Band - Johnny Cash
Song - God's Gonna Cut You Down
Album - American V: A Hundred Highways
What else can you say about the man in black?
Early in my life, my father would work his '76 Chevy Imapala that my mother named 'Christine'. She always had bad luck with that car, causing her to reference the Stephen King novel (and subsequent movie) towards that particular automobile.
My father, or I guess I should say step-father Ed, would work for hours in the blistering Arizona sun, and often he would listen to Johnny Cash albums. We've always been on the lower end of the middle class scale, often times dipping down into the poverty line. But Ed, being the ever optimist that he is, would always (and still does to this day) impart a bit of fatherly wisdom lifted from Cash: "Aaron, you gotta take it all. No one is going to give it to you. You have to be willing to take it one piece at a time."
That's something that's stuck with me my entire life.
That started my admiration and love for Johnny Cash. If Ed liked him, then I felt like I needed to like him. So I grew up with that.
Father's Day has come and past, and this post is dedicated to my father.
I was born on October 4th, 1985 in Colorado Springs, Colorado in some hospital in El Paso County. It was just my mother and I. Nine months prior she was given the news that she was pregnant at the age of 36, much to her surprise. Her entire life she'd been informed by doctors that she'd never be able to conceive.
The man responsible for this awkward conception told her he wanted no part in this, that he wanted her to get an abortion. For the first time in her life, however, she felt that God, or whatever higher power didn't want her to feel alone any longer, so she declined the abortion route, causing him to vacate her life in quite a timely fashion. He never even helped her buy a crib.
Nine months later I popped out of the womb kicking and screaming, filled with piss and vinegar. She'd been working as a waitress at this little restaurant in Colorado Springs called the Big Train up until the day I was born, and then resumed work a few days later.
There was a woman whom I would later affectionately know as "Gramma" Jesse. While there was no relation, she helped change diapers, bought toys...everything I'm told a grandmother does for a grandchild. On days she didn't, my mother would simply bring me to work with her and have me in the back. All the other waitresses would take turns on their breaks to help her out by watching me, as did the managers and cooks. All employee's, really.
One day she came across a man with a cane and a lot of friends chattering loudly. It was one of her tables.
One thing about waitresses, especially in places that cater to truck drivers, is that they are very personable. They talk, crack jokes and make friends. Especially with the regulars.
This man was a regular. As time passed, she learned of how a two-ton (yes, two tons) load of pipe had fell on him several years earlier, forcing him to retire. Not only did it not kill him, but five years later he'd defied every logistical obstacle, diagnosis, and odd presented to him by walking (albeit with the aide of a cane). That alone intrigued her, as it really would anyone.
But he couldn't work, and being divorced with his son grown up he really sunk into a depression. He had nothing to do, and felt so lousy being a "cripple". He really did, very understandably, fall into a depression that would've ended so many other people.
But meeting my mother, something sparked inside of him. His natural God-given charisma flamed back to life, his fierce green eyes regained that glimmer that'd been dullened for so many years. Upon meeting me, and gaining my mothers trust, she eventually deduced that Jesse could use a break, and a diner wasn't the best place for a newborn to be 12 hours a day.
She asked him to baby-sit, and so the story began.
They eventually began dating...
His name is Edward Hugh Williams. He had a son from a previous marriage, Leonard. He was a truck driver and mechanic since he was twelve years old. He never finished high school due to a strong form of dyslexia, and given the time frame in which he was in school was basically given up on.
One Christmas Eve Ed, who rarely is ever at a loss for words and never a bashful or nervous man, proposed to my mother via a Christmas Card. In late August 1988 they had a "going away" picnic in Colorado. The doctors had advised him to move somewhere with a more warm and dry climate because of his injuries. All his family (and trust me, that's a lot of people) and their friends showed up to see them off.
But in true Williams fashion, there was more than meets the eye that day. As everyone sat around talking, eating barbecue and generally having a good time, my parents slipped away and got dressed up in their very best.
Moments later while everyone was seated, they calmly walked in front of everyone, and promptly got married. It took everyone by surprise, and to me that's one of the most romantic gestures ever. I view love as defiance to every obstacle and human being; that these two people chose each other out of billions of others, and if it's their union, they'll do it their own way.
In 1990 Ed adopted me. He didn't have too. I was already five, and he'd already raised a child. He was in his 50's and retired. To take on a young child, especially a difficult hell-raiser like myself, is not something most people in his position would ever fathom. At least in the realm that they would claim this child as their own. Personally, if I were him I would've washed my hands of this trainwreck from the beginning.
But he has been there every single step of the way. Teaching me how to read, encouraging me to be my own person, instilling ideals of morals and integrity and honesty and how to be a man in every proper sense of the term, when so many fathers these days, biological fathers at that, don't give a second thought of their child. But there he was.
On the hardest days of my life, on the best days of my life. To discipline me when I was out of line, or to congratulate me when I did right. Every step of the way he's been there. Even now, with me being a 23 year old kid, he's never stopped being a father, not for a second.
I got a second chance to have a positive role model in my life. I've been blessed by whatever force, be it karma, or God or whatever sci-fi book it is that Scientologists worship. While he was a hard working man, and still continues to be, and has somehow found the fountain of youth (he still could pass for early 50's even though he's 73) he's always encouraged me well beyond that of most biological fathers.
I'm lucky to even know him. I'm lucky to say honestly that I consider him my best friend. While I do like to work with my hands (a very little known fact about me) I have chosen the path less traveled, to try to work in the field of "art". Most men from his generation would look down on that with much chagrin, especially those who drove trucks, worked on ranches and could rebuild an engine blindfolded. But Ed constantly pushes me to keep writing, to keep playing music, to keep discovering and chasing what it is that makes me happy, and to always do my best...and then try and top that.
Fathers so often get overlooked. So often fathers are the ones that take on as little responsibility as possible, as well, because it's "the womans job."
He stepped up to bat when a man who helped create me wouldn't even own up an ounce to being a decent human being.
At times I wonder where it is I came from. That biological father...I don't even know his name. I doubt I ever will. It's a piece to this puzzle that I'll never have, and I'll always wonder why he viewed me as such a bottom rung being, or how you could create a living being and then discard it as a piece of trash.
But like they say....one man's trash is anothers treasure.
And I hope one day I make Ed proud. He's been something more than a father, more than a friend. I thank whatever it is that allowed me to meet such a terrific human being, because I know I truly could have never done anything that was deserving of something this great.
I say thank you Ed. I love you very much.
-Until tomorrow.
Little, Big
3 months ago
