I have always been very proud of my dad. My dad was a career air force man and quite the big shot. He is big and burly, standing six feet tall and built like a bear. He was always quite intimidating and I reveled in the thought that my dad could beat up someone else's dad. Of course, being the smart man that he was, when it was time to beat someone's dad up, he usually let Mom do it.

My dad has a high I.Q. He is well schooled, informed, aware, and as most people are with a high I.Q., quite articulate. None of those credentials can take away from the fact that first and foremost, my dad is a hillbilly hick. He grew up in the Smoky Mountains and spent his boyhood tromping through the wilderness hunting and fishing. He went barefoot to school and lived modestly with his parents and sister in Paw Creek, North Carolina.

He often provided for his family by hunting up a varied plate of squirrel and opossum. Sometimes he lucked out and managed even to get deer and rabbit. His hunting was not to be outdone by his fishing. He was a boy with a gun, pole and the great outdoors.

When Dad grew older he brought this lifestyle to the table with his new bride. As all good country folks do, my parents married when they were 17 and 19. My dad was such a romantic that o­ne day after a date, he dropped my mom off at her house and said to her, "Challie, if you want to marry me, be standing o­n this corner at seven A.M. sharp."  How could a woman reject such a romantic proposal?

Seven o'clock came and Dad did a drive-by. There was my mother. She jumped in, they sped off, and were married a few hours later. He brought Mom home, dropped her off and said to her, "You'd better go tell them what you have done."  Thus began their life together.

My parents did not settle down right away.  They spent their first years of marriage traveling with a band of gypsies selling photo prints.  Even after the first baby came they continued to travel, sometimes living in hotels, sometimes in their car and, o­nce in a while, in colorful gypsy camps.  It was a world full of experiences and stories, many of which would be told later.  Sometimes they did well for themselves and feasted o­n steak and lobster; sometimes it was beans and weenies from a can, cooked over canned flame in a national park.  Then the time came when Dad decided to grow up. They moved to Mississippi and he joined the Army.  Army boot camp for my dad was like summer camp. Years of mountain living had prepared him for the cruel treatment by the government, and Dad loved it.  After a year he joined the Air Force, where he stayed for the next twenty years.

In Mississippi they had three more children: Kirsten, Michele and me.  We all came within 5 years of each other. Most of us were war babies or hurricane babies. Anytime Dad would come back from leave, another baby came in nine months. If there was a hurricane, Mom and Dad took cover in the shelter, as well as recreation.

I was born nine months after hurricane Camille. I was a little baby, with a bright red scalp. I did not have a hair o­n my head but there was no doubt that I was going to be a redhead. They named me Shalagh Lea, which romantically enough means "old blind walking stick."

I was to be the baby of the family for the next eight years and it was a position I immediately saw the benefit of. If ever anyone could milk every ounce of creamy goodness out of being the youngest, it was I. This caused a great deal of gnashing of teeth from my older sisters, and was the main reason, I am certain, for them abusing me the way they so often did.

There was a great deal of mutual abuse going o­n in my home growing up.  Often it was us kids killing us kids, but every now and then, we turned our skill o­n our parents. o­ne case in point was the summer between my fourth and fifth grades.  My dad was a teacher by this time and had the summers off.  We lived in the country in Oregon, in a house tucked away with a few acres. o­n our land we had several apple and pear trees, which my folks usually let go, preferring the wild look as opposed to the nicely kept manicured look our neighbors had.  Even so, my dad decided to prune the apple trees.

Now, it is no secret that I was my dad's favorite.  I say was, because after this summer I moved drastically down the ladder.  He and I went out to the trees and my dad climbed up o­n a tall ladder, pruners in hand, and began to cut off branches.  Many of them fell very close to my person, causing me alarm.  I was dancing around the bottom of the ladder trying to avoid getting hit by these missiles my dad was sending down to me, and he finally had enough. "Dang nabbit, Shalagh!  Stop playing around down there.  Don't move the ladder or I will tan your hide!"

Or so he says. What I heard was "Move the ladder and tan your hide."  Not wanting the last part, I moved the former and was quite surprised at what happened next.  Dad had o­ne foot o­n the ladder, o­ne foot o­n a tree branch and had been leaning precariously to o­ne side clipping branches. The force of my carrying out his requested task caused him to pitch forward completely and do a very good impression of Wile E. Coyote about to fall off the edge of the abyss.  Then he fell.  As I pointed out, my dad is a bright man, so he made sure he bounced from branch to branch o­n his way down to slow his descent and evenly distribute the bruises. Also, he is a big man, so it didn't help all that much.  I will say here that all this happened in slow motion, giving my dad ample time to curse me up o­ne side, down the other and drive a truck over my tender young mind with threats about what he was going to do to me, and for how long, o­nce he landed.

Landed isn't the right term.  Dad crashed to the ground and bounced.  He then splatted.  As luck would have it, Dad broke his leg, giving me just the head start I needed to outrun him.  It was quite a race, however, with me as the victor.

I was a smart girl and did what we kids called "laying low" for a week or so, because anytime I came close enough, Dad would take a swing at me with a crutch.  Swinging the crutches wasn't that good an idea, though, because it gave us girls an idea.  In a weak moment of his, we got the crutches away from Dad and realized we could do a fairly good imitation of a pole-vaulter.  Dad was tall, and we were short, so we would stuff the crutches under our armpits and run.  We then would plant the things o­n the ground and fly up and over at a pretty good clip of speed.  We all took turns flying through the air in our living room, with Dad as a reluctant spectator.  After a while of such shenanigans (as my dad was fond of calling them), he decided to put a stop to it.  He demanded we put the crutches down and go outside to play.  It was my turn, however, and I was not quite done.  Since Dad had a broken leg, and I had the crutches, he would just have to have it my way, so I stuffed the crutches under my armpits and said, "Oh, Dad! Lighten up!"  Then I ran. I planted the crutches and did what was quite possibly my highest, best vault of the day.  It was at the top of the vault I realized my dad had come off the couch a foot or so, eyes popping grotesquely from his head and his mouth frozen in a scream.  I quickly looked down and saw I had planted the crutch o­n the o­nly part of him that was not covered and protected by his cast: his toes.  I gasped, Dad screamed, and I found my legs and beat feet out of there, all the time ducking and dodging both the darts shooting from his eyes and the curses flowing from his lips.  Again, I laid low.

Dad's broken leg and broken toes eventually healed, but my impressionable mind still hadn't. I knew that Dad was just lying in wait to do my person harm o­ne day.  I was so careful to be very helpful to my dad to appease his temper and make amends.  O­ne day he was mowing the lawn and I was watching him.  He barked for me to go bring him a drink of water and I jumped up, Johnny-on-the-spot.  I filled a canning jar to the very top and ran out to my dad.  Right before I got to him, I stepped in a gopher hole.  I pitched forward and had a pretty good knock-down drag-out with gravity, determined to not douse my dad, and won.  But the way I landed was rather dramatic.  I fell forward, and kind of did several duck-walk steps before coming to a rest o­n o­ne knee, the jar lifted high to my father much like a lover o­n o­ne knee would give a ring to his sweetheart.  Dad snatched the jar from me and drained it in two mighty swallows.  Without so much as a word of thanks he handed me the jar and went about his business.  I rightly concluded that he still did not trust me in close proximity to himself.

Later that same evening I was sitting at the computer in the dining room, and Dad came in and told me he wanted that seat.  He had work to do o­n the computer.  We had several chairs in the dining room, none of which were in good shape.  Some were missing a wheel and some teetered.  What I had was o­ne of those.  As I got up I mentioned that the chair wobbled, and he said, "Just don't move the chair."

Or so he says that's what he said. What I heard was, "Just move the chair."  Still trying to get o­n my dad's good side, and attempting to be extra helpful, I whipped the chair away from him in o­ne quick movement.  At the same time he went to sit down in o­ne quick movement.  He was probably thinking, sit quick before this fool kid does something stupid.

Something very much like what I did.  Right about the time Dad's butt was supposed to hit the seat and didn't, was right about the time I rightly assumed I needed to get out there and fast.  I did outrun my dad o­nce again, but o­nly just.  The sight of him hitting the floor in slow motion, then rolling backward, his feet kicking the underside of the table and making everything o­n it leap up a good four inches in the air, was very funny to me.  Nobody thought a thing of it when o­nce again I went running as fast as I could out the door, my dad hot o­n my heels while I screamed, "Ahhhhhhh, hahahahaha, ahhhhhhhhhhh."  They were getting pretty used it to by then.  It seemed that day would not be the day to redeem myself to my dad.  That would come later, when time would muddy the memory.  For now, o­nce again, it was time for me to lay low.