VOLUME 1, CHRONICLE 15, DASH: This weekend I received a text from one of the great cheerleaders* in my grand crusade of fingers poised over the typewriter keys to be the next great Southern writer like Faulkner, Capote, or O’Connor. The text was a link to a collaborative song by Christian recording powerhouse Crowder & my favorite Christian artist, Toby Mac, titled “Dash”. The dash being the one on headstones separating one’s born on & passed on dates. Attached to the link, a note stating how the song reminded my supporter of stories I’d written on the dash. In addition to being grateful, I became archeological, sifting through my catalog for relics containing the dash. And there, in 2017 was my dad. I’d been missing him lately as one of his grandsons got married as another grandson’s daughters served as flower girls, as Sunday we gathered for a family birthday, as another column met little response & I needed a “sis, boom, bah” from my greatest cheerleader to keep writing, or advice to navigate another day of my mom’s dementia. In reading, I realized that though I’m nowhere near his zip code, I’m a little closer to Faulkner than 2017 and that my dad isn’t present any longer but he’s still profoundly here. As long as those he touched are here, he’s here in the dash. As long as those he touched touch others, he’s here in the dash. He’s here in the dash like he was that weekend in 2017, in a piece titled “The 24 Hour Dash”, that I’ll present shortly once again. But what about my dash? It’s the only thing each of us is guaranteed. The cemeteries are full of dashes. Dashes of summits & valleys, the truths, lies, & in betweens. My dash will have the highs & lows like those in the cemeteries but will it live on whether fallen or Faulkner, like my dad’s?

24 HOUR DASH: I spent last weekend, well, to be more precise, 24 hours with my dad. For those who know me, no, I haven’t finally lost it. For those unacquainted, my dad passed in September of 2013. It was one of those periods of when the present yields, then gives way, collapsing under the weight of the past. Like an addict seeking an evermore intoxicating dose of whatever he is addicted to, the weekend got its fix.  Friday evening, I traveled with my mom to a celebration of life service for an energetic young woman of 39 that was unexpectedly taken away.  Family connections  brought us to Birmingham, Alabama, but like a railway siding, the little hamlet of Fairfield , Alabama was the real destination, a rather unexpected , selfish celebration of life. So many classmates of the parents of the deceased were in attendance. Classmates that my father had taught at Baker Middle School. As my mom introduced me , I was met with, “Your dad was my 6th grade history teacher, he made it come alive” or “I still love history because of your dad”. If it wasn’t middle school, it was a trip to First Baptist Church of Fairfield. “Your dad was my youth director, my life was changed because of him” and then a trip to Oneonta, Alabama where he directed a summer camp. “We had more fun those summers with your dad than any other time I went to camp.” And the unexpected, “You know, one year on spring break, I got in a little trouble with the Panama City police, my one phone call was to your dad” He didn’t volunteer the outcome and for fear of spoiling memory lanes no-hitter, I didn’t ask. Finally, it was back to church and the best part of my “celebration of his life”. “When your father was our interim pastor”, she began, “he was the same man he was when he taught me. There was a time for fun and a time for serious, he knew and we knew when they were.” As we prepared to leave the funeral home for our trip home, my mom was saying her “nice to see yous” and goodbyes, I had an oppurtunity to step back and look around. The count was fifteen, as in people, that to this day my dad is still impacting. To keep myself occupied coming home, I tried to come up with a number for people influenced by my father and then I just gave up. The answer was simple, it was one. The one he took time for in a moment, or a lesson or in a police station……or in a son who loved basketball, specifically the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs basketball, 1972-77, particularly the 1976-77 season. The season a group of twelve young men, eight hailing from Louisville, Kentucky claimed the NCAA Division 2 National Championship. The season before ended in heartbreak as the Mocs lost the title game. By the way, I still hate the University of Puget Sound for ruining that weekend! My dad was employed at Eastern Airlines during this time and a group,of Eastern employees bought four season tickets. The main beneficiary was me. I missed a couple of games at old Maclellan Gymnasium, or “Big Mac” as it came to be known but I was usually there with three Eastern workers, one of whom may or may not have been my dad. All this brings me to Saturday, 5:00 PM. This years version of the Mocs was playing East Tennessee State, but in being honest, the only reason I wanted to go was for halftime. This favorite team of my youth, the ‘77 Mocs, were being honored on the fortieth anniversary of their accomplishment. As the team was introduced, it began with the subs and role players and little memories came to my mind from each of them. The memories got bigger as the bench got emptier. Only five left, “Book”, Stich, “Go-Go” and Golden, the guys who pressed with abandon, rebounded, shot and scored while a capacity crowd of 4,177 in Big Mac grew louder with every move. I was standing now as the coach, Ron Shumate, the man who took this team to “Rocky Top” was introduced. As I stood, for only the second time ever at sporting event, my tears fell. Fell, only slightly out of sadness from missing my dad, but more in appreciation that for this team coming back,the journey, our cheers, my cheers, meant something to them. As a matter of record, I was at the game with my son now attending UTC. Kind of that circle of life thing, father and son once more celebrating the Mocs.(He was the reason for the only other time I shed a tear at a ballpark, an early October evening when he played in his 16th quarter and became a hard earned and well deserved football letterman). I thought about those crazy guys from Eastern Airlines too. How we went out on the tarmac on a Sunday afternoon to welcome the Mocs plane back from Springfield, Mass. The trophy wasn’t as big as the smiles, then or Saturday in a 12,000 seat palace that those players success helped build. Or in my face and countless others who remembered. Remembered. That is really what this weekend, this 24 hours, was about, remembering. My dad always told me that the two employments he had that had the most meaning were Fairfield and Eastern Air. This weekend, people remembered, I remembered, the impact of a man, a father. A life well lived, footprints still evident, like those made by astronauts on the moon. Every tombstone has two dates, a beginning and an end. Between those dates is a dash, a history, a lifetime. It’s about making the most of the dash. My dad made a lot of his 81 year dash and I got to see part of it in my 24 hour dash.

(*) the cheerleader is one of the two best daughter-in-laws a starving writer could have😀