FLAWED GENIUS-24

Driven To Create

Chapter 24 (first draft)

Ups And Downs

When Dad picked me up at the bus station in Evansville, he asked me if I was doing okay. What could I say but "Sure," and wait for the hammer to fall. It never did. This was Dad at his most unexplainable. His son (me) had acted very poorly in Mt. Carmel, which did not reflect well upon Bill Cowling, and, to boot, damaged property under the control of Uncle Jay, who now had Dad by the financial short and curlies.

Dad held an interest in The Cowling Company, a privately held business. To buy or sell any amount of ownership was a two party affair: buyer and seller. The value was up to mutual agreement. Uncle Jay wrote Dad that the store would refurbish Carol's 1961 VW Beetle. Dad would have the choice of forwarding a check when the job was done or surrendering an appropriate amount of Dad's interest in the store to cover the work done.

This situation was brewing behind the scenes. Dad easily could have yelled at me about it, but did not. My actions had put Jay in control of what to charge Dad. The mutual would be gone in valuing Dad's interest, now that he would be forced to pay for the trouble I created.

I was so relieved whenever Dad cooled off from erupting over one of my goofs that I did not stop to think about what was going through his head. Did he love me so much that he could not criticize me after an initial blowup? Or what? He never grounded me or worked with me to make good on something I screwed up. I know that I hid things from him in my teens that would have upset him.

"Jesus Christ, you can buy a new VW for what Jay's charging to fix Carol's car," Dad said when he opened a letter from the store two months later. He grumbled some more, then dropped it. That was the end of the VW saga. I felt bad but hesitated to relax, knowing it could crop up again.

*****

Aunt Ruthie came running up the stairs at Grandmother's to tell us JFK had been shot in Dallas. It was Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963. I was packing my bag, getting ready for Dad to come pick me up. "Packing" is a loose term. I stuffed a pair of jeans, underwear, and a couple t-shirts haphazardly in the little bag along with my contact lens stuff.

I was trying my best to stay out of trouble. That summer, I had gotten my first pair of contact lenses. My vision was not good. I had gotten bifocal glasses in the second grade. Dr. Cooper at Ridgeways in Evansville had told us that the prescription provided by the optometrist in Mt. Carmel had nearly damaged my eyes. I needed contact lenses to stop the attrition.

Magazines in his office described the acclaim Dr. Cooper's pioneering contact lens development had received from Indiana University's Optometry Department. We felt lucky such an accomplished professional was addressing my eye problem. Sitting in his secondary office, getting used to the hard lenses in my eyes, I asked Dr. Cooper if I could open my eyes underwater while wearing my lenses, or if I would have to take them out to go swimming. I liked to do laps underwater in the deep end of the Mt. Carmel pool, but needed to have my eyes open to keep from banging against the concrete wall at each end.

Dr. Cooper said I could do so as long as I only opened my eyes partway. Sounded good to me. A week later, I swam laps in the deep end of the pool. When I came up for air, water was pouring down my face, distorting my vision. Took a few laps to realize I wasn't seeing very well. My contacts had floated out sometime soon after I first opened my eyes underwater. I panicked, but soon learned nothing could be done to find them in the pool. I had lost my new contacts. Dad was none too happy, but calmed down when Grandmother said she would pay for the new pair.

Tim thought my contacts were cool. One day at Grandmother's, he popped one of my lenses into his eye. "I can do this he said. "No problem." He got his contacts two weeks later.

Tim never slept enough. Sports, homework, and goofing off conspired to keep him up late. Freda got him up for school religiously. When I met him in the fourth grade, Tim had dark circles under his eyes. By the time he made it to school, he was awake but still blurry-eyed.

A few months after he got his contacts, during the winter of our eighth grade. I forgot my lunch money one day. We had Mrs. Gwaltney for homeroom. She was a terror. Would send one of us to the office for looking cross-eyed at her. I cruised by Tim's row and whispered. "Can I borrow some money?"

Tim looked up, gulped, and said, "Sure," then turned white as a sheet. His chronic lack of sleep meant his eyes were gunked up every morning. Eye gunk stuck to his contacts. Sitting in homeroom, Tim had popped his lenses out and put them in his mouth to clean them off. When I came along behind him and asked for a loan, he was happy to oblige. Looking up and back to reply to me as I had a hand on the back of his shoulder, he swallowed his contacts. After turning pale, he rushed to the office to call home. His mother, Freda, brought his old glasses to school, which he had to wear for the next two days. Tim told me Freda made him poop on a cookie sheet until she found his missing contacts. In those days, contacts were made of plastic that flexed little and prevented oxygen from getting to the eye. In the long run, they proved to be less than ideal to wear for decades. Gas permeable lenses solved the problem in the late 1970s. The hard contacts were great for sticking in your mouth, though, or cleaning off with soap and water after going through the body's digestive system.

I felt bad. Tim felt worse and was mortified to have to poop on a cookie sheet. Freda was determined not to pay for another set of contact lenses. Overall, in our youth, I caused Tim more problems than he caused me.

*****

Impressed by his articulated intelligence, Dad had voted for Adlai Stevenson in both the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. We favored JFK in the 1960 election for similar reasons. "We," meaning Dad, talked him up, and I parroted his words. JFK's assassination hit our family hard, as it did most Americans and many people around the world.

Dad and I spent the long weekend huddled in his Evansville apartment, watching four days of nonstop coverage of JFK's death, our nation's morning, and his funeral on our small black and white television. Kim joined us part of the time. Jan remained in California, brewing some family drama of her own, unbeknownst to us.

I missed a few days of school before and after that Thanksgiving vacation. When I got back to class, I learned our Christmas vacation assignment was to make a President Kennedy scrapbook. Dad thought it was a great idea. We collected and cut out newspaper and magazine articles for the next month.

For my thirteenth birthday eight months earlier, Dad had given me a professional grade 13 x 15 inch, 28 ring photo binder with ten pages of black matte cardstock in clear plastic sleeves on which he had laid out 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 photos of our karting life. The last page was a handwritten letter on white cardstock, telling me what a great kid I was. It was a tremendous gift, but I was embarrassed to receive it. Dad went so overboard as though he could make me into what he wanted me to be by putting it in writing.

Dad laid out the JFK album the same way. When I handed it in to Mrs. Gwaltney, she looked at me for a long moment, like she was about to say something. I knew Dad had done most of the work on the project, and wondered if she was going to call me on it. Instead, she said, "This is very nice, Bob."

Relieved, I nodded and went to my desk. I knew the album was very nice. It was laid out and presented better than most, if any, teachers could do, let alone a student. That was Dad. No halfway measures.

*****

Jan arrived home suddenly from California in the spring of 1964. Dad was angry and perplexed. He shared little with me. After a brief search, he took her to a Catholic boarding school not far over the river in Kentucky. She barely made it to the end of the school year. When Dad picked Jan up in late May, she was snarky. The nun who was Head of School told Dad in Jan's presence that the school "would be" at capacity the next school year, and he would need to find another suitable "placement" for her. Jan was happy to know she did not have to go back, but it was the only thing she was pleased about.

Gradually, I learned most of what had happened in California. Mother and Bill were deep into their martinis on a daily basis. As with many people, alcohol distorted emotions and thoughts. Jan upped her manipulation skills. Unhappy with herself, she readily focused her feelings on the two adults in the room. Over Christmas, Bill and Jan ganged up on Mom and had her committed on a seven day stay at a local hospital's psychiatric ward. I heard nothing about how they managed this.

Something else happened that caused Jan to be sent back to Evansville. I was not privy to those discussions. Dad muttered under his breath a lot. Livy and Kris in California must have been on an emotional roller coaster through all of this.

With Jan and me living with Dad for the summer, fireworks were a daily occurrence. Radio station selection and volume were a constant source of conflict in the Vette. Being smaller than Jan, I had to ride in the middle. Often less than fun.

Dad's Corvette was stolen in the summer. Pissed him off seriously. Third car stolen, one twice. He had to wait thirty days before the insurance company paid him. Still, he could not afford a new one. He opted for a 1964 1/2 Mustang at Carlton's Ford in Mt. Carmel. Had no choice about the color. The Mustang was turquoise, similar to the green Vette, and coincidentally nearly the same color as the repainted stolen '56 T-Bird when it was found on the last day before the insurance company would have owned it.

Dad was not a fan of green, especially after Billy Vukovich died in his green Indy racer in 1955, from what was called a "bad luck" crash. During that Indianapolis 500, Billy roared into turn two on the heels of three drivers. Roger Ward came out of the turn sideways "on ice," flipped twice, and miraculously landed on his wheels. The two drivers behind him spun and veered, trying to avoid crashing. Billy drove into this melee full throttle, tried to go high to miss everyone, hit the railing, skidded across it, then went over, hitting three parked cars behind the track, and flipped end over end, bursting into flames, trapping him. Crashes and driver deaths were much too common in those days, with the race cars having far more power than adhesion.

Dad had bought the green Vette after his '56 T-Bird was stolen. Needing a car quickly, he chose from a limited inventory. His later decision to get a four seat car was another hurried one, driven by Jan being home and his plans to marry Kim. He wanted to buy a house for all five of us to live in.

I learned about these developments haphazardly. The green Mustang showed up one day. We went house hunting soon thereafter. Dad's work income was erratic, but small inheritances kept coming his way from the sale of portions of Cowling farmland and oil well income from the remainder.

The four of us, Dad, Kim, Jan, and I, covered the north end of Evansville, looking at new and not so new homes. In one development off Stringtown Road, Dad named three of the dozen houses we saw, "Ugly," Double Ugly," and "Triple Ugly." The rest of us could have lived in any of them, but not Dad. He eventually bought a tract home on North Park on Tremont Road. He also purchased a two-thirds acre wooded lot on the other side of Stringtown Road from the "uglies," and designed a three pavilion home for it. He never felt financially secure enough to build this house, though. It became known in our family as "the lot."

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