On Christmas Day 1971, I was seven years old, a little spoiled, and living in our little tract home on Lee Ann Drive in Marietta. Christmas's back then were one of my father's two opportunities to splurge a little and enjoy the prosperity we were beginning to experience on his climb to the top of his profession. The other was grocery shopping--my mother did not dare send him with either Katie or me to the Kroger without a list, because everything that sounded delicious would end up in the shopping cart, to our delight and Mom's consternation. How many flavors of ice cream could two children eat in one sitting? Dad allowed us to find out.
I was the same way when the three amigos were growing up. Nature or nurture?
As our Christmas traditions evolved, we opened our wrapped presents on Christmas Eve. This was when we were expected to feign delight over a new sweater or some such, which as a small child I found painfully dull. Then Katie and I were shooed to bed, where we would sit in darkness and listen as Santa began profanely assembling the grand haul of toys that we would find strewn around the tree on Christmas morning. I gathered that "some assembly required" was a real challenge for the jolly old elf, particularly after a couple scotches, based on his invective at the box of toy parts and inscrutable instructions that every year came within a hair's breadth of defeating his efforts. But it always came together in the end, and we descended the stairs at insipid first light to find nary a flat surface that did not have a toy perched on top. It was almost overwhelming, and appeared enormously satisfying to the slightly hungover Santa who'd sit in his wingback chair wrapped in a bathrobe, skinny white legs leading down to faux leather slippers, hair disheveled, sipping coffee pale with creamer and smiling as his kids clawed through one box after another. The Mississippi farm boy had made good.
Dad loved cars, so it's no surprise that an automotive gift was usually in the mix. In 1969, while we lived in Charlotte, Santa had assembled a Johnny Lightning slot car set, with a ramp leading down to a long racetrack on which two Matchbox-sized cars would race side-by-side. This was the very one:
I remember it for the way the morning ended. Along with our presents from Santa, there was candy, lots of sticky candy, that soon ended up all over my face and fingers and, inevitably, in the slots and on the start levers of the ramp. I think the offending confection was a pile of Pixie Sticks, those long paper straws of sour candy powder in a rainbow of colors. By ten a.m. the whole race set was so fouled with sugary goo that the cars wouldn't slide and the levers barely moved. Dad was extremely unhappy, and let his five-year-old son know how disappointed he was that I'd goobered up such an expensive toy. I never forgot it.
By 1971 we were ready to try again, and that Christmas morning Mom and Dad led me from the toys under the tree in the living room, across to the family room where Santa had assembled a slot car set that covered what seemed like the entire floor.
This may well have been the track--I remember the slots crossing, which made for great wrecks if we timed the racers just right.
This time around the track was plugged into the wall, providing a current that powered the cars through two copper brushes on their underbelly. One was a Pontiac GTO and the other a Camaro. Dad and I sat on the floor all morning, learning how to race without flipping the cars off their tracks on the curves. He always drove the GTO.
After breakfast he and I boxed up the set so we could take it to Mr. Wilson's for Christmas Dinner. Mr. Wilson was one of Dad's coworkers, a big, dark man who looked to me like Johnny Cash, with a pretty wife and a huge German shepherd named Satan. I remember his house was tidy but smaller than ours. I figured he must've worked for Dad in some capacity.
That afternoon the men and I settled around the television to watch the first round of the AFC playoffs, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Miami Dolphins. I loved the Chiefs in an irrational way. I traded football cards with the neighbor kids to assemble a complete set of the 1970 Super Bowl team. I slept in Chiefs pajamas, under Chiefs sheets, and wore a Chiefs stocking cap with a tassel on top when I walked to school on cold mornings.
Why the obsession? There were some unfortunate character traits beginning to manifest. By 1971 we lived at our ninth address since my birth seven years before, and two of those houses had been in KC. I thought of that place as home for some reason, longing for the midwestern landscape like the Psalmist weeping for Zion from the gardens of Babylon. I was from somewhere, damn it. To this day, there is always a part of me that feels drawn to go home, even though there is no home for a nomad like me and never has been.
The Chiefs were my connection to "home" there in the north Georgia hills. I always wanted to grow up and be Lenny Dawson, the All-Pro quarterback who led the Chiefs to two Super Bowls at 6 feet even and 190 pounds. A scrawny kid like me could aspire to that.
On this particular Christmas Day, Dad set up the slot car set in front of the television so we could race while watching the game. The adults drank a lot of beer, which perhaps shielded them emotionally from the pain of what was happening on the screen.
The Chiefs ran out to a 10-0 lead in the first quarter. Then the Dolphins pulled even by the half. In the second half, each scored two touchdowns, and with maybe a minute to go it was tied at 24. Then another of my childhood heroes, Ed Podolak, on his way to racking up 350 years of total offense that day, ran back the ensuing kickoff to the Miami 22 yard line.
Three plays later, with around 30 seconds to go, the Chiefs trotted out perhaps the greatest kicker of all time, Jan Stenerud, to ice the game for the good guys.
Except he didn't. He missed. The game went into overtime.
What followed was the longest game in NFL history, with 81 minutes of play clock burned over two overtimes, and each team trading missed field goals, until Garo Yepremian put one through the uprights and ended Kansas City's season.
Which leads to the cringeworthy part of the story. I became inconsolable, wailing and crying at the injustice of the Dolphins defeating my beloved Chiefs. Dad was strangely permissive at my performance, curled into a ball on the floor carrying on like I'd been gut-shot. He boxed up the slot car set, told the Wilsons it seemed like a good time to go home, and we took our leave.
No one ever called me out for that ridiculous conduct, which was unfortunate for me in the long run. I flipped over a coffee table at my sainted mother's house when the 49ers beat the Cowboys in the 1982 playoffs. I threw a bottle at the television screen when Vince Young dashed eleven yards to score a touchdown in the 2006 Rose Bowl and lift the Texas Longhorns over my beloved USC Trojans to win the national championship. For most of my life, I was not a guy you'd want to spend time around when a big game was on television. No wonder my sons dislike football to this day.
I like to think I'm better now, mostly because P lets me know when I'm acting like a jackass. There are still flashes of the petulant seven-year-old, most recently at the SEC Championship Game when the drunk LSU guy behind us, in the middle of the Georgia section, was letting us all know in his semi-literate Louisianan way that our team stunk, a fact that was manifesting itself on the field without any need for comment. When I suggested it was time for me to shut him up, P suggested it was time to head back to the hotel. Good call.
Too often on social media we portray ourselves as something more than we really are. In fact, I can be sort of an ass at times, and have some glaring lacunae in my character that constantly bear monitoring. Then again, recognizing all that leads to humility, which leads to progress on this lifelong project of becoming something better. Aristotle's practical wisdom, I guess.
A beautiful sunrise here in the Crystal City (I learned yesterday that's what the local chamber of commerce types call this place, on account of its glass-making history). Time to suit up for another mediation.
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