Your author, step-mother Terri, my Dad Jerry Schuett, and brother Jeff.
I’m not the only one out there with conflicting feelings about my parents, or any specific parent. I can’t be. And this blog and other blogs I’ve written confirms this for me.
Today, had he lived my Dad would have been 75 years old. Unfortunately he was only on this planet until he was 64. At 48 years of age I can say with far more assuredness than I felt at the time of his death, that’s too damned young.
My Dad died of liver disease brought on in part by medical malpractice and in part, I’m guessing, with his life long habit of enjoying a cocktail whenever he felt like enjoying a cocktail.
Jerome Mathis Schuett was born September 26, 1937 to Delores and Shelby Schuett in Bellingham, Washington. He was born to people of moderate income and moderate everything else. Which is to say…he was born an American.
He was fiercely proud of being American, but his pride came from little effort of his own. He lived a life in which he tried to do what he wanted, when he wanted, and be damned anyone who in any way inhibited his selfish desires. He was American.
I clashed with my Dad through much of my teens and early adulthood. I never felt he was racist, but in today’s context few would say he wasn’t. He opposed me marrying a black woman. I distinctly remember jokes told in a family setting in my childhood that were racially tainted and disturbed me. But I also remember him speaking highly of people of color who impressed him. I remember him calling me Jackie Robinson for having ignored his opposition to marrying a black woman and saying, “You showed that it was all right”.
I felt he lacked ambition. And I felt a lack of respect for him because of it. But he worked for himself the last 27 years of his life, running his own business. Having done the same for the past seven years I have a new-found respect for how difficult that can be.
My Dad lost his temper far more than anyone would like. He never showed a reverence for Jesus, that I feel. My Dad seldom showed much reverence for anything that didn’t immediately serve his specific need or purpose. But he always counseled me not to hurt others. He always counseled me to NEVER start a fight, but if I did I better finish it.
It’s hard to imagine how my life would be shaped without him. But 25% of our nation is raised without a father. It’s frustrating to think of all the angry episodes he displayed for me in my formative years for all to see; and how in spite of my vow to not do the same how I have on far too many occasions done so.
What I can’t get over, what I can’t reconcile in my heart and in my mind……………………..is how much I miss him and wish he had been available to me for counsel during some of the more trying times in my life.
My Dad was an extremely flawed man. Which, I guess, means that I am likewise. Because I will never forget his death-bed. At one point when he could no longer talk I said, “I hope you’re proud of me.” Though he couldn’t speak he almost cried, and with his reaction told me all I needed to know to forgive him his many flaws, and to love him the rest of my life.
You have parents. Hopefully they are loving and free of the contradictions that cause my conflicted emotions for my father. But as I’ve written before, if he/she is there, if they are present in your life, they have fulfilled more than what more than 25% of American fathers fulfill. Be grateful. Because someday, like my friend Rob McBride told me a long time prior to my own fathers death and a short time after his own father’s death, “forgive him for your own sake. You’ll miss him/them when they’re gone.”
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The Author as a 6th Grader
I’ve been struck by a car going 35-40 miles per hour and lived to tell about it. Most kids eleven years old don’t survive to tell such a tale. Too many of them aren’t talked too enough to know they can prevent it by having a little fear.
The other day I was driving out of my neighborhood, past my local elementary. A young girl was walking on the sidewalk in front of me to my left. A car was parked on the right sidewalk and appeared to have people in it. I noticed all this as I was approaching. I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck and took my foot off the accelerator. Suddenly, without warning, without looking the little girl turned from the sidewalk directly into the street and directly into my path. She was walking to the car. Fortunately, I’d sensed this might happen. Though I was prepared for it, I still needed to quickly, firmly apply my brakes and screeched to a stop. My 7000-pound Chevy Avalanche skidded. I was only driving about 20 miles per hour. The little girl crossed in front of me and never looked up at me. She was about 3 feet from the grill of my truck.
As has happened too many times I was instantly transported back 37 years to January 5, 1976. The day I was almost killed doing something very similar to that unknowing little girl.
When I was 11 years old my older brother and I shared a Seattle Times paper route. Back then the Times was an afternoon paper and we took turns delivering the daily news to the residents around Crossroads in Bellevue, Washington. January 5 was a cold and rainy night. As is the norm at that time of year in the Northwest it was dark by 4:30pm.
I was returning home from my route. I’d made it a regular practice to ride my bike through the Crossroads Shopping Center parking lot in making the 2 mile ride home following my delivery of the papers. I’d also made it a habit to cross 4-lane NE 8th Street about 100-yards from the traffic light…and nearest cross walk. It was the first Monday following what was then called the Christmas vacation. So more people were at work that day and at that time coming home. I waited and waited for a clearing in the traffic in order to cross the busy street. It seemed like an eternity.
In being a little impatient, I saw a small opening and began pedaling my ten-speed across the street as I had done a-hundred times before. I quickly knew I’d made a bad decision. Two cars were descending upon me in the rain and dark of a cold January night. Still, I thought I could make it. I pedaled faster; reached the far curb and yanked up on my front handle-bars. I had performed this exact act many times without fail, to hop the curb and continued into the parking lot, and subsequently onto the rest of the way home. On this night my hop was short. I hit the curb with my front tire and bounced back into the road, and the on-coming car.
It’s amazing how everything slows down when faced with a perilous situation. I distinctly remember hitting the curb and then bouncing back. Almost instantly the brand new blue Cadillac hit me broad-side and sent me flying through the air. For the rest of my life I’ll remember turning upside down in the air, and with me upside down as if hanging by my feet my forehead smashing against the vertical street-side part of the curb. I tumbled onto the sidewalk, lay there for just a moment, then stood up. I was a big kid. Already 5-foot 10-inches. I stretched out my full length. My newspaper-carrier poncho fell twisted around my shoulders. And then…gravity pulled me back to the ground. I collapsed and smashed my head again.
Seemingly instantly I was surrounded by caring people asking if I was OK. I don’t know where they all came from. Someone had a blanket and covered me as I laid on the concrete trying to cope with what had just happened. All I could think was, “My Dad was going to be pissed!”. I remember repeatedly apologizing to everyone who was helping me for causing them so much trouble. I couldn’t bring myself to spit out the blood in my mouth. That would have been rude, in front of all those people. So I just swallowed it. I can still taste it.
The ambulance arrived in a hurry. Paramedics quickly began looking me over. They paid particular attention to my right arm. One said to the other, “It looks like he cut it off.” Having not scanned myself. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I couldn’t feel my whole right side. So I thought he was talking about my right hand. Then the same EMT looked me in my eyes and said, “Where else do you hurt?”. “Huh?” I replied. “Besides your hand, where else do you hurt?”. “My right leg kinda hurts.” My leg is where the car had made direct contact.
It was eleven days after Christmas. I was wearing my first ever pair of new jeans. They were Swabbies, with the BIG patch pockets. They were very popular in 1976. And they were the first cool clothes I’d ever had. The first that weren’t hand-me-downs. The EMT took out some scissors and began cutting my first-ever brand new pants. And for the first time I began to cry. The paramedic, a 20-something guy, stopped cutting and asked if he was hurting me. I cried “No. You’re ruining my new pants”.
Shortly after, they hoisted me onto a gurney and loaded me into the ambulance. My leg was badly bruised; in coming days turning purple from my shin to my hip. I had a big bloody scar on my forehead. It looked like the worst kind of floor-burn you might get from taking a charge or diving for a loose ball on the basketball court. Only worse. My bottom lip was split, leaving me with a slight, permanent fish- hook shaped scar. And my hand survived. But my right index finger didn’t. It was completely severed. Fortunately, I was wearing gloves. So the last two digits of my pointing finger didn’t end up on NE 8th Street run over by the many cars that sped by, hurrying home. It was re-attached.
Over the next 3 years I had four surgeries to straighten the finger out, and to get the blood flowing properly. But nothing worked. It’s a bent stump, with a permanently frozen knuckle to this day. And it will be the rest of my life.
I was lucky that night. My head trauma could have been much worse. My other fingers and hand could have been more seriously mangled. And while my clear and sober mind reminds me of how lucky I was, every time I slam on my brakes to avoid hitting a kid too impatient to look and wait for traffic, every time I hear screeching tires, and every time I see a car-pedestrian accident is depicted on TV or in the movies I’m instantly transported back to this nightmare. And it is a nightmare. One you don’t want your children to experience.
Talk to your kids about obeying traffic laws. It’s Summer time and they’ll be out and about a lot more. Tell them to be patient and to cross at the
Me and My Dog Sheiba- My Hand in a Cast behind the dog
cross walk. Tell them to never step in front of a moving car unless you have absolutely made eye contact with the driver and you know they see you. Tell them the pain of being impatient, or of lacking respectful care is too much. Tell them a friend told you how bad it can be.
My severed finger today
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Painting, 1856, by Junius Brutus Stearns, Washington at Constitutional Convention of 1787,
In November 1787 General George Washington wrote a letter to his nephew Bushrod Washington, who would later become one of the early Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The purpose of the letter was for the Father of our Country to explain his support for the yet to be adopted U.S. Constitution. Washington had served honorably as the President of the 1787 Constitutional Convention which crafted this great document. In the letter the Great General wrote “No man is a warmer advocate for proper restraints, and wholesome checks in every department of government than I am; but neither my reasoning, nor my experience, has yet been able to discover the propriety of preventing men from doing good, because there is a possibility of their doing evil.” In so writing few men have ever more fully and properly espoused the arguments for individual liberty. In essence Washington was saying TRUST your fellow man.
In the 223 years since the adoption of our Nations most revered document people have forgotten that it was hardily debated, and strongly opposed. The mere presence of Washington and fellow American Revolutionary hero Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin 1767
within the Convention was perhaps the greatest argument the Constitution’s advocate’s had for its adoption. And a strong argument it was. Franklin and Washington were held in near God-like reverence by early Americans. Since Franklin and Washington supported adoption of the Constitution as it was ultimately written its adoption became far easier.
Opponents feared the Constitution produced too strong a government, and gave the office of The President too much power. Opponents were aghast at the fact that the Constitution enabled the continuing existence of slavery. Having just fought an eight year bloody Revolutionary War for liberty and freedom from the tyranny of British rule, continuing to hold fellow human beings in forced servitude was an hypocritical conflict some members of the Convention couldn’t stomach. Opponents of the Constitution also objected to the absence of a Bill of Rights. The first ten amendments to the Constitution granted, or acknowledged, the individual rights we all enjoy and fight over today. But they came after the Constitutions adoption in 1789. Ratification of 10 of the first 12 proposed Amendments (yes 12), The Bill of Rights, was finally ratified by the states more than 2 years later in December 1791.
Washington’s admonition to trust that good not evil would be the end result of a God-fearing and moral people speaks to today’s Democrats calls for increasing government regulations, laws, and controls on the American people. Democrats specifically say more control is necessary in order to prevent some from doing evil (in some form or another).
George Washington
Though Washington was responding to specific concerns about the fear he would become President and subsequently Monarch, and that slavery would continue, and more importantly to the opponents, that recognition of American citizen’s individual rights was not and would not be addressed; he said this is a good document, it should be adopted, and stopping its adoption didn’t make sense merely because some didn’t trust that what did ultimately come-to-pass would come-to-pass.
Were the Constitution not adopted and ratified the 13 original State’s would have split up to ultimately fall under the control of some more powerful and organized nation; perhaps Spain, France, and perhaps Britain again. Imagine. The Bill of Rights would never have been created and the shining light on the hill that the United States of America became for the rest of the world, would never have gotten started. And it would have failed because some didn’t trust their fellow Americans to do the right thing.
Where have we heard THAT before.
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Washington Times building
My Conservative friends may find it surprising that I think we as a nation should go green. My Conservative friends would appreciate that I don’t think government should be directing that movement.
As gas prices sore past $4-per gallon President Obama acts helpless. But as is pointed out in this Washington Times editorial he doesn’t need to be standing in the way of us doing for ourselves what he refuses.
EDITORIAL: Obama’s goofy green gas – Washington Times.
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(Credit to Gds44’s blog where I first came across this commentary)
M Schuett blah blah blah 