Messed up Kid.

 

With the steering wheel of the little white Chevy in a death grip, I navigated the switchback turns on the north end of Red Oak Ridge. Reluctant to look out the passenger window, for fear of drifting anywhere closer to the edge and off the side of a mountain where, if lost, I wouldn’t be found for days – months? Maybe even years – 42 years ...?

Last weekend, I traveled thousands of miles without a hitch to meet this stranger. A late Friday night flight in to Knoxville. A rental car and a hotel room followed by a 3-hour drive through the wet, foggy Appalachian morning. Bluegrass music calmed my nerves. It was a day I never anticipated would happen. It’s almost ironic that I wound up off track and searching for that extra hour. When the cellular signal gave out, no more than 4 miles separated us but it took me one more full hour to figure out the mountain riddle I’d been studying since I was a child.

1777 Red Oak Ridge Road has been in his family since the turn of the century. The building clings to the side of the road. At this point, I’m reluctant to call it a house. It’s more like some stones, some wood, some cardboard and tin piled up against each other – held tight to the ridge between the walnut trees and vines and the river bottom somewhere down there. With a stiff breeze I’m afraid his home would slide in to the hollow below – his treasure piled high to the ceiling and no discernable difference between what goes on the floor inside and what is relegated to being trash in the yard outside. Whatever has kept it from falling up to now is a mystery.

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I started this piece in August of 2017 after coming back from my first face to face visit with my biological father in over 40 years… you could say this story started long before then…. I don’t know exactly why but I never sat down and finished my thoughts from 2017.

 Yesterday (2/15/22) I received a call from Russell County Social Services that Mr. Patrick is not doing well. He has been discharged from the COVID Unit at his long-term care facility in Big Stone Gap, Virginia but his two years of hospitalization and care following a stroke may be coming to an end.

For lack of a better term, “Unique” is the word that the Social Worker and I politely use to describe the relationship between Lee-Bo and me. I guess she felt obligated to let me know and wanted to prepare me for what may lie ahead. So, there I sat….in the parking lot at the school, just after dismissal, here in Central Minnesota. The nice lady on the other end of the phone had just called to be nice – called to tell me, “Your daddy is dying” in her sweetest southern drawl. I thanked her for her time, recognized that she was in a difficult position and that I respected her an awful lot for taking the time to keep me informed. I could feel the pain in her voice.

I remember 6 months or so ago – the last time we talked – the social worker and I…. we got candid for a bit, and she let on that there are plenty of good old, mountain boys growing old and laying up sick in nursing homes – more than one with family “issues”. I sensed her genuine compassion and care for these wards of the court who could no longer care for themselves. Marvin Lee Patrick had been on her radar for years and it took him having a stroke; lying helpless on the floor of that ramshackle home for hours, maybe days, before they found him - before they could commit him to Heritage Hall and get him the medical care and attention he needed to stay alive. Before the courts took over there was a matter of small consequence…I had to essentially sign over any legal claim to being his only living relative. I had to tell the courts that we shared blood but that’s about where it stopped. Those wheels were put into motion in the mid 1970’s… I felt no obligation to be a decision maker as to what was best for him when he proved he could no longer take care of himself. The courts agreed and Russel County took over.

So goes another page in the ever-winding Daddy Chapter of my life.

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Maybe I should have written more after that trip to Virginia in 2017. I had every intention of putting words to paper so that I could document that moment in time… but that’s all I could muster. 3 Paragraphs…. Three paragraphs of a trip that was supposed to answer forty years of questions….and so it sat. Unwritten.

Marvin “Lee” was adopted by Luther and Ethel Patrick in Castlewood, Virginia. Ms. Ethel’s maiden name was Steffey. The home that I visited in 2017 was the home in which they raised Lee. I don’t recall much being said about his childhood other than he never went too far from southwest Virginia until he was an adult. Oh yeah, there was the piece about never finishing school.

At some point, Lee became a truck driver and started to travel across the county. I don’t know what he was hauling nor how often his route took him through Illinois, but I can tell you that he was a “regular” at the drinking establishment that my maternal grandparents visited in East Aurora. Maybe things were different in 1974 but as the story goes, it was my mother’s parents that brought her to the Bar at 18 years old. It was her parents that introduced her to the much older gentleman.  It was a Halloween Party and a one-night stand that resulted in Yours Truly. Up until that point, Lee-Bo’s side of the story mirrored my mother’s.

For two hot days in August 2017, Lee-bo and I toured the hills and hollows of southwest Virginia in a white rental car. Air conditioning blasting, he showed me the State Line from on top of a mountain. I don’t recall if I was looking at Kentucky or Tennessee. For two days he showed me around and showed me off as his “son” – never once did he introduce me as “Paul”. I would later find out that it was his stubborn way of recognizing Paul only as my middle name – named after my maternal grandfather of which he was not a fan. Food City is where we ate our meals. The deli at the St. Paul grocery store was downright cheap and the food was good. Besides, the ladies there treated Lee-Bo real nice. I was surprised to see that he had a Super Saver card to redeem points. I think he insisted to pay once.

For the most part we avoided any true depth of conversation. He took pride in introducing me to some close friends of his. I enjoyed a Pepsi while watching NASCAR on a TV in the living room of strangers, 1500 miles from my home. Coach and Polly told stories about Lee. Coach had stories from 30 and 40 years ago. With me as the only real surviving kin, I was comforted that these people had treated Lee as family for a long time. They looked after him. Drove him where he needed to go. Brought him a meal now and again. Made sure that he was included. I respectfully listened to stories of which I had no frame of reference, but I could see that Marvin Lee Patrick was proud to sit in the corner rocker and finally see his “son” across the room. In that moment he was happy and perhaps that was why I went….not to really get any real answers but to finally hear a different side of the story. His side….and maybe to make an old man happy after all these years of mistakes.

That evening we went back to Lee’s house. Amidst the rubbish, he showed me around. He cleared a spot off the mattress in the sitting room and turned on some John Wayne, black and white, spaghetti western of which I had zero interest. His home was floor to ceiling of junk. No recognizable place for anything…there was caulk in the same drawer as a box of macaroni and cheese…. there was junk mail from years on end, broken down computer parts and shells of old TVs everywhere. I have been to third world countries that would look like 4 star living compared to his place. Tucked quietly, high on a shelf, above the unsightly piles of trash was a picture frame with photos of my children, Emma and Logan….by rights – his grandchildren -  that up until 2015, he knew nothing of. Without scratching the surface of the tough topics that lay ahead, Lee wanted to hear about them.

The evening carried on and as nighttime approached, Lee started to ready a place for me to lay my head to sleep. He was taken back a bit when I told him that I had reserved a room at a hotel in Lebanon, just up the road. I needed a break to process what I had seen. I needed to call home and talk to Michele. I needed a stiff drink.

I promised to return in the morning and take him out for breakfast… I could sense that he was reluctant to let me go again.

Day 2 was filled with more small talk and two more trips to Food City. Seriously, that’s the name of the grocery store – Food City. I offered to take him to any other restaurant, any bar…. his choice. I was buying. He chose Food City. Again, he racked up a few more rewards points on his card and before we got our lunch that afternoon, I decided that it’d be a nice gesture to buy the ladies in the kitchen some flowers. They had served me 4 of the 5 meals that I ate in my short stay in Virginia. One lady asked me what I thought of their town and if I’d ever be back. I honestly liked the towns of Castlewood and St. Paul and secretly wished that I would have been able to see and do more during my visit. I answered politely and wondered myself if I would ever return.

After our last lunch together, I had just about an hour before I would need to get on the road for a flight out of Knoxville. Lee and I drove over the creek and under the railroad bridge back to his place. Standing outside, I asked for another quick tour of the yard. The outside was just as cluttered as the inside. The overgrowth of vines and trees absorbed bicycle frames, oil cans, turtle shells and all sorts of other collectibles. Standing to the left of what should have been a porch, I stopped my tour guide and cut to the chase.

“You’ve got me here. I have an hour before I must leave, and we’ve not even touched any of the specifics on your story…of our story. What do you want me to know, Lee?”

And in that last hour I heard his side for the first and only time in my life. He spoke fondly of my Aunt Sarah and my Aunt Deanna. He remembered details from 42 years earlier like they happened yesterday. He recalled how much my Grandpa Paul and he didn’t get along, but truth be told, my grandpa had plenty of folks that he didn’t see eye to eye with. He told me how he was smitten with my mother from day one. He talked about driving truck and living in Sandwich, Illinois and Ontario, California. He said he had a hard time keeping my mother from “going out” and when things got tough, he brought his family back to Virginia. He vividly told me about my Uncle Theron and Aunt Debbie driving down from Aurora and picking me and my mother up…..and driving away.

He recalled the day in 1980 when the sheriff’s department served papers terminating his parental rights to me so that Tom Kirby could adopt me. He refused to sign them. He said he tried to stay in touch, but my grandparents made that difficult and that my mother’s words warned him to stay away. He told me he was thankful for Tom and asked me what kind of a father he was.

He never remarried.

He hit the bottle hard – for a long time.

He stayed in Castlewood and lived with his parents.

Luther died in 1989. Miss Ethel in 2002.

He never really worked anywhere too long to have a career or a trade.

The world moved on and I guess he never really did.

In the sweltering afternoon heat, Lee retrieved a bible from somewhere in his dilapidated home. He feverishly paged through it and asked to show me something. On the side of a hill in southwestern Virginia, my biological father preached a 5-minute sermon on how to pray. He implored me to teach my children how to pray. He didn’t point fingers and he didn’t cast any stones. He offered very few excuses and even fewer explanations on why or how things happened the way that they did. And as time winded down on our visit, I was at peace. Marvin Lee Patrick had been given a chance to tell his side of the story – albeit it in a condensed and abbreviated version but nonetheless, I heard it straight from his mouth.

We shook hands and I drove away. The late afternoon sun washed the mountains. The twangy country music helped pass the miles. I made my flight and in an instant was back into my World with a wife and three wonderful children. I imagined Ol’ Lee-bo standing by the roadside on Red Oak Ridge, staring off for days…probably like he said he did in 1976.

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We spoke on the phone periodically for the next couple of years. Lee wanted to come to Minnesota in the worst way. He begged to meet his grandchildren in person, but his simple ways weren’t conducive to interstate travel. He had no driver’s license. He had no valid ID to board an airplane. His health was increasingly worse, and he talked about buses and trains. It never happened.

A stroke followed by bouts of dementia led to court papers and committal to Heritage Hall, an elder care center not far from his home. His Social Workers called and reported his condition from time to time. Apparently, his mind took him back to the 1970’s. He spoke of his parents as if they were still alive. He spoke of my mother as if they were still married. I sent a Christmas card and a family photo but his phone calls ceased. I hoped that he wasn’t a burden and that when he thought of me, if he ever did, I hoped that he was happy that we had gotten to know each other just a little bit since I sent that letter in October 2015.

I was glad that I did.