If you asked me, right now, what it is that I’m doin’, I would simply answer….reading my scars. Yep, that’s right, reading my scars. Your body is an almanac of how you have treated it, all the years of your life.
You don’t get to where I’m at, in an active lifestyle, without scars to remember.
I look down at my hands, on the keyboard, pretty twisted and knarled up now, but that is from heavy use. The scar on my left hand, between the first and middle finger….1955, standing on the Main Deck of my ship, USS Bryce Canyon (AD36), Second Division Morning Muster. We are at Sea, between Hawaii and Japan. A new guy that had just come aboard the ship when we stopped at the Naval Base in Honolulu, a real quiet, moody guy, who said nothing to nobody, as a rule…turned to me and said the only words I ever heard him say, “Hey, let me see your knife.” All sailors carry knives, in a leather scabbard on their belt, razor sharp, in case you get a rope wrapped around you or something and are about to get dragged overboard. I reached down and unsnapped my blade, took it out and handed it to the guy. He promptly began cutting on me. He let out a squall, and took a swipe at my face with the blade…I threw up my left hand to block it, and the blade cut through bone, gristle, muscle and anything else that you happen to have between the fingers of your hand . The blade hung in the bones of my hand and he let go of it, as some of the other guys grabbed him, wrestled him to the deck, and held him while he continued screaming. Yeah, I know, I was kind surprised too…I reckon he just flipped out and I was handy. He was locked up in the brig ‘til we got to Japan and then they shipped him back to the States and a Medical Discharge. The result, for me, was that I could never make bar chords on my guitar. Didn’t matter much cause I used a capo, tuned my big E String down to dropped D, and kept on playing.
The Scar on my right eyebrow and forehead is from the metal window dividers on the drivers side wing window, on my ’39 Pontiac, holding my head out the window to see where I was going, in the pitch dark of night, playing hide and seek with another carload of friends from High School…and getting found, at 20 miles per hour, by Bucky Goss in his Folks ’49 Chevy. Bucky was 14, I was 15, neither one of us had a driver’s license, and it didn’t matter now cause I no longer had an operating car…the ’39 and the ’49 were pretty well welded together. I got my head sewed up by the Pleasant Hope Chiropractor, and after he got through I realized why he hadn’t tried to be a brain surgeon. I looked like where they sewed Frankenstein together, only not as handsome. That scar was 1951.
The Scar on my left shoulder came in 1956, I was home from the Navy on leave and helping my dad string a new barbed wire fence. Dad liked to really string them tight. This time he tightened it a little to tight…it snapped like a fishing line…except this line had really sharp barbs all in it. It whipped back and sliced across my shoulder, laying it open to the bone. But, to me it is a memory marker, a happy time in my life when I was working with my dad. I treasure it.
The Scar on my back hip, from when the tractor turned over on the ice, back on the farm, when I was in High Sfoool. When my dad picked the tractor up off of me and I crawled out before the gas that was leaking could ignite. Another dad memory, from 1950.
The lumpy spot on my jaw, from a blunt instrument laid upside my jaw, in an altercation on the road. Not a good memory marker. 1970.
The knot, still on my head, where the horse threw me, and I fell on a rock and knocked all my brains out…which fit perfect for the rest of my life being a starving musician. 1948.
So, yeah, I’m just sitting here, on the porch, having a little sweet tea and visitin’ my scars. Kinda like a book of memories, ‘cept most of these hurt when the memory was being made. Stan
No comments:
Post a Comment