sound the wind made in the pines as I lay in my bed, prayers said and waiting for sleep. I remember my father coming out of the garage with a wrench in his hand and his MORTON FUEL OIL cap pulled low on his forehead, blood oozing through the grease on his knuckles. I remember watching Ken MacKenzie introducing Popeye cartoons on The Mighty 90 Show , and how I was forced to give up the TV on the afternoons when Claire and her friends arrived, because they wanted to watch American Bandstand and see what the girls were wearing. I remember sunsets as red as the blood on my fatherâs knuckles, and how that makes me shiver now.
I remember a thousand other things, mostly good ones, but I didnât sit down at my computer to put on rose-colored glasses and wax nostalgic. Selective memory is one of the chief sins of the old, and I donât have time for it. They were not all good things. We lived in the country, and back then, country life was hard. I suppose it still is.
My friend Al Knowles got his left hand caught in his fatherâs potato grader and lost three fingers before Mr. Knowles could get the balky, dangerous thing turned off. I was there that day, and remember how the belts turned red. I remember how Al screamed.
My father (along with Terry, his faithful if clueless acolyte) got the Road Rocket runningâGod, what a gorgeous, blasting clatter it made when he revved the engine!âand turned it over to Duane Robichaud, newly painted and with the number 19 emblazoned on its side, to race at the Speedway in Castle Rock. In the first lap of the first heat, the idiot rolled it and totaled it. Duane walked away without a scratch. âAccelerator pedal must have stuck,â he said, grinning his foolish grin, only he said it ass -celerator, and my father said the only ass was the one behind the wheel.
âThat will teach you to ever trust anything valuable to a Robichaud,â my mother said, and my father stuffed his hands so deep into his pockets that the top of his underwear showed, perhaps to ensure they would not escape and go someplace they werenât supposed to.
Lenny Macintosh, the postmanâs son, lost an eye when he bent down to see why the cherry bomb heâd put in an empty pineapple tin didnât go off.
My brother Conrad lost his voice.
So, noâthey werenât all good things.
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On the first Sunday that Reverend Jacobs took the pulpit, there were more people present than had been there in all the years fat, white-haired, good-natured Mr. Latoure had kept the church open, preaching his well-meant but obscure sermons and reliably welling up at the eyes on Motherâs Day, which he called Motherâs Sunday (these details came courtesy of my own mother, years laterâI barely remembered Mr. Latoure at all). Instead of twenty congregants there were easily four times that number, and I remember how their voices soared during the Doxology: Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, Praise Him ye creatures here below . It gave me goosebumps. Mrs. Jacobs was no slouch on the pedal organ, either, and her blond hairâheld back with a plain black ribbonâglowed many colors in the light falling through our only stained glass window.
Walking home from church en famille , our good Sunday shoes kicking up little puffs of dust, I found myself just behind my parents, so heard Mom expressing her approval. Also her relief. âI thought, him being so young and all, weâd get a lecture on civil rights, or banning the draft, or something like that,â she said. âInstead we got a very nice Bible-based lesson. I think people will come back, donât you?â
âFor awhile,â my father said.
She said, âOh, the big oil baron. The big cynic.â And punched his arm playfully.
As it turned out, they were both sort of right. Attendance at our church never slumped back to Mr. Latoure levelsâwhich meant as few as a