Introduction: Life with Dad prepared me well for the military.
Don't misunderstand this chapter's message. My father is my hero, and the role model I always needed. However, the background given here won't make it sound that way. In fact, it will probably sound like he was one mean SOB. If he sounds that way, it's because from the perspective of my youth, he probably was. Dad traded being 'buddies' with me as a child, for a mature, understanding love and deeper friendship as an adult. That's the way every father should do it. Looking back, he was just what I needed, and I wouldn't trade a second (except for maybe that one time when…).
Dr. James Elliot Ossian was born in Red Oak, Iowa, in 1938. I'm told he went by Tod because too many youngsters in the area were already pegged with derivatives of James; Jim, Jimmy, etc. Somebody else told me that Tod was short for 'toddler' or Elliot. I get the former, but I never figured out the latter, so we'll go with the first version.
Dad was quite an ornery youngster himself. I'm told he grew up as ornery as all of us boys put together, so he probably deserved every thing we put him through. I can just hear his mother saying, "You're going to have one just like you." Little did she know he'd get cursed with four.
Dad was a hell of a ball player. Sure, everybody's Dad will recall stories of heroic performances for their boys' entertainment, but my Dad was for real. He's been inducted into the Clarinda A's Hall of Fame, alongside legendary players like Ozzie Smith, and Von Hayes, and some not-yet, maybe never, legendary players like Chuck Knoblauch and Andy Benes.
In his youth, Dad had the luxury of being born to two catchers. My Grandfather, Paul David Ossian, was a catcher for the Beatrice Blues, a AA club out of Beatrice, Nebraska, and my Grandmother, Mildred Ossian, was the only left-handed girls' catcher in NAIA history with the Peru State Bobcats. He could work on his pitching anytime he wished because he had parents who were always eager to 'have a catch'. He credits them for assisting his invention of the curve' ball. If you ever saw him throw it, you'd almost believe it.
The time came when he had to choose between a contract to pitch with the Chicago White Sox and a scholarship to Iowa State. At that time, pro contracts weren't nearly as lucrative as they are now, and my folks already had their fourth child, so getting a free education was the simple and obvious choice.
When I started this book, Dad was sixty-four (64) years old. He is one of those unfortunate people to have been born on September 11th , except it doesn't seem to bother him, since the first sixty-two of them were just his birthday.
Except for the 'Ossian appliance curse', most of the remaining misfortunes my father experienced were caused by any number or combination of his sons. I'll leave my brother's stories for future books written by them, unless they are part of mine, which mostly, they are.
You'd think, my being the third of four boys, my father (one of three boys) would be accustomed to the problems an adolescent male could create. I wasn't any more mischievous than my other brothers. I just have this weird shit-o-meter that pegs every time I dare to delve into devilishness. To include them all here would require volumes, so I'll just attempt to tackle the most memorable and humorous.
Where to start? Throwing rocks at retards or bombing the neighbor's tin shed with cinder blocks? I guess we could take them in that order. They're short, but they will give you some perspective as to how the weirdness got started.
I must have been in Junior High in Big Rapids, Michigan, because of the route I remember taking home from school. It was called Intermediate school then, so it was somewhere between the 6th and 8th grade, '76 to '78. Wait a minute……it's been 25 years since I could sit straight, so it must have been '77, when I was a 7th grader.
We've established that I was routinely on the way home from school, but what I never figured out was why was Dad walking home half a block behind me? Before writing this story, it never dawned on me to ask. I still don't feel completely safe bringing up this story to Dad, so I think I'll wait a few more years before I broach the subject.
Right to the point already. Dad was a highly respected educator in the state of Michigan and continues to be, a highly respected educator in the state of Nebraska. He's currently the department chair of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but for the better part of our school years, he was the high school Principal or Superintendent in the district where my siblings and I attended school.
Being the son of a professional educator, you were expected to abide by all the rules to a much higher standard than the typical youngster. I wasn't going in for all that. I don't believe my older brothers thought it was fair either, and just to prove it, my brother Rick got in trouble so bad, that Dad had to kick him out of school. Actually, a first year high school Principal, Dennis Whitman, had to do it, but he called Dad, his superintendent, for approval first. Dad never kicked me out of school. Probably because most of these stories didn't happen there. Maybe I did do something smart in trying to avoid all the trouble at school. After watching two older brothers receive 'double jeopardy' for their troubles, I learned that being punished once for what you did, and once for embarrassing the family name was a much worse deal than just causing trouble somewhere else.
On this particularly troubling day, I didn't have anything better to do, and I saw a kid that was in my class. He didn't attend too many with me because he attended Special Education classes. Today, I know that Special Education classes aren't for idiots or rocks. They are for students who need some extra help or have a specific learning disability. Many of them are smarter than you and me.
The treatment I inflicted on this poor boy is shameful now, but at the time, I didn't know better. I was in the middle of pitching rocks at this poor kid. He was in the middle of his yard, minding his own business, but now trying to figure out the nomenclature of what in the hell was landing all around him and where the hell they were coming from.
My father was about to teach me about picking on people. From my perspective, it appeared that he had no intention of teaching me that it was wrong, he was teaching me what would happened to you if your father caught you. I didn't even see it coming. My worst Godzilla nightmares couldn't compare to this. The shit-my-pants feeling was much worse than sending out the testers and accidentally filling your shorts. It was definitely one for a before and after weight. I should have gone to a shrink for therapy.
I learned later in life to duck the inevitable slap up side the head after seeing the brother walking beside me lurch forward from the launching kick-in-the-ass he'd just received. To hear the 'whoosh' pass overhead was relieving and terrifying at the same time. It gave you time to brace yourself, but it also gave him time to reload. Maybe I should have avoided that reaction after all. They say hindsight is 20-20.
I'm going to apologize to my brother again before writing this next story. David really took a beating for me on this one, and I would have remained unscathed for eternity had it not been for his buddy's big mouth.
I was a freshman in high school, not into the growth spurt yet, so I was very similar to the size of my younger brother and his friends. I can't remember what David was doing on this day, but I remember like it was yesterday what I was up to, and it was no good.
David's friend, Matt Vance (funny, he joined the Marines too), and I had this idea. Matt was a tall lanky kid that didn't usually come up with his own ideas. He used to be a pretty good follower, and spent most of his days in my brother's shadow. I can't remember who came up with the idea first. I hope it wasn't me, but given Matt's tendency for following, it probably was. Even if it wasn't me, I went along with it readily enough.
Behind the Vance's house, probably 50 feet across the yard, there sat a garage. It was positioned next to the alley. On the adjacent property, his neighbors had a tin shed where they kept all their preserved fruit. There must have been hundreds of glass Ball jars in that shed. Can you see this bad idea coming yet?
Matt and I decided to haul cinder blocks onto his father's garage roof, to see if we could launch them onto the tin shed in the neighbor's yard. It was a good ten feet away, and we just wanted to see if we could hit it. I wish I'd had another synapse fire off before we followed through with this idea.
I'm sure somewhere in my mind, I wondered ('knew' would be more accurate) what would happen to the roof of the shed if we could hit it, but we went about hauling up the blocks anyway. I don't even remember who heaved the first block, but what I do remember is we had such a good time watching the roof cave in that we continued to heave blocks. The first block hit it like it was only aluminum foil. After a few minutes, we were<