BEST DAY I EVER HAD

STORIES MY FATHER TOLD ME: BEST DAY I EVER HAD

By Mark Reed

Do you remember the best day you ever had with your father? I do. Like it was yesterday. It was the summer of 1980.

Dad had a friend who owned a house boat at the lake. He spent a lot of time up there. It was his last summer, and he had just turned 59. Young by a lot of standards. I would say he was the youngest 59 year old I ever knew.

I got a call at my office from Dad’s friend and was told that Dad was up at the boat and seemed really down. Perhaps I could give him a call and cheer him up or even go up and spend some time with him. There was a phone on the boat and I called him. I told him I had just about enough of the grind for the day and since Michelle was out of town, perhaps if he didn’t have other plans I could grab some steaks and run on up and we could spend the day and evening together. He seemed to perk up at the prospect.

What a day! A day for memories. Memories I will treasure for the rest of my life. We went fishing. Didn’t catch any fish to speak of, but that wasn’t the point. We were together. When we were not talking we just enjoyed the other’s company.

He pulled me on the slalom. We talked about when he taught me to water ski. We both laughed about the time he pulled me up on a slalom from a sitting position on the edge of the dock. My bathing suit got caught on a nail head when the boat jerked me off the dock, and the crotch was ripped out. I skied with a ragged skirt that time. Indecent exposure on skis. I guess I was lucky it was only the bathing suit that got ripped. We laughed till we cried.

Later that evening we watched the sun set over the water, sipped our Jack Daniels and grilled steaks. We drank our share and then some that night. Not sloppy drunk, but good drunk. A warm glow. We really had a good time. As we drank into the night we talked of life, death, love, happiness, sadness, business and play. God, I wish I had it on tape. What a conversation.

The part I remember most was when he talked about Mom. Mom before her first operation 20 years before. The removal of a brain tumor had taken its toll on her and the whole family, to tell the truth. Mom survived the brain tumor, but she was changed. Still the sweetest and kindest person I ever knew, but she lost her zip, including the sight in one eye and her sense of smell. That’s another story.

He said he wished I had known her as the young girl he first met during the war. She was the “Belle of the Ball.” She was Miss Bloomfield. The sharpest thing he had ever seen. “She was a pistol,” he said.

He met her at a USO dance in Missouri when he was a flight cadet earning his wings and that gold bar. He said she was the best thing to ever come out of Bloomfield, Missouri. She could dance like no tomorrow. Put on the Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw and watch her go. I saw them dance together. They were smooth. Really something on a dance floor.

When he came home from the war, married her and brought her home to Smyrna, Georgia, well, no-one quiet knew what to make of her. She was a ball of fire. She was a beauty, too. I have the pictures to prove it. Dad considered himself the luckiest man in the world. He said he loved her so. The only time I heard him say it. He still did. We both cried and held each other. Have you ever held a big grizzly bear while it sobbed? I have. It was wonderful.

He said she would get in her car and run around everywhere – she still did that, at least until the second brain tumor got her years later. Always on the go. I remember that well. She was known to wear out tires on her cars with less miles than most anyone except a race driver. We would all laugh and joke about Mom and her running around in her car, visiting her friends, which were many. She would make the rounds.

Yeah, dad told me a lot of things that night. Some I guess I’ll just take with me to my grave, and others I’ll try to share with those who would care.

Yes sir, the best day I ever had………

WHEN I DIE

STORIES MY FATHER TOLD ME – WHEN I DIE

By Mark Reed

Dad used to tell a funny story about an old friend of his named Art Mims. Yes, Art was the namesake for Arthur’s Vineyard on Johnson Ferry Road, but that’s another story. Art told Dad that he told his wife, “Snooky, when I die, I want you to do two things for me. First, make sure I’m dead. Second, get me in the ground fast.” We would laugh about that when Art died and was buried less than 24 hours later. Snooky did her duty. Dad made me promise to do my duty by him.

The last couple of years of Dad’s life, I guess he was feeling mortal for the first time. It was his health. His Doctor admitted him to the hospital one day. I got a call from Dad asking me to go by the house and pick him up his pajamas and his shaving kit and take them to him at the hospital. When I got to his room and asked him what was going on, he sort of laughed and said, “They seem to think I’m having a heart attack or something, and want me to stay in the hospital a day or two for some tests.”

I immediately searched out his Doctor and asked for the straight poop. He said that Dad had a bad heart along with high blood pressure. His recommendation was surgery, but Dad would have none of that. The Doctor said he could help with medication, but that Dad needed to stop smoking the four packs a day of the Salem’s altogether, cut back considerably on his drinking, lose weight and start exercising on a daily basis. At that point in time the only exercise he got was walking from the golf cart to his ball, hitting it, and back to the cart. The Doctor said that if Dad did not do what he said, then he wouldn’t live another two years.

When I confronted Dad with the Doctors prognosis and recommendations, he laughed and said, “When the Doctor tells me to quit smoking, drinking and eating is when I get a second opinion.”

For a while there he did exercise a little. He bought some tennis shoes and started daily walks around a jogging track near our office where I would run in the afternoons – I would say hi when I lapped him. That lasted for a couple of months until the scare wore off, then it was business as usual. He did take his pills, but sometimes they made him feel like hell, and he changed medications a time or two.

As for his drinking and smoking, he never really changed much. He did make a concession sometimes with a cigar or pipe, but those nasty old Salem’s were with him until the end, as was the Jack Daniels.

I finally quit saying anything to him about it in a serious vein, and tried instead to make a joke out of it like, “Well at least we will save some money on the formaldehyde when you kick off because you will already be preserved in alcohol.” He liked that. He also liked it when I suggested he donate his lungs to medical science to study the worst lungs since black lung disease.

He would say he was too old a dog to learn new tricks. I bet he could have taught all of us a few, though. And he did.

As I said earlier, toward the end, he felt mortal. Hell, he didn’t feel good. He told me on his 59th birthday that this was the first time a birthday ever bothered him. He finally realized that he would die sometime. And it bothered him. I hated to see that happen to him.

We had a lot of talks toward the end, as if he was trying to tell me all those things he wanted said before he was gone. Maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe it was just that we were closer then and just communicated better. I don’t know.

Don’t get me wrong, this was not a morbid time at all, in fact, I look back on it as the closest we ever were, and the time I treasure most of our entire relationship. We got to be good friends. There was a lot of humor mixed in with the seriousness. Black humor maybe, but us Reed’s are known for our off the wall humor. Some call it sick. So be it, but I laugh.

At any rate, in one of our conversations he reminded me of the Art Mims story and made me promise to do two things for him when he died – make sure he was dead and get him in the ground quick. He also said there was a third thing he wanted me to do – make sure that it was not an open casket service. I said OK, but asked why. He said that there were those who had said they would see him dead, but he’d be damned if he would give them that satisfaction. We both got a laugh over that one. I promised that we would cheat them out of that.

He would say that his brother-in-law, D.R. Guthrie, knew how to die. He did it in his favorite leather armchair with his feet propped up after a drink of bourbon. Looked like he went in his sleep, because his hands were crossed over his belly. He had not moved. “That’s the way I want to go,” he would say, “except that on the day I die I want to play 18 holes of golf, play cards with my buddies at the club, drink my fill, go to a cocktail party, eat a good dinner with friends and die in bed.”

He got his wish. At age 59. Just less than two years after the Doctor told him to cool it. He did it his way, just like he did his whole life. And guess what?

I made sure he was dead and got him in the ground the next day. Furthermore, we cheated hell out of those who said they would see him dead. I did my duty.

 

FRIENDLY FLY IN

FRIENDLY FLY IN

By Mark Reed

This is not my typical Blog story. They are usually autobiographical for the most part, having to do with family and friends. From time to time I will slip in one that is shared with me by another. So, come to think of it, I guess the fact this story was shared with me qualifies it…sorta.

Once upon a time, far far away in a foreign land…OK, it was in a bar in Bangkok in 1970. I was in the Army. I was siting on a bar stool next to an Air America pilot, where we were putting away Singha beer and Mekong Whiskey shooters. So, I cannot attest to the veracity of the story shared with me, since it was absolutely alcohol induced. I have never shared this story before; maybe because it was outlandish in a way, but the more I think about it, I want it to be true.

I had met this pilot at the U.S. Embassy Diplomatic Medical Mission where I was stationed. I must tell you I met some very interesting folks who passed through our doors. We were the medical provider for the U.S. Military troops in the Greater Bangkok area, including their dependents. We also treated all Foreign Service personnel and their families, as well as those permanent duty and TDY spooks from the CIA and other entities, like Air America. Any way, I digress.

As we sat there, throwing back Singha and Mekong, my new pilot friend started opening up about some of his experiences. Talk about interesting stories.

He was flying a single-engine fixed wing aircraft. I’m not sure exactly what it was, but it was not your normal military aircraft. It was a modified civilian aircraft with some very specific modifications, most specifically for this story, machine guns mounted under the nose. His AO (Area of Operations) was in northern Laos. I am not exactly sure what his mission was for this story, but whatever it was, it was preempted by what happened.

He picked up radio chatter about one of his fellow Air America pilots who had been shot down over a Montagnard village in a mountainous area. He was close and was first to arrive on the scene. As he circled the area, looking for the pilot, he was receiving rounds directed his way from the area surrounding the village. He identified the wreckage at the edge of the village and was able to make radio contact with the downed pilot. While the Montagnards were friendlies, there were plenty of unfriendlies around.

He identified an area near the top of the mountain ridge where it looked like he may be able to set his aircraft down, although getting her airborne again was iffy. He directed the downed pilot to make his way to the edge of the clearing where he would attempt to land. The downed pilot informed him that he was being hunted by bad guys, so he was on the run, but he would get there as quick as he could.

My friend told me his butt clenched his seat as he brought his aircraft down onto the “landing area.” He taxied to a rolling stop and turned on the upslope at the edge of the trees, pointing his nose back downhill poised for a precarious takeoff. The downed pilot burst out of the tree line and dashed to the plane, scrambling into the cramped cockpit, whereupon my friend started his takeoff, bouncing down the incline. They were taking rounds into the ship from several different directions, primarily from in front of them where a squad of soldiers was running toward them firing their AK 47’s. He said he was more concerned with clearing the trees at the edge of a cliff at the end of his “runway” than he was from the soldiers charging directly at him (which I had a hard time imagining). They were playing a deadly game of chicken.

Did I mention he had machine guns mounted under the nose of his plane? As he picked up speed for a hoped for takeoff, rapidly approaching the advancing soldiers and the tree lined cliff, he opened up with his machine guns. Some of them dropped dead and the remaining soldiers scattered to the sides out of the fixed machine gun’s field of fire, still firing their AK’s at them as they zoomed past.

He said they barely cleared the trees and almost stalled, but thankfully there was a lot of air below them once over the cliff. Down the mountainside they flew, into the valley below and on to safety. Only then did they look at each other, breaking into outrageous sustained laughter. Then they sat in silence as they flew back to base, marveling that they were still alive and breathing. He said there were over 100 holes in his aircraft, miraculously none of which hit a crucial spot.

After hearing this story from my new pilot friend, I told him I was picking up the bar tab. He gave me a crooked drunken smile and yelled to the bartender to set em up.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.