Dr. Seuss

As I mentioned last time, we moved from The Pink Palace into The Bat Cave. Mom tells me we only stayed at The Pink Palace for about six months, so I would have been three-and-a-half during that January or February of 1966 when we moved to the house on Pine Avenue (aka The Bat Cave). We lived there for only a year, but I remember so very much from that year. Never, ever believe that the time you spend working with small children is wasted or forgotten. They will remember things that you never expect, and they will learn things that they don't consciously remember. My mind is filled with a million things that I did, or saw, or learned that year. It's as if I came alive while I lived there. Fortunately for me, one of the most important things that happened to me while my mind was coming alive was that my parents subscribed to a book club that delivered Dr. Seuss's books directly to our house.

If you, or your children, or your grandchildren can't quote Green Eggs and Ham without looking at the book; then follow the link this instant and buy it from Barnes and Noble. Do not buy a Nook or Kindle version, and do not buy a video. Buy a real, live book; then sit down with your young person and prepare to read that book until you are so sick of it that you try to sneak out and bury it. If you are very, very fortunate, the same thing will happen to them as happened to me: they will learn to want to read. Yes, someone has to teach them to want to read.

Dr. Seuss created a burning desire to be able to read. I still remember the sheer joy that surrounded the arrival of the latest Dr. Seuss; and I knew that only people who could read were admitted into the magic that was contained within the pages of the book. I had to wait for someone to be willing to read it for me; but they could pick it up and see what was inside any time they liked. I memorized the stories so that I could look at the pictures and know what was happening; but, oh, to be able to pick up any book I wanted and know what was happening anytime I liked! I couldn't imagine a more amazing power. Next to that, all of my Bat-powers were trivial. For people my age, and for people a couple of decades younger, Dr. Seuss opened a world of pure imagination and endless possibilities. He defined life as something to be lived without fear of the unknown. We could walk down Mulberry Street and see amazing things. Even a rainy day could see the arrival of Thing 1 and Thing 2. Anything was possible!

He never did get us to eat things that looked funny, though.

Batman!

We moved from The Pink Palace after six months, and moved to Pine Avenue (just off of Governor's Drive in Huntsville). It was at this time, shortly before my 4^th birthday, that I answered Gotham City's call for a fearless crime fighter. The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, and other mange-minded mayhem-makers were threatening the peace and tranquility of Gotham. I decided to come to the rescue, and thus I became Batman. Please don't misunderstand - I wasn't pretending to be Batman. I was The Real Batman. You may have seen stories from my life. Adam West regularly pretended to be me on television and, in later years, many famous actors brought my stories to the screen. My impact on American culture was significant and, to this day, I have a fondness for the songs that I inspired; but I digress from the tale of Batman's origins.

I knew that I had to have some faithful assistants in order to create my alter ego, since even Bruce Wayne must have his Alfred. I enlisted my parents, hoping that I could trust them with a secret of this magnitude. My mother made my Bat-costume. She made a black cape, with hat and ears; then she attached fringes to a pair of black gloves. My father was in charge of creating the Batmobile. He converted a child's pedal car into The Batmobile by painting it black, putting the Bat-logo on the side, and installing an atomic reactor for a power source. I enlisted both private industry and the US Government in the creation of the all-important Bat Utility Belt. We sent in about a billion breakfast cereal boxtops and ordered a spy utility belt, which was then transferred to the US Post Officefor delivery. In order to make a full transition from Bruce Wayne to Batman, I had my mother put the Bat-Logo on everything: pillowcases, t-shirts, and underwear. With my Bat-Identity complete, I embarked upon a career of crime-fighting that was unmatched in modern history.

I remember the utility belt especially. We had just gotten in the car to go somewhere when the mailman brought the package up and handed it into the car. It was awesome. It was a beautiful yellow, made of that wonderful, high-grade, molded plastic that they use when making toys that you can order with box tops. I thought how great it was to be the only person in America with a utility belt like that. I used that utility belt to hold all of my amazing Bat-tools: a Batarang, the Bat-cuffs, the Bat-laser, Bat-signaling devices, and many more. My imagination was the only limit to the tools I could put in the utility belt.

I fought crime and foiled evil plots until someone stole the Batmobile.  

The Pink Palace

We moved to Huntsville, AL from Mobile in July, 1965. Dad had lost his job at Brookley Air Force Base because President Johnson, in a piece of political comeuppance, had closed the base. Alabama had had the temerity to vote for Goldwater in the recent presidential election, and Johnson was nothing if not vindictive. That wasn't the reason the President gave for the base closure, of course; but no one in Mobile could be convinced of anything else. Dad got a job at Redstone Arsenal, and so North we went – away from 360 frost-free days a year, away from the coastal culture, away from the French Catholic mindset, and away from the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in America. Most significantly, we went North away from the most interesting batch of relatives since the Mobile Indian tribe attacked Hernando DeSoto in 1540.

If you move to a new city, you have to get a new house; and we got The Pink Palace, which is nothing like the one in Hawaii. It was a tiny, horrid, pink thing on Patton Road just outside the gate of Redstone Arsenal. I don't remember much about it; but no one in the family ever called it anything other than The Pink Palace in honor of its grandeur, and of Pepto-Bismol. We didn't stay there long, for reasons that never occurred to me as a child; but that's where we were living when I selected the man that would be the family's doctor for the next 20 years. I was jumping on the bed one night when I fell and hit my head. I don't remember any of this, but Dad says that we went off to the emergency room where Dr. Bernie Moore tended to my cracked head. If you keep reading this blog, you are going to see a lot of stories that include the words “emergency room,” and “stitches.” There have been some scurrilous ne'er-do-wells who have intimated that I was clumsy and and accident-prone as a child, when anyone who is clear-eyed and wise can see that I was adventurous and fearless.

I only have one memory of The Pink Palace. One night Mom and Dad told me to go to bed, so I went into my room and did as I was told (which proves that I was very wise as a child). The next morning, when I got up, they were sitting on the couch in the same place that they had been when I went to bed. I was amazed! They had stayed up all night long, and hadn't even moved! It was incredible that anyone would sit in one spot for that long! I was very impressed.

Perhaps that explains my penchant for sitting on the couch for long periods of time...

I Was Born At An Early Age

I was born at a very early age*; but I don't remember it. Dad tells me that we moved from Hollinger's Island to Huntsville in July 1965. That would make me 3 years and a few weeks old when we moved, so there are only a few snippets of memory from the very earliest years of life on Hollinger's Island, which is a few miles south of I-10 on Mobile Bay. Whatever has happened since then, started on Hollinger's Island with Jack Edward Parker, Sr., Delma Key Luke Parker and my sister Cathy (Debra Catherine, whom no one ever calls Debra).

I remember only two things from that time. The first doesn't mean anything. The second made me what I am today. I remember standing behind the first house that we lived in, which Dad calls “The Canal House”. I looked across the canal and saw a small island with an open area surrounded by trees and bamboo. I've no idea what was happening, if anything. It's like looking at a snapshot in my mind with the water moving sullenly past a small island where the water moccasins would sun themselves.

The second thing I remember is standing in the Hollinger's Island Baptist Church singing “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing”. There is no way I could have understood the song at that age, of course. It is a song with deep meaning and rich, Biblical imagery that takes years to assimilate. However, the melody stuck in my mind; and it remains a favorite to this day. I am convinced that these experiences at a church that I don't really remember, hearing a song that I couldn't possibly understand, set me on course to eventually become a minister and music director. Deep faith and profound music work themselves into your heart, from which they are not easily removed. If the people around you are wise, loving, and patient, they can become the treasures of your life.

----

*Apologies to Groucho

Inaugural Post

My wife and children are always saying, “You never told me that!” They have claimed, through the years, not to have known that I knew four murderers, or that I was friends with a Secret Service agent, before I mentioned these things in public. The number of things they don't know about me is simply staggering, especially when you consider that my wife has known me since I was 13 years old. In spite of talking too much, I apparently don't say anything. This bugs them all a lot because, for some reason, they think that they should know what has happened to me during my life before I start talking about it from the pulpit.

I thought that this was an unusual state of affairs until I thought about my mother's parents. How much did I really know about them? I assumed it must be a lot, since I spent time on their farm growing up. Then I realized that I didn't know how they met, where they lived before the farm, or how they lived. My time on their farm had produced many memories that included them, but weren't really about them. I was self-centered as a child, in the way that all children believe that the world exists for them. I was confident that the world would never change, because I could not imagine it being any other way. It never occurred to me that parents and grandparents were really people in the way that I was, because they were godlike creatures. They had no beginning that I could remember, and I could imagine no ending for them. They didn't come from anywhere - they simply were. A teenaged Papaw or a child Grandmaw were thoughts that the child never imagined thinkable. At any rate, I never learned who they were before they were gone.

In the last year of her life, my Grandmaw Luke began writing down some of her memories; but she became too ill to continue. She finished four pages of her memories. Four pages. That is all that I have left that is not corrupted by the years since her death. It occurs to me that I want my children and grandchildren to know my stories as I have lived them. There are a few things that I want to set the record straight about. To wit:

• I didn't burn the campground down.
• Nothing happened to my Grandmother Parker's 70^th birthday cake. Nothing at all.
• My uncle's head didn't even need stitches.
• I did break that girl's finger, though. 

This won't be Tolstoy's “Childhood”; but I'll tell my stories in more or less chronological order, and I'll be more or less honest.

Blessings!

Jack

Dad

Grandpaw

JP