My Father And Me

March 24th, 2008 at 06:19pm B Jon Traylor 199

There was a time there, oh, along about 1980, when my Dad and I were just bachelors.  My mom took off with some rich doctor to Florida, never to be heard of again until 12 years later (another story.)  My dad and I were close, very close.  We hunted and fished and played football and baseball, drove trucks and tractors and worked cattle, etc., etc.  He wasn't even my real Dad.  I'd find that fact out about six years later. 

During those years, he lost his trophy wife (she truly was a beautiful woman), and all he had from her was me.  He was my best friend.  I was all-state and as good as I was because he was my teacher.  Kinda funny, that is athletic prowess I gained was from a teacher whom was a national champion calf-roper, on scholarship to Texas A&M University, hauling truckloads of chickens across Texas to Albuquerque, NM. every weekend he wasn't rodeoing.  But he knew I wasn't a calf roper.  I wasn't even his biological son.  But I was popular, driven, likeable, extrovertive, active, and a pretty good athlete.  I remember all the hundreds of times he'd come home covered in grease and dust and tell me to grab my mit as we loaded up in that ol' IH pickup truck, headed towards town to shag balls on one of the baseball diamonds.

He'd hit balls to me hard, really hard, teaching me how to field.  He'd throw junk to me at the plate, teaching me how to hit curves, fastballs, change-ups and sliders.  He taught me how to think at the plate, to expect what was coming next, how to play the percentages in my head and be a student of the game.  I wasn't much of a homerun hitter, but I never hit lower than .450..  And he threw thousands of football passes to me, when I could tell he was dog tired.  Honestly, there wasn't a kid in West Texas who could outplay me on either field.  I was good, and I owe much of that to an ol' country boy rodeo bum, calf-roper.  I got drafted by St. Louis in the middle rounds of the 1986 draft, fresh out of high school.  Instead of living off 900 bucks a month and sleeping on buses and in hotel rooms while playing rookie ball in Alaska, I chose college.  Good choice.  (Another long, difficult story, painful story.... referred to as complete knee reconstruction surgery, knee cap knocked half way around my leg, pcl, mcl and acl complete separations, and five knee surgeries.)

During those years, while chasing girls and striving for straight A's, we attended a spirit filled, non-demoninational church, Agape Christian Fellowship.  I saw things that to this day I'll never forget.  The preacher, Jay Newsom, was a serious Jimmy Swaggert clone.  He moved me, made me sit at attention, made me think, and made me believe.  I witnessed people waving their hands, dancing, speaking in tongues, being so full of the spirit that they would pass out, fall in the aisles, convulsing, praising, talking in a manner that was complete gibberish to me, yet in a manner that I'll never forget. 

Something happened there, all the time.  Was (is) that something that is perhaps real?  Is that the type of spiritual profoundness and realness that I seek?  Who knows.  But I saw it for a few years.  I'll never forget it.  Was it real?  I think so.  Was it perhaps faked?  I'm not sure.  But what lives on with me is this:

Just before I started high school, we abruptly stopped going to that church.  I found out soon after that my pastor was sleeping with about half the women in the church.  He was healing people, supposedly through God, each Sunday.  He was fucking the congregation, literally, every opportunity he could. 

I think its then that I started to get real.  I think its then that I began my own spriritual journey, separate from whatever any one man or woman would preach to me.

I don't have the answers.  I hope, though, that by my own belief and choices and faith, that one day if I'm lucky enough to enter Heaven, that then I will know all the answers.  Until then, I'll just keep trying to be a good man and live by the Golden Rules. 

I didn't end up in the majors, but what really is the majors in our spiritual journey through this chosen life? 

Just some thoughts.  Good night.  --J

Entry Filed under: Carbondale, Colorado, Family, Fly Fishing, Garfield County, Aspen Life Post, United Post