He was born in South Carolina on April 30, 1906, twelve days after the great quake nearly incinerated San Francisco. He stayed in the Palmetto State until he left to go north in 1928 while the nation braced for hard times. Now and again he’d go back to tidy up family affairs, but the General Electric Company had pulled him away from the South forever. They’d seen he was a solid electrical engineer with his degree from Clemson. More importantly, they’d seen he was a sweet talker. A deal maker. Their marriage lasted 43 years.

His name was Alexander Pearson Wylie, and he was my father. He left us 90 years and 45 days after he’d arrived. He was an honest and ethical man, but not a good parent nor husband. He had a rapier tongue that could wound all of us when his temper flared. I’ve tried to forgive him for that, but I probably never will. Not completely. He let that tongue damage me. Worse, he passed it on to me. And I struggle daily to keep the monstrous thing in check.

All that said, I believe something happens between family members whose relationships have not ruptured completely. I believe those relationships evolve. Maybe they worsen. Maybe they improve. But they don’t stay the same. And in the blink of an eye, they can change dramatically.

It was a subzero afternoon in New Hampshire where he had retired with my mother. We were sitting in his station wagon after some skiing. I said, “Seeing all these hardwoods up here reminds me of the chain saw work I did with Eric Walgreen back in the summer of 1964.”

“That the boy you went down to Mississippi with?”

“Yup.”

“Damn fool idea that was.”

“That so? Trying to help black folks who’d been denied the right to vote by crackers like you and me, Dad?”

For a moment he said nothing. Then, “How about we leave that one alone. Don’t see either of us budging much on the matter.”

“Probably not.”

“So, what about the chain sawing? Didn’t know you were doing that with him.”

“Wasn’t about to tell you back then. Had no wish to hear the shit you woulda heaped on me if I had.”

“Not gonna give you shit now about something happened twenty years ago.”

“That right?”

“Jesus, boy, just tell it.” So I did.

Eric and I would finish off our work on somebody’s property. Then we’d get drunk with a running buddy or two. Whoever joined the pack was like us in a couple of ways: didn’t believe they could die and thought they could bite the ass off an elephant.

It wasn’t a complicated process. We’d go off in the woods with a chainsaw idling as we scuffled about looking for the right tree. Had to be at least thirty feet tall with lots of thick branches. Conifers and birches wouldn’t work. Mostly, we picked oaks or maples.

Once the tree was selected, we needed a climber and a cutter. Being on the smaller side, nimble, and bat shit crazy, I was usually the climber. The cutter had to be strong enough to wrangle the saw, and couldn’t be too compassionate given he was about to put the climber’s life in peril.

Once the climber got up into the thickest branches, the exchange went something like this:

“You ready for some pain, little man?”

“Only ’cause your fat country ass couldn’t drag itself up here.”

“Absolutely. Stand the fuck by.”

Then the saw whined and gnawed on the trunk. The bystanders would whoop and holler as the tree cracked, twisted, and leaned ever so slowly. Then I’d watch the ground come up at me in a god awful hurry.

No good way to prepare for the impact. I’d try to wrap my arms around my head. Try to relax. (Being drunk helped.) And then I’d try to roll when I hit. That’d work some times, but too often I’d get knocked out for a second or two and maybe sprain an ankle or a wrist.

Dad smirked and shook his head: “You just like your grandfather.”

“Say again.”

“Yup. You know he was born in 1857 and lived right through the ravages of the war?”

“I did know that. Ashamed to say I never gave it much thought. Musta been god awful.”

“Had to have been. But when he talked about it, he focused mostly on the fun parts.”

“Why you think?”

“Not sure. He died when I was fourteen. Maybe he knew he wasn’t gonna last long. Maybe afraid that’d knock me down hard. Maybe wanted to soften the blow.”

“Shit.”

“That’d be the word for it.”

“Anyway, by the time the war ended, there was all kinds of ‘toys’ lying around that young boys could use to put themselves in harm’s way.”

“Like guns and stuff?”

“Definitely guns. But what they wanted most was undetonated artillery rounds.”

“Jesus.”

“Sounds crazy. And it was. Other hand, you gotta remember what those fellas’d been through. Each day for four years they woke up not knowing if they’d make it till sundown.”

“But what’d they do with the rounds? Throw ’em down into a quarry and watch ’em explode?”

“Nope.”

“So what?”

“Think about what you and your buddies did with the chain saw.”

“Tell me they didn’t do that.”

“Sure as shit did. A boy would climb up the tree with the artillery round lashed to the tree trunk. They’d suspend a big rock above the round and run a line out maybe a 100 feet where they could take cover. When they yanked the line, the rock’d fall on the round. Most times it’d blow.”

“Goddam.” For a second or two, we just stared at each other. Then I spit out a mouthful of beer and burst out laughing. Dad did, too. Then he opened the door and said, “Gonna piss myself I don’t get out of this car.”

A few minutes later we pulled out of the parking lot and headed home. As we hit the macadam, I said, “You didn’t do shit like that when you were a kid?”

“I did not.”

“Be nice if Grampa were here to help us talk about things.”

He reached over, patted me on the head, and said, “Maybe he just did.”