Cast of Characters:  George, my father, Edythe, my mother

After a career as the best quarterback in recent memory on the Rosebud High School football team, George, at 18, joined the Marines.  He was immediately shipped off to China where the Japanese had invaded.  Two years later, he was out of the Marines and bumming around California when those pesky Japanese again invaded - this time Pearl Harbor.  George re-upped.

Edythe was 25 and working at a miltary facility in Seattle for the war effort.  She and a girlfriend were let off early one day and as they passed through the gates of the military facility, a man in a "nice" car asked if they needed a lift.  Edythe, the slut, and her girlfriend said, "But of course," and were wisked off to the Elks club for dining and dancing.  It was here that the tall, lanky brunette caught the eye of the silver-tongued Marine from Rosebud, Texas.  They were married six weeks later.  That marriage lasted for 56 years, only ending when George died on January 1, 2001, at the age of 82.  Edythe passed away that April, supposedly from complications of a stroke.  She'd slap me silly or wash my mouth out with soap (a favorite trick of hers) if she heard me say this, but I think she died of a broken heart.  Uncle Kurt Vonnegut, in his diatribe on relationships, called this a "carrass of two."

I have mixed feelings about my dad.  In a lot of ways he was an SOB, but he was still the one who told me at the age of 5, when he was going off to Korea to fight, to look to the evening star every night to say goodnight to him.  That he'd hear me and smile.  He was also the one who, when I was nineteen and trying to get out of a bad relationship, told me I deserved to be loved, and that this relationship wasn't good enough for me.  He was right.  Of course, he was also the one who threw a wall-eyed fit when he found out Don and I were getting married in a park.  Then, the day of rehersal, when we walked through the woods of Memorial Park in Houston to the little area deep in the woods that had benches and a podium, perfect for a small wedding, my dad took my hand and said, "This is beautiful.  It's God's work."  How can you stay mad at a guy like that?

When I was growing up my dad was a yellow-dog Democrat.  As a child he'd blanketed his county with posters of Ma Ferguson, the first female governor of the State of Texas.  This, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman or the fact that she might be good for the job: it had everything to do with the fact that she was a Democrat and her opponent was not only a Republican but a Catholic to boot.  (At the age of eleven, my father told me I couldn't get serious about my then boyfriend Gene because I could never marry him - he was a Catholic.)  So, up to and threw the reign of Lyndon Baines Johnson, my dad was a Democrat.  He even voted for Catholic John Kennedy, because he "knew in his heart that Johnson would take over."  Although he vehemently opposed Nixon the first time he ran, he decided somehow the second time that this would be the savior of our nation.  My dad, the yellow dog Democrat, became a Republican.  This became a running battle between the two of us for the rest of his life.  It took me a while to notice the twinkle in his eye when he really got going.  This was because when he really got going, I gave as good as I got - usually to the point of foaming at the mouth and ranting loud enough to be heard in the next county.  He loved it when that happened.  My dad became the Republican County Chairman for Cook County, Texas, and ran for and lost a seat as the Republican candidate for county commissioner.

At that time my parents lived in a small enclave of Republicans in a private lake resort known as Lake Kiowa, outside the town of Gainesville, Texas.  Gainesville was tenth generation yellow dog Democrat; the only Republicans were the enterlopers in Lake Kiowa.  Of course he lost.  As Republican Party chairman for Lake Kiowa, he did tell me that when George Bush ran against Jimmy Carter, there were 780 votes for Bush, 4 for Carter, and one for John what's-his-name who was running independent.  The community of course found out who that voter was and he wasn't long at Lake Kiowa.  That kind of dissent just isn't tolerated.

There were the bad times: like the time he threw me out of the house when we were watching TV the night LBJ said he wouldn't run again, and I said, "Thank God."  And the time he wouldn't let me in the door because I didn't have a bra on.  He had strange rules: Can't leave the house after nine p.m., although I had no curfew on when I had to be home; or the really weird one about not going to the drive-in theater with my girlfriends; I could only go with a boy.  Work on that logic, please.

He was a bigot and a misogonist, and anti-anything that wasn't middle-aged, white, protostant, heterosexual, and male.  He had a quick temper, but it faded quickly, and he loved his projects, although he always left his tools where ever he was when he decided to quit.  But he was funny, and affectionate, a bit of a hypocontriact, and down deep in his soul, a Marine.  Semper Fi, Daddy.