Thinking about dad.....

I remember listening to the opening of a Waylon Jennings tape called, "A Man Called Hoss". It was meant to be a musical anthology of Waylon's work. He talks about how there had been a writer who wanted to write his biography. He states how if he did an honest one....there would be a lot of divorces and bad things that would result from it...that line always cracked me up, but if you really think about it, it's true with a lot of our lives. My story is not so hard to write, there's not too much too hide in my family, and there's a lot of freedom in that. We have lots of bad faults, but it's all out in the open pretty much. None of us really try and be anything that we're not...we're just us.

My dad had always been that way, open and honest with me. I can't ever remember the time that I ever felt deceived or lied to by him. I could always count on my dad to be that picture of honesty with me, even when it seemed everybody else was a bold faced liar. If my dad is anything, he is honest to a fault...and true to his own understanding of things. He's a lot more perceptive and understanding of things than many might give him credit for. The community that he lives in now just knows him as Jim the Air Conditioning man, but they really don't know the half of it. To them he's just another 'Good ole boy', but dad is no fool, he's been to the rodeo a few times as we say in Texas. The thing that always amazes me about the old man is that even if he is wrong, and stands to look bad...he never tries to hide it. It's that transparency about dad that makes me respect him so much.

Dad grew up in Gloster and Frierson Louisiana, a pretty rural farming community south of Shreveport that has hardly changed in a hundred years. Every time I ride out there, I am captured by the beauty of the land, full of dairy farms, quarter horse ranches and miles and miles of cotton. The old rusting cotton gins seem to call out to me as I pass them by, "Wait! Slow down, take another look at me, I have a story to tell of your people from long ago.." Dad was born in what amounts to a sharecropper shack...a very small house in the middle of a cotton field in Gloster, La. My grandfather was doing a little of everything in those days from Carpentering, to doing some oilfield work, to putting in water wells. Not too long after my Grandfather bought what would be his homestead. It took about 2 years to build, and my grandfather built the whole thing himself with some help from his brothers. In those days he worked sun up to sun down, so he had to build at night...and he certainly wouldn't work on the Sabbath. I take it that my grandfather ran a pretty tight ship back then, and my dad and his brother Tommy were chomping at the bit to get out of the country and get on their own. My Uncle George Thomas Holder was about five years or so older that dad...and he joined the Navy. Dad wasn't too far behind him and lied about his age and enlisted at 16. This would take dad all over the world, but mostly in the south pacific. Dad was an Electrician's mate, and was pretty good at it. He served on a number of different ships (USS Ajax and USS Chicago).


I know dad carries a lot of scars from those days, but I believe he genuinely enjoyed being a sailor, and wound up putting ten years of his life into it. It was in the Navy that dad learned to drink and smoke, those two things would come back to haunt him later in life. My grandparents had been tea totelers never really drank at all. But both my dad, and his brother wound up being pretty serious drinkers, but in those days, I guess it was that way for a lot of people...nothing too unusual there. My dad wound up getting out of the Navy and began working as an electrician in the shipyards there in San Diego, CA. It was there that he met my mom, married, and had me. When I was still a toddler, there was a big strike in the shipyards...and dad decided to move us all back home to Louisiana, in particular to my grandparents' home. Dad then took work as an electrician for the Shreveport Times newspaper, and drove quite a ways into town every day coming home very late. Around this time there was a big breakdown between my dad and his brother Tommy. Tommy (George Thomas Holder) was a Shreveport Fireman, and was drinking pretty heavy at this point in his life. Evidently, one night he got stinking drunk and wound up at my grandfather's house. There was an argument between him and my grandfather, and Tommy took a swing at my grandfather. Dad stepped in and wore Tommy out...and after that, they didn't speak for a good 20 years or so, unless they just had to. I got to know my Uncle Tommy years later and found out he had been a pretty rough character back then. He was am alcoholic, a Klansman, and a pretty degenerate guy all around. He tells the story of how he became born again, and how he actually heard the audible voice of God give him one more chance to get his act together. It seems that he did, and has lived an admirable life ever since.

My dad has drunk pretty heavily in his life, but he has always respected his parents...and that has always stuck with me. He always called his father Sir, or daddy, and I never failed to notice that. When he stepped over his dad's threshold, he became a kid again it seemed. He so wanted to please them, and wanted them to think well of him. I remember the time once when he and my mom were in the middle of a big fight. He thought for sure they were going to divorce. The biggest thing on his mind was how he was going to tell his parents that he had failed. He shook and almost wept when he said that, and it chilled me to the bone that as a grown man, with grown children, he still was so shaped by the opinion that his parents might have of him. It just goes to show you, that we never really grow out of our parents’ houses now do we?

Dad applied for the Shreveport Police Department in the early 70's, and that's the job I always remember him having. I remember how I used to try and stay awake as long as I could at night, knowing that my dad would be coming in late. I could hear his heavy leather boots, and the creaking of his gun belt as he came in the house. It was always then that I know I could go to sleep. I could smell his Old Spice Cologne, and I knew that I was safe. I was always aware of the risks he took defending our community, and the danger that he was in. Our home was a troubled one at times, with both mom and dad drinking pretty heavily, but they loved us and tried really hard to make our lives better than the ones they had known. Dad worked extra jobs on his nights off so that we could go to Catholic school, and mom did volunteer work at the school to keep us there as well (the Shreveport school system was terrible at the time). We went on lots of fishing and camping trips, and although we had plenty of troubles and plenty of conflicts due to the alcohol....we knew that we were loved, and that mom and dad were doing the very best that they could for us.

Years later, I would strap on my leather gear, pin on my badge, and walk out into the night to work. At the end of my shift, I would come come, trying to come quietly into my house. I would hear my leather gun belt creak, my boots fall heavily, and I would remember my dad...and check on my baby boy to make sure he was sleeping safe and sound.