When I was twelve, my father painted my portrait. By then he had painted for several years, mostly still life and landscapes. He especially liked capturing old barns on canvas and during his life produced a number of paintings of broken-down, rotting barns, telling me once the barns could stay alive on his canvas even after they collapsed.
As far as I know, Dad painted only three or four portraits, and mine was one of them. Sitting for this portrait was painful. It must have been summer, for I remember perspiring as he painted, and I couldn’t move much or read. Probably each session lasted less than an hour, but to my boyhood self those sittings seemed an eternity. Now, of course, I am glad to have the portrait, but then it was sheer misery.
As far as I know, Dad painted only three or four portraits, and mine was one of them. Sitting for this portrait was painful. It must have been summer, for I remember perspiring as he painted, and I couldn’t move much or read. Probably each session lasted less than an hour, but to my boyhood self those sittings seemed an eternity. Now, of course, I am glad to have the portrait, but then it was sheer misery.
Though he painted my ears too low and made my eyes too wide—they’re also unaligned, like the eyes on the cheap statues of Catholic saints, Picasso eyes, if that helps—it’s not a bad painting. Dad decked me out in a blue t-shirt for the sittings, perhaps to bring out the color in my eyes. My hair is short, probably because I was in military school. Freckles dot my cheeks, as they did then, and my lips are parted. The exaggerated eyes and parted lips were, I suspect, his attempts to make me appear as if I were dreaming.
Dad enhanced this effect of dreaming with the background. Here he cleverly painted a battle scene from the Civil War, with the Confederates to the right of my face and the Union to the left. In the deeper background he painted explosions and a conflagration topped by an enormous dark cloud.
When I look at this portrait, which modesty demands I hang in my bedroom, my eyes usually travel past the face to the battle scene and I am then transported to earlier days in Boonville when the forests and fields around our house became Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Bull Run, and Antietam. For three summers in a row, my brother Doug and I along with our friends Dickie Shore and Allen Speer would recreate the Civil War. Usually Dickie and I were the Rebels and Doug and Allen the Yankees, a division not without irony since some of my ancestors fought for the North while Allen’s great-great-uncle had lost his life in the War as a Confederate colonel. Most of the time we waged our battles in the woods directly behind my house, where we built forts from dirt, sticks, and stones. Part of my fortress walls included a metal Tampa Cigar sign I had found in the woods and which afforded me, I thought, some great protection.
We needed this protection because we didn’t use toy guns in these wars except for decorative purposes. We were engaging in hostilities long before Nerf weapons and airsoft rifles, and so our bullets and cannon shells were more primitive. We threw things at each other—sticks, stones, and in the field down by our barn, dirt clods. Once the four of us hurled so many sticks and stones at one another that we stripped the leaves from the sourwood standing between our battle lines.
Fortunately, we were very young—eight, nine, ten years old—and generally terrible marksmen, so casualties were few. Once I did catch Allen Speer in the chin with a thrown stick when he peeked around a tree, but overall we yelled and ran and dodged missiles without any real harm.
We fought other enemies as well, sometimes as comrades, sometimes as opposing forces. We attacked Nazis. We beat back the British at Bunker Hill. We made swords and used trashcan lids for shields and fought with King Richard on his Crusade. Once, inspired by the movie “The Vikings” starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, we were imagining ourselves on a long ship when Doug ran back to the house. A few minutes later, he emerged wearing baby diapers strapped with rubber bands to his lower legs. He was copying the sheepskin leggings worn by the Vikings in the movie, which we found both hilarious and quite clever.
In the nearby town of Elkin, we watched “Moby Dick” starring Gregory Peck, came home, and ran straight to the woods, where we built an outline of a ship from sticks and used other sticks to harpoon nearby whales, humpbacks who only looked like trees and piles of leaves. When we watched Westerns, we became Indians, decorating our faces with pokeberry juice and whooping through the woods with stick tomahawks and spears, or else we’d become Wyatt Earp and his friends and have a shoot-out at the OK Corral.
Sometimes our imaginations got us into trouble.
Here I must digress.
When some people ask whether I have a retirement plan, I explain to them that I have no money and anticipate no money for retirement, but that I do have a plan. Someday, should I decide I’m done with working and want a life of leisure, I plan to rob a bank. I’ll stick a toy gun in my coat pocket, or just use my thumb and finger. If I survive the encounter, I am reasonably certain the law requires a mandatory jail sentence. Having taught in prison, and really being too old and decrepit for anyone to bother, I have little fear of incarceration. I would receive free medical and dental care, I wouldn’t have to cook anymore, I could read and write, and I’d make some interesting friends.
What I don’t tell people is that I once did rob a bank.
One summer day Doug and I each received a spiffy brand-new cowboy pistol. We collected Dickie and Allen, who brought along their revolvers, and headed up town. Kids could do that sort of thing back then in Boonville. Everyone knew everybody else, and when we were eight and nine, we used to roam all over that little town.
That day—I suspect this was my idea—we walked into Bovender’s Grocery Store, waved our cap pistols, and yelled, “This is a stickup!” Mr. Bovender chuckled and gave us each a piece of gum.
Well, this robbery business was pretty slick, so next we planned to hit the bank. Dickie’s grandfather owned the bank, which was housed in a ramshackle brick building that looked straight out of the old West. I can’t remember whether we brought kerchiefs to hide our faces, but we ran into the lobby of the bank, waved our pistols, and yelled, “This is a stickup! Give us all the money!”
The tellers and Mr. Shore thought our little act was hilarious, and he gave each of us a coin—probably a dime. Well, giving us that money was his mistake, and then we made our mistake. We walked to the Weatherwax Pharmacy, where we bought some candy and gum with our ill-gotten wealth. Then we decided to hit the bank again. We charged in again, waving our pistols and yelling, “This is a stickup!”
Mr. Shore was not amused. He came around his desk, bent over, looked the four of us in the eyes, and told us never to come back to the bank with our guns. We left embarrassed and ashamed, and probably spent the rest of the day in my basement, hiding out from the law and playing with toy soldiers.
That was my brief life of crime.
Recently an article appeared online about a seven-year-old suspended from school for shaping a gun out of chewing gum. Given that judgment, I am certain that had we as youngsters committed our bank robbery today, Dickie, Allen, Doug, and I would be sitting out our adolescence in some juvenile prison, learning to make license plates, exercising in the Yard, and planning our next heist.
Dad enhanced this effect of dreaming with the background. Here he cleverly painted a battle scene from the Civil War, with the Confederates to the right of my face and the Union to the left. In the deeper background he painted explosions and a conflagration topped by an enormous dark cloud.
When I look at this portrait, which modesty demands I hang in my bedroom, my eyes usually travel past the face to the battle scene and I am then transported to earlier days in Boonville when the forests and fields around our house became Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Bull Run, and Antietam. For three summers in a row, my brother Doug and I along with our friends Dickie Shore and Allen Speer would recreate the Civil War. Usually Dickie and I were the Rebels and Doug and Allen the Yankees, a division not without irony since some of my ancestors fought for the North while Allen’s great-great-uncle had lost his life in the War as a Confederate colonel. Most of the time we waged our battles in the woods directly behind my house, where we built forts from dirt, sticks, and stones. Part of my fortress walls included a metal Tampa Cigar sign I had found in the woods and which afforded me, I thought, some great protection.
We needed this protection because we didn’t use toy guns in these wars except for decorative purposes. We were engaging in hostilities long before Nerf weapons and airsoft rifles, and so our bullets and cannon shells were more primitive. We threw things at each other—sticks, stones, and in the field down by our barn, dirt clods. Once the four of us hurled so many sticks and stones at one another that we stripped the leaves from the sourwood standing between our battle lines.
Fortunately, we were very young—eight, nine, ten years old—and generally terrible marksmen, so casualties were few. Once I did catch Allen Speer in the chin with a thrown stick when he peeked around a tree, but overall we yelled and ran and dodged missiles without any real harm.
We fought other enemies as well, sometimes as comrades, sometimes as opposing forces. We attacked Nazis. We beat back the British at Bunker Hill. We made swords and used trashcan lids for shields and fought with King Richard on his Crusade. Once, inspired by the movie “The Vikings” starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, we were imagining ourselves on a long ship when Doug ran back to the house. A few minutes later, he emerged wearing baby diapers strapped with rubber bands to his lower legs. He was copying the sheepskin leggings worn by the Vikings in the movie, which we found both hilarious and quite clever.
In the nearby town of Elkin, we watched “Moby Dick” starring Gregory Peck, came home, and ran straight to the woods, where we built an outline of a ship from sticks and used other sticks to harpoon nearby whales, humpbacks who only looked like trees and piles of leaves. When we watched Westerns, we became Indians, decorating our faces with pokeberry juice and whooping through the woods with stick tomahawks and spears, or else we’d become Wyatt Earp and his friends and have a shoot-out at the OK Corral.
Sometimes our imaginations got us into trouble.
Here I must digress.
When some people ask whether I have a retirement plan, I explain to them that I have no money and anticipate no money for retirement, but that I do have a plan. Someday, should I decide I’m done with working and want a life of leisure, I plan to rob a bank. I’ll stick a toy gun in my coat pocket, or just use my thumb and finger. If I survive the encounter, I am reasonably certain the law requires a mandatory jail sentence. Having taught in prison, and really being too old and decrepit for anyone to bother, I have little fear of incarceration. I would receive free medical and dental care, I wouldn’t have to cook anymore, I could read and write, and I’d make some interesting friends.
What I don’t tell people is that I once did rob a bank.
One summer day Doug and I each received a spiffy brand-new cowboy pistol. We collected Dickie and Allen, who brought along their revolvers, and headed up town. Kids could do that sort of thing back then in Boonville. Everyone knew everybody else, and when we were eight and nine, we used to roam all over that little town.
That day—I suspect this was my idea—we walked into Bovender’s Grocery Store, waved our cap pistols, and yelled, “This is a stickup!” Mr. Bovender chuckled and gave us each a piece of gum.
Well, this robbery business was pretty slick, so next we planned to hit the bank. Dickie’s grandfather owned the bank, which was housed in a ramshackle brick building that looked straight out of the old West. I can’t remember whether we brought kerchiefs to hide our faces, but we ran into the lobby of the bank, waved our pistols, and yelled, “This is a stickup! Give us all the money!”
The tellers and Mr. Shore thought our little act was hilarious, and he gave each of us a coin—probably a dime. Well, giving us that money was his mistake, and then we made our mistake. We walked to the Weatherwax Pharmacy, where we bought some candy and gum with our ill-gotten wealth. Then we decided to hit the bank again. We charged in again, waving our pistols and yelling, “This is a stickup!”
Mr. Shore was not amused. He came around his desk, bent over, looked the four of us in the eyes, and told us never to come back to the bank with our guns. We left embarrassed and ashamed, and probably spent the rest of the day in my basement, hiding out from the law and playing with toy soldiers.
That was my brief life of crime.
Recently an article appeared online about a seven-year-old suspended from school for shaping a gun out of chewing gum. Given that judgment, I am certain that had we as youngsters committed our bank robbery today, Dickie, Allen, Doug, and I would be sitting out our adolescence in some juvenile prison, learning to make license plates, exercising in the Yard, and planning our next heist.
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