Happy Birthday, Dad!

Raymond Harold "Pert" Woolum was born on October 28, 1930. He would have been 76 years old today, had he not died on June 1, 1996.

This picture epitomizes what I remember most about my dad and what his friends in Kellogg are referring to when they see me and say, "Jesus Christ, I sure miss old Pert, that son of a bitch." I guess you can tell: son of a bitch is used as a term of high praise in Kellogg, as well as a way to demean some one. I never heard any one call my dad a son of a bitch in a mean way. It was always with affection.

I think I took the phrase "you'll go far" too literally. I think it meant that if I was going to succeed in the world, I had to go far away from Kellogg in order to do it. I learned this idea about the American idea of "going far" from Bill Kauffman. Kauffman has made me think a lot about this and, for now, I'm thinking about it this way, in relation to my dad:

When I was younger, I was guilty of throwing out the dishes with the dish water when I took my family's and community's advice and left Kellogg. I thought to leave Kellogg meant that I should leave behind all that Kellogg stood for to me. Chief among those things, for me, was what I perceived to be strong anti-intellectual strain.

Let me digress. I don't know if you've ever been bitten by the life of the mind bug, but its bite is very intoxicating. It's not like alcohol because it doesn't depress your functions. No. It's more like speed or cocaine, more like meth. The intellectual bug makes the world seem vivid, alive with new color, new light, new ways of doing things. It can be a born again experience to be converted to the life of the mind. This is the way I experienced it.

And, although I may not have said it outwardly, inwardly I felt, at one time, that Kellogg was an inferior place, lacking in sophistication and intellectual life. I had put on the blinders of book learning.

The blinders started to fall quite a bit when I came back to Kellogg for my 20th high school reunion, one of the best three days of my life. As I had the chance to talk with my classmates and as my dad and I hosted some of the boys in the back yard, drinking coffee and shooting the breeze, I felt this deep tie between me and my old friends. The tie wasn't intellectual or political. Far from it. It was a tie that had to do with decency, a way of seeing the world, a way of talking, a way of helping out others. I hadn't felt so good about my life, ever, as I did at that reunion and I began to realize that what I felt good about was rooted in Kellogg and rooted in my dad, the force in our family who kept us in Kellogg.

I had quit drinking in January 1985. I was deep into a long stretch of abstinence from alcohol at this reunion. I had a condescending and patronizing attitude toward alcohol. It wasn't so bad in relation to my peers, but was worse toward my dad and his friends. I so bought into the idea that to amount to anything you had to leave Kellogg, that I had lumped my dad and his friends together and looked at them with about four parts snootiness for every six parts of enjoyment.

I just didn't understand my dad. I didn't understand what all those days and nights drinking with men had come to mean. I saw my dad as having pissed away his life. He'd stayed in Kellogg. He'd stayed at the Bunker Hill. He lacked ambition. He hadn't gone far.

Then he got liver cancer. Mom called me in early May to say had only a month to live. I was able to make arrangments at Lane Community College and take a leave without pay. I came home.

Then my eyes were opened. Friend after friend, drinking friend after drinking friend, golf buddy after golf buddy, fellow sports fan after sports fan filed in our house and reached out to him in his dying days. I got it. Those days and nights of drinking, working hard at the Bunker Hill, bowling in league, and telling tall tales, watching football and baseball games, rooting hard against the Cougars and Notre Dame, drinking more, they hadn't been what some head up his ass 18th century moralist might have called idle recreation. I could see in the way these men comforted my dad and in the way his friends filled the church for his funeral and I see now in the reverent look his friends have on their face when they tell me they miss the old son of a bitch, that those days and nights were about making life-long friends. You can't have those if you go far. You've got to stay home.

That big open laugh you see on my dad's face in the picture above? It's because he's home. He's in our back yard. I'm not sure what is the occasion. It might just be having a few Heidelbergs or grilling some steaks. Sometimes I think this picture was taken the day of one of my two sister's wedding. I don't know. But it's a picture that could be captioned, "He didn't go far."
Nope. He stayed home. He enjoyed every benefit of not going far. That's why he looks so full of joy in this picture.

Happy 76th, Pert, you old son of a bitch.

The Crummy Cougars

This afternoon, my graduate school alma mater, Oregon, plays the Washington State Cougars in football. As a sports fan growing up in Kellogg, I was raised to loathe the Cougars, the Crummy Cougars. My dad and all of his friends never referred to them simply as the Cougars. They were the Crummy Cougars. I don't know if I've ever been in the company of such a deeply-rooted hatred for a single team since. I'm not quite sure why my dad and almost all of his friends hated the Crummy Cougars so much. Wrong side of the state line from the Vandals? Jerry Turnbow went to the University of Washington for a year or os so all of his brothers, friends, and my dad hated the Cougars? Did someone get pulled over for speeding in Pullman? Was it because Harry Missildine came to Kellogg during the Rich Porter basketball hey-day and had a few too many Cutty Sarks and water and got pithy and pissy with the Silver Valley crew at Joe and Henry's? I don't really know the reason. All I can say is if you have any of the old-timers from Joe and Henry's on your Christmas gift list, do not give them Cougar Gold.

How intense was this hatred? Bob Turnbow, the oldest of the Cougar-hating Kellogg Turnbow brothers, was part of a Kellogg entourage about forty years ago at a basketball game at Bohler Gym. He and my dad left their seats for some pre-game rest room relief and on their return my dad suddenly saw Bob go to his knees, but continue walking.
"Jesus Christ, Bob! What the hell are you doing?"
"Goddamnit, Pert! We took too goddamn long in the pisser.... I can't stand for the Crummy Cougar goddamn fight song!"

Dad and Bob and the other members of this Silver Valley posse had tickets to see WSU play UCLA in Bohler because the Silver Valley Bogie Bread man, Mike Turner, had married UCLA assistant coach Denny Crum's mother. (Yes, that's right. Denny Crum got us Crummy Cougar tickets.) The seats were right behind the UCLA bench. I got one of these tickets in 1969, Lew Alcindor's senior year, before he became Kareem. Maybe there were fifteen or twenty of us from Kellogg, the only people in Bohler rooting, and rooting hard for UCLA.

If you haven't been to Bohler Gym, it was a classic old school gym that gave the Cougars a trememdous home court advantage. Seating started just beyond the out of bound lines on the long sides of the court, and the seats rose sraight up. Then, on one of the wide sides of the gym was a balcony, packed with huge signs taunting the Cougars' opponents. My favorite in 1969 showed a black player with a huge afro and read, "Sidney Wickes, you're so bush your mother was a tree." Classic Whitman County smack. (That sign would probably be removed today by the Enforcers of Appropriateness.)

The UCLA players were seated, waiting for player introductions. I couldn't believe my fifteen year old eyes. My dad had his hand on Lew Alcindor's right rib cage. Dad was talking in his ear. I thought, "Jesus, Dad. He's been the NCAA Player of the Year two years running. His coach is freakin' John Wooden. He's learned the Wooden Pyramid of Success. What are you telling him? Be sure to screen your man off the boards? Let the game come to you? I can get you a job at the Zinc Plant? Don't be like me!? " Whatever he was saying, Alcindor maintained his expressionless gaze, chewing calmly on a wad of gum, staring straight ahead. If he needed motivation to excell against the Cougs, I don't think my dad's pep talk was having that strong of an effect.

It wasn't long that night in February of 1969 before it became obvious to the three thousand fans rising up behind us, that this Kellogg gang was rooting boisterously for UCLA. Silver Valley men stood beet-faced to challenge every call that went the Cougar's way. When Harry Missildine walked to the press table he was showered with verbal abuse: "Sit down, Pencil Head." "Hey, Muscle Head, get out of the way!" "Sober up, Harry!" "Hey, Missildine, crawl back in your hole." "What tree did you fall out of!" The verbal abuse continued toward Marv Harshman and Jud Heathcoate. At one point, Dick Costa went to the concession stand and bought an ice cream bar and handed it to the famously animated Heathecoate: "Here, cool off, coach." Reporting that Heathecoate said, "Uh, gee thanks!", Costa inspired doubled over laughter from the guys from Kellogg.

It wasn't long that night before the Silver Valley mob got just what they wanted: peppered. Ice cubes, wads of gum, popcorn containers, pop cups, all hurled down on these UCLA boosters from Kellogg. Other abuse came pouring down. The Kellogg guys loved it. They knew they had the Cougar fans right where they wanted them. They'd got their goat. "What's the score, Crummy Cougars?" "Booger the Cougars!"

UCLA won. Silver Valley Cougar baiting and hating triumphed once again. As I sign off this post, the Cougars are beating the Oregon Ducks 13-3 at halftime. I've mellowed considerably toward the Cougars since moving away from the Silver Valley. But, any time I find myself wishing the Cougars well or feeling happy that they have defeated, say Oregon State or the University of Washington or have made it to the Rose Bowl, I can't feel that happiness immediately. There is a mechanism inside me, an emotional checkpoint, created by years and years of adamant formation, the Booger the Cougars filter that that good feeling for the Cougars must pass through, before I can feel good for them. But, I have no problem being on my feet when I hear the Cougar fight song.