Senator John Tower

Houston – 1984

On David Letterman’s old NBC talk show, Late Night, he used to have a segment called “Brush With Greatness.”  He would invite audience members to tell tales of their encounters with celebrities.  There are clips of these segments on You Tube. 

Living with Dad, I had my own “Brush With Greatness” with Texas Senator John Tower.

When we moved into the mobile home in 1983, Dad was hiding out from the IRS. He decided to put the utilities in an assumed name.  It wasn’t a case of identity theft; it was just a fake name that he grabbed from nowhere.  The name he picked was Jack Blanton. 

I learned that Jack Blanton was a real person when I answered the home phone a couple of times and the caller was looking for Jack Blanton.  I was in college at the time; I typically had classes in the morning and worked at Kmart in the evening.

 The first phone call came in the middle of a week day. “Hello?” I answered.

A woman’s voice replied, “Senator John Tower would like to speak with Mr. Jack Blanton.  Is he available?” 

I assumed that the call would be some sort of recording where the Senator would ask for a campaign donation.  When you get a phone call for a name that you know is made up, you can be pretty sure that it is some sort of telephone solicitor. 

 “He’s not here right now.” I answered.

“Do you know when he will be back?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Okay, thank you.”  She seemed confused by this answer.  I didn’t offer to take a message and she didn’t ask me to take one.  That confirmed to me that the phone call was some sort of effort to raise money for the Senator’s re-election campaign.  Senator Tower actually wasn’t running for re-election, but I didn’t know that at the time.

A few weeks later another call came in for Jack Blanton in the middle of a week day.

“Hello?” I answered.

A woman’s voice replied, “Senator John Tower would like to speak with Mr. Jack Blanton.  Is he available?” 

Again?  I decided to play along.  “I’m Jack Blanton,” I declared.

“Please hold,” she replied.

I waited for a moment and a male voice came on the line. “Uh, Jack?”

Oh shit! It’s a real person! I wasn’t aware of what Senator Tower’s voice sounded like, but the voice on the line had an East Texas twang to it.  “Yes sir?” I replied.

“Jack, we’re looking for someone to head up a fund raising committee to for the campaign against Lloyd Doggett.”  Crap!  This is the real deal! I’m on the phone with U.S. Senator John Tower and I’m pretending to be someone who doesn’t exist.  I later learned that Lloyd Doggett was running for John Tower’s Senate seat as the Democratic Party nominee. 

“Well, Senator, I’m pretty busy these days.  I don’t think I have the time to do anything like that.”  Get me out of this phone call!

“Jack, it’s very important that we get this committee going in Houston and we’ll need someone like you to help us out.”

“I’m sorry sir, but I’m a college student and I’m working a full-time job.  I just don’t think I’ll be able to do this.”

The conversation paused just slightly, “I think I have the wrong Jack Blanton.”

“Yes sir, I think you do to,” I replied.  With that, I was no longer on the phone with Senator John Tower.

I thought to myself, Who the hell is Jack Blanton and where did Dad come up with that name?

Dad swore that he picked the name at random.  I can only guess that Dad saw the name somewhere and it bubbled up from his memory when he picked a name to use for his phone, gas and electricity bills. 

We didn’t have the internet back then, so there was no way, other than going to the public library, to research and try find out who Jack Blanton was. I didn’t do that, but a couple of more clues came my way. 

The first clue was something I spotted in a business journal in the lobby of the Sugar Creek National Bank in Sugar Land. I was scanning the magazine while waiting and came across a full page ad for Texas Commerce Bank.  The ad had headshot line drawings of each of the bank’s directors on the Board of Directors. Oil Executive Jack Blanton was there.  The second clue about  Jack Blanton came to me at another time and place, I don’t remember where, but I learned that Jack Blanton was on the University of Texas Board of Regents.

John Tower died in a plane crash in 1991 and Jack S. Blanton died “peacefully in his Galveston vacation home” in 2013.

Lloyd Doggett is currently serving as a representative in the U.S. Congress from the Texas 35th District. 

Little Gems

Memphis – Spring and Summer, 1976

In May of 1976, when I had just four weeks left in the seventh grade, Mom decided to secretly take me and Cousin away from Dad.  He was drinking pretty heavily then, but she had recently gotten out of a half-way house after having her latest nervous breakdown.  So, of course, she was in much better shape to take care of us kids.

For the life of me, I will never understand why she didn’t wait for us to finish the school year.  That put us in the third school and our second state for the school year of 1975-76.  We were still living in Central Florida when she took us. 

The plan to take us divided my loyalties between parents.  At the time I wanted to stay with Dad because he was more emotionally balanced and functionally stable; it felt safer with him. Mom had lost it many times and would probably lose it again.  But if I was to refuse to go with her or blow the whistle on her plan, then I could become the cause of the next breakdown.  That’s a lot for a 12-year-old kid to process and make a decision on. 

As sad as it made me to leave Dad, I kept the secret and off we went to Memphis.  We packed everything we could into our 1972 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate Station Wagon. It was the three of us and our loyal German Shepherd Dog named Shama. 

The drive from Florida to Memphis had its moments.  We had little money, so a motel was out of the question.  I remember stopping a few times so that she could nap while us kids waited nervously.  There was a scary episode while driving at night; we got lost trying to change from one interstate highway to another.  I remember Mom getting angry as we drove around in circles trying to find the right ramp.  I remember feeling very scared.

I remember Mom losing it over an eye-liner pencil.  It had fallen out of her purse into the floor board of the wagon.  We were in a parking lot searching for this pencil in the front seat clutter of the car, “that pencil cost me ninety-seven cents! Do you know how long it took for me to save up for that!?”  We just stood there meekly saying, “we’re sorry” and hoping she that didn’t take it out on us.  I don’t remember if she found the pencil or not. 

Another memory of that drive was having only one eight-track tape to listen to the whole way.  It was John Denver’s Back Home Again. You would think that I would hate that album, but I still love it to this day and I can still sing most of the songs on it.

Skipping ahead a bit in the timeline, later that summer when we finally set up house in a three-room apartment we had very little to our names.  We needed almost all household items, including dinnerware.  We were receiving welfare checks and food stamps by then, and so had little money.  But what Mom did have was a stack of S&H Green Stamp Saver Books.  With these books you could go to an S&H Green Stamp store and redeem the stamps for all sorts of merchandise. Memphis in 1976 had an S&H Green Stamp store.  Mom had enough trading stamps to redeem them for a set of Mikasa Avitra dinnerware, a set of flatware, and a few other things.

Mom died about nine months after taking us to Memphis.  Those kitchen items ended up with Dad and me when I went to live with him in Houston.  Cleaning out Dad’s mobile home did not reveal any treasure, but it did reveal the Mikasa dinnerware and a few other small house hold gems.

Today I went through the two boxes of kitchen things that I saved from his mobile home, intending to clean up the items and donate them to Goodwill. Along with the Mikasa Avitra dinnerware are two turquoise Pyrex Butterprint casserole bowls, one Federal Glass batter bowl and one set of Lefton china canisters.  (I used the Internet to discover all these names). The casseroles and batter bowl I rember from my childhood.  I have no idea where the china canisters came from. 

These little gems don’t have a great value assigned to them, but through the Internet I can get them to collectors who will love them for the nostalgic pieces that they are. 

Update 1. :  The wife and I both like the cheerfulness of the Mikasa dinnerware and are going to use it for a while

Update 2.:  Dang it! Through my clumsiness and courtesy of the granite countertops, I put a big chip in the lid of the smallest Lefton china canister.

Keeping Me Alive

Greenville – December, 1963

When I was in my late 20s, I almost went to Europe on a business trip.  The company had all the reservations and I had my plane ticket in hand.  However, the day before the flight they said, “never mind . . .” Yeah, I was disappointed.

In preparation for that trip, I needed a U.S. Passport.  One of the requirements is a certified copy of your birth certificate.  I always had the pretty one from the hospital, but never had a certified copy.  South Carolina was pretty efficient and for the right fee had a copy to me overnight. 

I read the certificate in detail and found one detail that was a small surprise.

Question:

     “16. PREVIOUS DELIVERIES TO MOTHER

          c. How many fetal deaths (fetuses born dead at ANY time after conception)?”

Answer:

     “2.”

This was a only small surprise because I knew that Mom had two stillbirths after I was born, but I didn’t know of any stillbirths or miscarriages before I was born. 

I asked Dad about it.  He answered, “I finally had to make her get her tubes tied.  I got tired of burying babies. Before you came along, I came home from work and found her and your brother and sister gone.  She told me later that she was headed to visit her family in Baltimore.  She was pregnant and had a miscarriage along the way. She stopped and put D and D in a motel with enough food for a couple of days and went to the hospital.” 

Mom left my brother and sister alone in a motel and went to the hospital for a miscarriage.  D and D were  two years apart in age and were under the age of six.  Mom didn’t tell Dad she was even leaving for this road trip and didn’t call him for help.  She told him about the miscarriage after she got home. 

I have vague memories about the two stillbirths that occurred after I was born. I remember Mom going off to the hospital for several days a couple of times. During the day I stayed at a nearby daycare, probably in someone’s home.  I remember her being gone for days(?) and I remember all the neat toys to play with at that daycare.  I also remember visiting the graves of my brother and sister, Devin and Denine Green. 

 

My mother kept having miscarriages and stillbirths because of Rh sensitization.  This causes a condition called hemolytic anemia where the mother’s Rh negative blood creates antibodies that destroy the fetus’ positive red blood cells faster than they can be replaced. 

My blood type is O+ and hemolytic anemia almost killed me. 

I was born on Friday the 13^th, December 1963. I was 5 lbs. 13 oz. at birth, anemic and yellow with jaundice.  To save my life I needed blood transfusions.  Dad told me that I had an IV in my head and an IV in my foot, one taking blood out and the other putting fresh blood in. 

I remember him telling me that the doctor told him “don’t  get attached to this baby – he won’t make it past six months.”  I guess he got a little attached because he didn’t give up.  He said that he would feed me coke and crackers, that was the only thing I could keep down.  This was the 60s and so I don’t know whether they even tried to breast-feed me.

Knowing that blood transfusions are what saved my life when I was born, I am a regular blood donor.  I started when I was 17 years old and still donate three or four times a year.  

Oddly enough, Dad never understood donating blood. He sneered at the thought and said, “if they want my blood, they’ll have to pay me.”

The Note

Houston – June, 2016

Two days after Dad’s death, while cleaning out his mobile home, I found the note.  It wasn’t placed in a prominent place and it might have been overlooked but for me reading any scrap of paper with Dad’s hand writing. 

The note was on a small notepad. The artwork on the page had a cartoon family of owls at the top, staring directly at you and the logo for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at the bottom.  The notepad was in with the clutter on the table next to his living room recliner. 

I spoke to him twice in the week before he died.  On the Friday before, I brought him some bar-b-que (pork not beef; he was raised in Memphis, not Texas) and invited him over for Father’s Day. Then on Father’s Day when he was late, I called to see what was up. He said he was not feeling well and apologized for not calling me to cancel. 

I imagine it was several days between the time he wrote the note and committed the act.  I imagine he was trying the idea out first – that he wrote the note to make the idea real. He may have even written it on Father’s Day.

“Goodbuy  Cruel World:  I’ve Been hurting 3 T 5 years That’s enuff” 

The note told me what I needed to know – that he didn’t blame me.

I wonder how many other loved ones of suicide victims do the same thing, read the note to see if they are blamed by the victim.  That seems like a selfish thought and is a bit of a turn on what it frequently said about suicide – that suicide is a selfish act of the victim.

Calling suicide a selfish act is a form of blame too, I guess. When we say that, we are blaming the suicide victim for causing our grief.

Since I don’t have any grief for the end of his life, I don’t have any blame for Dad either.

In that final moment outside his trailer, in the gravel of his parking space, what was he thinking? Was he sad? Was he angry? Was he depressed? Was he relieved?

I wish I could have provided a happier ending for him. Deciding that you’ve had a long enough life after 80 years of living is a decision that should be respected.  Like the movie Soylent Green, going “Home” should be a happy decision.  You should be able to die in a peaceful, clean place, listening to your favorite music, watching images of beauty and happiness, surrounded by loved ones. The end shouldn’t be standing all alone on a gravel driveway with Houston humidity bearing down on you. 

I’ll give him this – at least he didn’t die in a hospital with tubes and wires keeping him alive.  He was ready and he died on his own terms.  Mr. DIY to the end.