There's a light-hearted Johnny Cash song my kids love called "A Boy Named Sue." In the story, which was written by Shel Silverstein, a mythical boy grows up without a father who left him behind with nothing much but that name.
Later as an adult, the younger man finally meets up with his old Dad, who explains why he gave him that name.
So he'd grow up to be tough.
***
My two youngest boys grew up sharing a loft in their Mom's house way up on Bernal Hill. It's an old, drafty house and the window frames in their room are metal and ill-fitted. They make sounds in the wind and fail to prevent the rain from coming in when a storm hits at a certain angle.
Unfortunately, that angle happens to be from the west, which is where the prevailing winds hail from in the 49-square-mile tip of the peninsula known as San Francisco. And the boys did tend to get a lot of colds in the rainy season.
On occasion, when I visited them there, I went up to their room to work on those windows. Replacing them completely was the right solution; but we couldn't afford that, so a roll of duct tape and some small nails were the next best option.
Sealing them up pretty tight was my goal.
When you are one of those Dads living apart from your kids, a persistent fear you can't shake is that something bad might happen to them that could have been prevented had you been there.
My oldest son had his own small room in another old, drafty house (we specialize in those in the Bay Area) and when he was about ten, in my absence he had taken over the chore of chopping wood for the fireplace. One time he chopped off the tip of one of his fingers in the process and had to be rushed to a nearby emergency room, where the doctor said, "He's still young, it will probably grow back."
Another time, I arrived at the house to find a grocery bag of smoking coals sitting in the front entry way. The house is made of wood and had I not removed it, that bag would have burst into flames, probably after everyone was asleep.
But I took the bag outside, doused it with the hose, and buried it in the yard.
Over the years, I would frequently try to project a protective shield over all of my progeny against all the bad guys and bad things in this unpredictable world.
Maybe in some tiny way, it even worked, sort of.
***
Divorced fathers tended to develop a bad reputation in the relevant years when I was one, with labels such as Deadbeat Dads and so on. The stereotype was that you left your wife for a younger, sexier woman and the family station wagon for a faster, sexier car. But personally, I never met one of those kinds of guys.
No, most common among my cohort were hard-working chaps who spent most everything they earned supporting the families they'd left behind and stayed themselves in rented rooms rented out by kindly divorced ladies on the other side of town.
There, we would commiserate with one another and show up at school events, where we'd sit alone at the back of the room as opposed to up front, where the intact families congregated.
Not that exciting, sexy experiences never came our way, mind you. But even those tended to be more like the swimming pool scene at the motel in "National Lampoon's Family Vacation," where Clark Grizwold ended up exposed when he was simply skinny dipping with a cute young acquaintance in what was supposed to be a secret encounter while his wife and kids were asleep upstairs.
Actually, they were out on the balcony, looking down with all the other guests.
***
Well, the news is back and up to its old tricks.
* Archaeologists in Pompeii, the city buried in a volcanic eruption in 79 AD, have made the extraordinary find of a frescoed hot food and drinks shop that served up the ancient equivalent of street food to Roman passersby. (Reuters)
* The Forgotten Radicalism of Jesus Christ -- First-century Christians weren’t prepared for what a truly inclusive figure he was, and what was true then is still true today (NYT)
* In Christmas address, Pope calls for vaccines for all (WashPo)
* One Vaccine Side Effect: Global Economic Inequality --As Covid inoculations begin, the economic downturn stands to be reversed, but developing countries are at risk of being left behind (NYT)
* Millions of people in the U.K. faced tough new coronavirus restrictions Saturday, with Scotland and Northern Ireland demanding tighter measures to try to halt a new variant of the coronavirus. (AP)
* Syria’s bread lines are so long that children have to skip school to wait in them (WashPo)
* Japan to suspend all new travelers from abroad (NHK)
* Millions of Americans to lose jobless benefits as Trump refuses to sign aid bill (Reuters)
* For a Defeated President, Pardons as an Expression of Grievance -- President Trump’s grants of clemency to convicted liars, corrupt congressmen and child-killing war criminals are a way to lash out at a system that he believes has treated him and his friends unfairly. (NYT)
* The Girl Scouts are in a “highly damaging” recruitment war with the Boy Scouts after the latter opened its core services to girls, leading to marketplace confusion (AP)
* The recreational vehicle that exploded on Christmas morning in downtown Nashville’s Arts District played a warning through a loudspeaker shortly before the detonation, police said. (WashPo)
* Trump’s border wall was a complete waste of time and money (WashPo)
***
When I was three
Except this ole guitar and
An empty bottle of booze
'Cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that my daddy ever did
Name me Sue
He musta thought
And it got a lot of laughs from lots a folks
Seems I had to fight my whole life through
And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head
I'll tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue
My fist got hard and my wits got keen
Roamed from town to town
But I made me a vow to the moon and stars
I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
Me that awful name
Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew
At an old saloon on a street of mud
There at a table dealin' stud
Well I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn out picture that my mother had
His cheek and his evil eye
He was big and bent and grey and old
Blood ran cold, and I said
"My name is Sue! How do you do?
Well, I hit him hard right
Between the eyes
Came up with a knife and
Cut off a piece of my ear
And we crashed through
The wall and into the street
Kickin' and a gougin' in the mud
And the blood and the beer
Well I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when
He kicked like a mule and
He bit like a crocodile
I heard him laugh and
Then I heard him cuss
And he reached for his gun but
I pulled mine first
He stood there lookin' at me and
I saw him smile
And he said
"Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make
It he's gotta be tough
And I know I wouldn't be
There to help you along
So I gave you that name
And I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's that name that helped
To make you strong."
He said, "Now you just fought
One heck of a fight
And I know you hate me
And ya got the right
To kill me now and I wouldn't
Blame you if you do
But you oughta thank me before I die
For the gravel in your gut
And the spit in the eye
'Cause I'm the -
That named you Sue."
Yeah, what could I do?
I got all choked up and threw down my gun
Called him my pa and he called me his son
And I came away with a
Different point of view
And I think about him now and then
Every time I try and every time I win
And if I ever have a boy
I'll name him
Bill or George or Frank
Anything dam thing but Sue!
Hate that name
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