porch. She wore a white terrycloth robe that was
rarely tightly tied, offering a bit more than a glimpse of legs and
cleavage. She always managed to bend
down facing me when she retrieved her paper from the walk or, if my aim had
been good, from the porch itself. I
can’t recall whether her exposure excited me or embarrassed me, but I didn’t
race home to tell my folks about it.
Suffice it to say that the lady in the doorway in Wilmington , wanton as she may have appeared
to be, was not even in the running for a tawdry tiara. Nonetheless, on collection day,
she would stand behind her screen door, either in the same robe or in a slip,
with a drink in her hand, and apologize in a most breathy way for being unable
to pay me.
I also loaded a newspaper machine in
the front lobby of the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company located about two
miles outside town. The paper sold for a dime, and I think my monthly
collection from each subscriber was about four bucks (adding in the Sunday
issue). From the Milling Machine Company, I earned a flat fee, something like
ten dollars for a month’s worth of sales.
My route manager was a man named Red, who was probably no more than 20,
but who seemed, to an 11-year-old, to be considerably older but rather pleasant
– as route managers go. He only became upset when my sales records did not
match his contracts – and that was often.
I don’t know what it is about kindly old ladies and soft-spoken old men
– or, for that matter, about sexually frustrated, exhibitionist housewives and
reclusive war veterans – that causes them to stiff an innocent paperboy of a
measly four dollars on collection day. (The exhibitionist housewife I can
understand, in a rather dysfunctional way. For all that she either attempted to
show me, or in fact, did show me, I’m sure she felt her subscription was paid
for in trade). But whatever else it was, I usually fell short in my collections
by at least twenty-five dollars. Red would come by my house on collection day
to receive the canvas bag that held my take for my route’s subscribers. I gave
him a slip that showed who had and who had not paid. It was a very predictable
roster, and Red would seethe as he ran down the all-too-familiar names. Except
for the housewife. Not once did I ever hear Red moan about her reluctance to
pay. Hmmmm. You don’t suppose…?
The only time I ever met my collections
quota was the day my dad and I did the route together; he came with me to every
door to “encourage” my customers to make good on their contracts. He cut a pretty commanding figure in those
days, so it’s not surprising that my canvas collection purse was full by day’s
end. What does surprise me is that for
nearly 40 years I had no memory of his coming to my rescue. I didn’t learn
about his good deed until one night on his farm when he, at 81, and I, at 52,
were trying to make sense of our family’s peripatetic history.
After Alan Shepherd’ capsule splashed
down in the Atlantic , and on the heels of a
bite of breakfast, my parents brought some packages into the living room and
set them down on the coffee table. One package in particular stood out from the
others. It had a bow with a ribbon that snaked off the coffee table, across the
living room floor, and into the front hall.
“Happy birthday!” My mother was in
major smile mode; my dad gave me his best grin.
I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“May I open this?” My hand was hovering
over the ribbon-encircled package.
“Are you sure you want to?” my mother
asked. “There are some other gifts you can open…”
My father was already chuckling which I
took as a go-ahead to open the box. I ripped though the wrap and opened the
white box within. The ribbon was tied around a note inside the box which read.
“Follow me if you dare.”
“Hope you like it, old buddy.” Now where had I heard that before?
I tore out the front door, following
the ribbon to the rear of my parents’ Chevy Impala station wagon. There was
another note stuck on the back window. “Open me.” All I could see inside the car was a large
blanket covering something long and wide. I yanked the back door open and
lifted the blanket. There it was. A go-cart. I was looking at the engine end of
the cart, and it was red. The engine and the frame around it were red. Two hard
rubber wheels flanked the engine. They were secured to their axle by cotter
pins, the same kind of pins you see holding lawnmower wheels to their axles.
My dad joined me at the back of the
Chevy, and together we pulled the cart out of the car and onto the asphalt
street. I don’t think I’d ever seen anything like it. I certainly never
imagined a go-cart would look quite like this. Picture a giant red paperclip.
Place it on its edge. Now stick axles on
it, running perpendicular to the clip and situated just below the rounded ends.
The smaller of the two rounded ends was the front of the cart. The slightly
larger end, the rear. A small platform welded to the bottom of the back of the
clip supported a Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine, its drive shaft
connected by a chain to the right rear axle.
In the middle of this giant, red,
paperclip was welded a seat which was fashioned out of a flat piece of iron
bent at a 90-degree angle. No cushion. No armrests. No harness. Just a slab of
metal formed into a butt-busting seat. The top middle section of the paper clip
was open to allow the driver to sit in the seat and steer via a large, round
metal steering wheel mounted on a steering column that extended down diagonally
through the center of the paperclip to a primitive device sufficient to move
the front wheels either left or right.
I
remember the engine was a five-horsepower affair with a rope pull starter and a
spark arrestor used to shut the engine down.
The paperclip had two pedals. On the left was the brake pedal which,
when depressed, caused a piece of metal to rub against the tread of the left
rear tire. I use the word ‘tread’
loosely, since all four tires were made of hard rubber with no appreciable
“tread” in the grooved sense. Instead of an accelerator pedal, there was a
clutch pedal. Pressing down on the clutch pedal engaged the chain drive,
spinning the right rear axle. Relaxing pressure on the pedal disengaged the
chain. The engine was controlled by the same kind of throttle found on most
lawnmowers of the day – a flat thumb-sized metal plate attached to the frame next
to the go-cart’s steering wheel. A stiff wire ran from this plate to the
throttle on the engine. Pushing the metal tab down caused the engine to speed
up; pulling back on the tab retarded the engine’s speed.
Going forward was a two-part process:
rev the engine and press down on the clutch. If the engine was not turning fast
enough, the clutch would overpower the chain drive and the engine would stall.
If the engine was turning too fast, depressing the clutch guaranteed a smoking,
spinning right rear wheel, followed by a crazed fishtailing or fast left-hand
turn until the driver got the cart under control. For all intents and purposes, my special
birthday go-cart was a sit down, self-propelled, four-wheel, rear-engined
lawnmower without the blade. Did I mention that it was fire engine red? All of
it. Every last part – even the wheel hubs.
One of the advantages of having a base
commander for a father is also having access to the expanses of parking areas
and taxiways unused by airplanes. We took the Yazoo
out to the base that very afternoon. Pop drove our station wagon out onto the
tarmac at the far end of the Air Base, far beyond the ugly duckling KC-97s
sitting forlornly on the ramp. I was grateful that we were far away from the
prying eyes of any of my peers, and thankful that I had not made any friends so
close that I would feel obligated to share with them my Yazoo
shame.
Aircraft parking areas and taxiways are
constructed of large slabs of concrete separated by expansion joints that are
filled with tar. Airplane tires, which are considerably larger than automobile
tires, roll over these expansion lines easily, but the small diameter tires of
my new Yazoo, uncushioned by air pressure or any sort of shock absorber, hit
those tarry joints with tooth-rattling jolts which were transmitted from the
hard tires through the metal frame, up the unprotected seat, and directly into
my spine. With the cart going at a flat out top speed of maybe 30 miles per
hour, the shock of the jolts soon took its toll on my tailbone and back.
I ran the Yazoo Racer on the parking
apron a few more times that spring and early summer. Once, we even obtained
clearance to drive the thing it down the main runway. On the one hand, it was a
privilege not granted to any other kid with a go-cart, but, on the other hand,
it was a humiliating privilege because so many base personnel watched as I
bump-bump-bumped down the two miles of concrete in my giant red paperclip. In the final analysis, the Yazoo Racer
experience was worse than the brown machine gun with the bright pink bullets.
Here was something I’d been wanting so badly; yet, despite all the hints from
me to my parents, the interpretation of the dream got lost in its execution.
But this disappointment in my birthday
gift wasn’t the greatest tragedy surrounding the Yazoo Racer. This came many
years later with the revelation of a lie of such enormity that it shook my
heart to its very core. The go-cart was not actually a gift from my parents. It
was meant to be a gift from my grandfather, the movie mogul who was so removed
from his youngest grandson that only money and the gifts it could buy might be
able to bridge the gap. What he did not know – and never learned – was that his
affection for me was derailed over and over again by my mother. In her teenage
days, and into her twenties, my mother pined to try her hand in the movies. Her
father had the position and clout to help her, yet not only did he try to
discourage her, once she finally did manage to complete a screen test, he saw to
it that the resulting good reviews were quashed. She eventually discovered his
lie and never forgave him.
Her anger burned for years, and charred forever the
bonds of honesty her children so desperately needed. No matter what I received from him – letters,
checks, presents, offers of help in getting to a good college, and support for
my writing – my mother managed to re-credit most of his efforts as her own; and
when, as with the college assistance, she could not take credit, she simply
discarded the evidence. Only rarely did I see the true giving nature of a
grandfather I thought had abandoned me. Thirty years after his death, I
stumbled upon boxes of letters addressed to me from him, none of which I had
ever seen before.
“My dear Chris. I hear that you are quite the young author. I would love to see some of the writing your mother has told me so much about. If you think of me, please send along your work.”
“My dear Chris. As you look at universities, don’t forget that your old gramps did a turn at Williams. I would be happy to put in a good word for you. Just say the word.”
“My dear Chris. Your mother tells me you are worried that your grades may not be good enough to get you into a good college. My friend at Harvard said he’d be glad to speak to you about an opportunity there.”
“My dear Chris. How I long to hear some word from you. Your mother says you are very busy. When you get some time for your old gramps, please write.”
“My dear Chris. If the go-cart is not what you wanted, just let me know and you shall have the right one immediately. Your loving Gramps.”
I read those letters for the first time
in the basement of my parents’ house as my mother lay dying upstairs in her
bedroom. I sat on the basement steps, the box of letters in my lap, and I wept.
The tears poured out like acid, eating through years of perceptions with which
I had woven the fabric of my life. What else didn’t I know? What was truth and
what was fiction? It was a whole cloth of lies, and it was unraveling with
every letter I read.
The story of the Yazoo Racer is
instructive as I look back at all the warning signs leading up to my basement
discovery. A family that refuses every opportunity for honesty and candor – a
family that promotes dissembling, prevarication, beating-around-the-bush, and
just plain flat-out lying – is never going to read one another’s true desires
with any success. The letters in my hand made it clear we never had a chance to
proceed in any other direction. Lying is what my mother did because that was
the life she was born into; I suppose it was the only survival technique she
knew. My father, in his misplaced honor to meet my mother’s needs – and having
sworn a secrecy oath to protect his country –
granted himself permission to leave the complete truth outside the front
door.
He never lied to me…that must be said.
But he didn’t give full voice to the honesty that might have cut a better path
for me. He knew that the Yazoo Racer’s cover story was a lie, but since it
wasn’t his lie, he let it enter my life. Honesty may have served him well in
his career, but he forgot how to embrace it in his life at home. The Yazoo
Racer was the harbinger of many more years of lies to follow. Its very arrival
into my world was predicated on a gross and ugly lie that took advantage of my
unwavering trust in my parents. Their complicity in maintaining the lie, rooted
in my mother’s selfish pride, and nurtured by my father’s reluctance to hold
the moral high ground, yielded a decades-long harvest of deception. They had so
many opportunities to respond to the ebb and flow of the everyday frustrations,
fears, sorrows, and joys that pass through the lives of average families.
At any juncture they could have chosen
a new course and taken a chance with the truth. But they couldn’t find the
faith to act on those opportunities. They’d long ago lost the will or the
vision to cast us down the mountain of their fears and enter the mainstream of
life. As I sat on the basement stairs, awash in my tears, surrounded by the
rising waters of lies, the stark reality of the origins of the Yazoo Racer
picked me up by my heels and threw me headlong into the depths of the river. I
swam, all right…but in the wrong direction.
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