"He became a millionaire:" Make it go away!

My daughter and I went out for Chinese food tonight, and a few seconds after this photo was taken, in the no-time-for-segues, relentless conversational pace of teenage girls, she blurted, "Oh, my gosh. My history teacher. Today. He starts singing that song. The Beverly Hillbillies. And he asked, 'What happened to Jed?' And I said, 'He became a millionaire.' And he asked, 'How did you know that?' And I said my dad walks around the house singing it ALL the time."

Whew!
 
About an hour later, Luci (my dog, the quieter of the females in my house) and I walked the mile up to our church's community garden. This past weekend, my wife and I planted a couple of tomato plants and seeds for peas, beans, carrots, spinach and other foods that we don't like but that grow in the fall, and I was planning on watering.

But I took another look at the sky just to be sure it's not going to rain, and this is what I saw ... beautiful!



 

And with the same uncontrollable mind rush that delivered "first thing you know ol' Jed's a millionaire" to my daughter, Tennessee Ernie Ford's choir launches into:

 

He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am his own

 

Ironically, that song is In the Garden, and I remember my dad playing Tennessee Ernie Ford's album and singing along (it's a great phrase for meditation, especially if you just happen to be in a garden watering vegetables). 



 

So, what causes those "mind rushes?" What makes those memories stick.

 

Why can you say "three-hour tour" to someone my age -- many of us who can't even remember to pull our zippers up -- and we immediately break into the theme song from Gilligan's Island? Walk up to a baby boomer and say, "farm livin' is the life for me," and we're holding a pitchfork or driving an imaginary tractor, singing "Green Acres."

 

What makes words, phrases and ideas memorable? We were a TV generation, and those simple, story-telling theme songs burned forever in our brains. But how can contemporary writers deliver messages that have the same impact?

 

My daughter's Beverly Hillbillies horror reminded me of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Heath and Heath, 2007) that I reported on a few years ago.

 

It convincingly outlines the SUCCESs concept to making writing memorable. SUCCESs is the authors' acronym for the key elements to creating messages that "stick" with readers or listeners:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Authors Chip and Dan Heath immediately make their point in chapter one, "The Kidney Heist," telling the urban legend about a traveling salesman who meets a woman in a bar, invites her to his room, and then the next thing he remembers is waking up in a bathtub full of ice with stitches on the spot covering where his kidney should be.

 

Re-read or simply re-tell that story. Like so many urban legends and other stories, theme songs, commercials and movie scenes that have created our unique cultures, it has all the SUCCESs elements to make it memorable. Made to Stick is a must-read for any writer, but especially those writer charged with delivering convincing, persuasive messages to move publics to action.

 

Or for those writers who want to plague TV-watching fans long into middle age (and their children ... bwahahahahahaha) with ditties that never die, like my own personel nemeses Underdog, Batman and, of course, The Addams Family (snap, snap).

 

My dad loved to play his guitar and sing, and he especially liked country gospel and bluegrass music. I know I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my favorites, so just think of it as a bonus. Here's my dad:

 

 

Follow me on Twitter: @FWgib

 

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to stick: why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House, 2007.



 

 



How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#5)

Here's the 'When We Last Saw Our Hero' catch-up: During a TV show set in Kentucky, I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, and she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' So I'm scribbling down 10 things for her to know about my dad. I posted Numbers 1-4 earlier.

Number 5

My dad was so trusting, and his friends and family (okay, me) knew it. I played that trust for a few minutes; a friend of his took him for a 'ride' for 18 years. If MTV practical joker Ashton Kutcher knew him, my dad would've easily been 'Punk'd.'

PUNK'D BY ME
Some time around 1993-94, my parents, my wife, daughter #1 and my son spent Thanksgiving with other families at Sid Richardson Scout Ranch near Bridgeport, Texas. I was working for the Boy Scouts, and a tradition had started a few years earlier that those staff members and their immediate families who couldn't be with their extended families for Thanksgiving would meet at Sid for a huge, community meal. Sid has a large dining hall with cabins and dorms to accommodate the more civilized camper.

After dinner, I was talking with my dad on the porch of the dining hall. Jim Gidley, who was responsible for the local camping programs, was building a fire down near the lake for . . . you guessed it, s'mores.

Knowing how trusting my dad was (and thinking that he would appreciate a good practical joke), I tested an old Tenderfoot Scout trick on him. I told him that I couldn't find the tool that we needed to help build the fire, so I instructed him, 'Go ask Mr. Gidley where I can find a left-handed smoke-shifter (for you non-campers, there is no such thing as a left-handed smoke-shifter).'

My 70+ year old dad walked the 150 yards down to the lake, which was too far for me to hear the conversation, talked with Mr. Gidley, then trudged back up the hill. As he got closer to the porch, I asked him what Mr. Gidley said.

My dad replied, 'He told me to tell you to go to hell,' and gave me that 'smart ass' look and laugh.

PUNK'D FOR 18-YEARS
My son's mom and I were born two days apart in Port Arthur's St. Mary's Hospital. Both of us are the youngest in our families; she has two older sisters, and I have one older sister. Our dads had worked together at Texaco since the '40s, and like any group of co-workers, everybody knew their wives were pregnant.

I was born first, and my dad was so proud. In a world of blue-collar working men, most of them World War II veterans, having a son must've been like winning the title fight or hitting a home run to win the World Series. My dad followed a long-lost custom and passed out cigars to friends at work while he bragged about his new son. When the phone rang and the caller asked for George, he'd ask, 'Do you want to talk to George Senior or George Junior.'

My son's mom and I grew up in the same town and both attended St. James Catholic Church, but we didn't meet until the summer after high school, when we were 18 years old. When I told my dad who I was dating, he said, 'I work with her daddy. She has a brother about your age.'

I'd just met this girl, but I knew enough about her to correct him, 'Daddy, she doesn't have a brother. She has two older sisters.'

For more than 18 years, my outgoing, very trusting dad would ask my future father-in-law, 'How's your son?' And, for more than 18 years, my tight-lipped FFIL responded in his typically Cajun mutter, 'He's fine,' never admitting that he'd had a third daughter instead of a son.

Punk'd for 18 years, but one of my dad's best traits was that he loved to be around people, and he trusted them, maybe the most important gifts he passed on to my sister and me (and I see it in both daughter #1 and daughter #2).

My dad died in 1999, and the visitation at the funeral home became a real celebration of his life, as his former co-workers and friends approached me with 'George' stories: 'good man,' 'always smiling,' 'always happy,' 'always playing a joke on somebody' . . . WHAT!?

How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#3)

Here's the 'When We Last Saw Our Hero' catch-up: During a TV show set in Kentucky, I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, and she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' So I'm scribbling down 10 things for her to know about my dad. I posted Number One and Number Two earlier.

Number Two Postscript
I'm 6' 1" and usually around 210 pounds, which is about two inches shorter than Mohammed Ali and right in the middle of his range of fighting weight. After my last post, someone described my dad as 'larger than life,' and I laughed. He was 5' 8" and probably weighed 150-160 pounds most of his adult life. Even at that size, when we'd watch Ali, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston and all the other heavyweight boxers, he'd tell me that he could take them all. And maybe with my height and my heavyweight bulk, he could've. Or, if you read my last post, you'd know that he would've at least made it entertaining.

Number Three
My dad's the one on the right, and nobody knows who Kelley is except that the two of them celebrated V.E. Day (Victory in Europe, ending World War II in Europe). He joined the Coast Guard in 1939 in St. Louis, Missouri, before the United States entered the war, and told me that he enlisted when he saw a poster of a ship-to-ship rescue. He later mentioned an additional sense of urgency to his enlistment.

Prior to joining the Coast Guard, my dad worked as a truck driver, delivering ice to homes and businesses in Western Kentucky. I'd like to think that patriotic duty and the lure of adventure on the open seas drew him to the Coast Guard . . . but the real story seems to involve speeding along a dark roadway, skidding the ice truck on its side around a curve and his sneaking away to St. Louis.

During the war, he became a Chief Petty Officer in the engine room of a frigate, the Tallapoosa, escorting convoys in and out of North Africa. He also spent time in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

His stories of World War II were always funny. One of the best occurred during shore leave in Oran, Algeria, when an Algerian military policeman stopped a truckload of his shipmates. A buddy of my dad's stepped out of the back of the truck, assuring them that he'd handle it. He casually walked up to the soldier looking eager to improve international relations, then knocked him out with one punch and returned to the party in the back of the truck (I later saw this same episode in a movie, but you have to believe your dad).

My dad showed me how he cooked 'Frog in a Hole,' atop a diesel engine. It's an egg and toast combination that I passed on to my kids and that daughter #1's friends love for her to cook. He talked of friends and wild antics that made me believe that he loved his military days.

During my senior year in high school, I began recognizing the signs that our family really didn't have the money to send me to college. At the time, I wanted to go to the University of Texas, like my cousin Jack, and eventually become an architect.

I knew that my dad loved his days in the Coast Guard, so I stopped by the Navy recruiter's trailer in Port Arthur's Jefferson City Shopping Center. This was a major step for me because the Vietnam War had ended just a couple of years earlier; and I'd spent most of my junior high and high school life scared to death of being drafted and hauled off to a place that I understood only by the nightly news score cards (we always won, killing and wounding more of them than they killed and wounded of us).

I told the recruiter that I'd like to be an architect and that I'd heard the Navy would pay for me to go to school. He assured me that the Navy would pay for me to go to school to become an engineer, which he told me was pretty much the same thing.

Brochures in hand -- probably featuring photos of a '70s version of a ship-to-ship rescue -- and expecting elation from my dad, I excitedly told him and my mom of my plans. His only response was, 'Don't worry. We'll find a way to pay for college.'

I was shocked and didn't understand until about 10 years later, when my dad checked into an alcoholic recovery unit. My older sister and I had never experienced any kind of abuse, neglect or embarassment because of his drinking, so this took us as a HUGE surprise.

He was out of his room, when I arrived for a visit, and I picked up a handwritten note off his night stand. When I asked about the note, he told me that patients in the unit talked in groups about their addiction-related issues, then wrote letters of encouragement to whoever spoke during that session.

This letter said something like: 'George, I know it must have been awful for you during the war to see men burning in the water, screaming for help, and you couldn't do anything.'

A German submarine had sunk a ship in his convoy, trapping its crew and passengers in a sea of burning oil and diesel fuel. His dreams of an exciting ship-to-ship rescue had become a decades-long nightmare.

I don't think I'm ready to share all of Number Three with daughter #2. In her very sweet, caring way, she'd ask, 'Hey, buddy. What's wrong? Why are you crying?'

'How Am I Supposed to Know?' 10 Things About My Dad (#1 and #2)

This is my dad. This photo is one of my best photos. I took it in the late '70s, and it's been around our house for decades. I think it captures my dad perfectly, in appearance, character and personality, although I did have loan him the hat for full effect.

I'm telling you about this photo and introducing you to my dad because of daughter #2. She shocked me last weekend when we were watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (our family's weekly sniff-and-feel-good-about-people time together). The show took place in Louisville, Kentucky.

When I asked daughter #2 who was born in Kentucky, she just shrugged. When I exasperatedly told her that my dad was born in Kentucky, she just as exasperatedly questioned, 'How am I supposed to know anything about him?' He died when daughter #2 was less than 2 years old.

So, here are 10 things about my dad (in no order of importance . . . forgive me if I've already shared some of this with you) that I'll share with daughter #2.

Number One
He was born August 6, 1916 in Dukedom, Tennessee, and grew up in Mayfield, Kentucky, which is in Western Kentucky, and was a teenager during the Great Depression. He was the youngest in his family and had two older sisters -- Kathleen and Ruby -- and an older brother Herman.

Aunt Kathleen and Aunt Ruby visited Texas when I lived in Conroe in the early '80s. My parents drove them over from Port Arthur, and I still laugh when I think of them calling my dad, then nearly 70 years old, by his childhood name: 'Baby.'

Number Two
My dad was a boxer in his teens and 20s. He told me that he was a Golden Gloves boxer, but most of the stories I heard were about his matches when a carnival came to Mayfield or nearby Paducah, Kentucky. Carnivals were traveling shows that moved from town to town during the Depression; and their games, contests, shows and exotic animals were the most excitement a little town like his would see for months.

Some carnivals featured a 'champion' boxer, and when the carnival hit town, word spread quickly (and tickets sold just as quickly) that this champion would box and beat 24 of the 'best' local boxers in 24 hours. My dad usually was one of those 24 boxers; and during the Depression, when jobs and money were hard to come by, he was happy to look good for a few rounds, take a few punches, hit the mat, and then pick up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

He must've been a local favorite because other carnivals recruited him for their Thursday-through-Saturday, best-of-three matches. From what I understand, he always lost on Thursday, but made a valiant, underdog comeback on Friday. Tickets sales 'skyrocketed' (as much as tickets sales would skyrocket in a small town) for Saturday's championship bout; and almost always, he lost after a 'hard-fought' match. And then he picked up his paycheck from the champ's manager.

My dad was 'older' -- 39 -- when I was born (I was 42 when daughter #2 was born, so I laugh when I think about it), but he was very quick when he'd box with the neighborhood boys in his 50s and even when he'd shadow box in his 60s.

I don't think I appreciated just how quick he was until he shared with me how he and a World War II shipmate (he was in the Coast Guard, which was rolled into the Navy during the war) would pick up a few bucks before shore leave. My dad would pull his handkerchief out of his pocket, lay it on the ground and stand on it with both feet. His friend would take bets: my dad would remain standing on the handkerchief and any challenger could try to hit in the head. The story, as told to me, was that he never got hit; however, his ears sure were cauliflowered (a sure sign that a boxer has taken some hits -- could've been from all those carnival losses).

There does seem to be common thread of boxing and money running through all his stories.

My dad gave me two bits of boxing/life advice:
- You gotta roll with the punches (which, at 52, I finally realize is true)
- You gotta bob and weave (a skill to which he attributed his handkerchief-bet winnings)

He tried to teach me how to box, but I was slow, skinny and not very strong. And I weaved and bobbed when I should've bobbed and weaved.

When I was about 13 or 14, we were boxing in the front yard (can you imagine today's response to a father and teenage son fighting in the front yard?). He hit me upside the head with a right cross and floored me. Like most teenage boys, I sprang up wildly, and I caught him by surprise with a right hook in the side. After several days of soreness, he went to the doctor, who told him that he had a couple of broken ribs.

And I think that became Chapter One in his unwritten, unplanned Lessons for Fatherhood. Even with fascinating recollections of carnivals and ship-board bets, that front-yard match and those broken ribs became his most-often repeated boxing story for the next couple of decades.

Daughter #2's going to have to wait for Things to Know About My Dad #3-10.

Blog Central aka The Front Porch

Laurie at I Can Leave My Hat On (my blog mentor) asked her visitors to post their 'work stations.' You can see why my blog is called George's Front Porch.

Items of note (from left to right)

Antique trunk that my wife refinished. It contains family photos and momentoes and will eventually go to daughter #1. We have an antique tool box of similar size for my son and another trunk (still awaiting sandpaper) for daughter #2.

The radio on top of the trunk sat in my parents' garage for years. My dad would listen to it while he worked in the garage or on our car, and my friends and I would listen while we played. There's a distinct (and pleasant) memory of cigarette smoke, beer and motor oil associated with it. The radio originally belonged to my mom's Aunt Blanche (Domingue), who lived in Lake Charles.

A reflection of the flash because George doesn't know how to take pictures.

An antique sled that my wife loves. It's part of one of those winters that she's hoping we'll eventually have. MAJOR part of Christmas decorating around our house.

The book case also came from Aunt Blanche's. It's one of the pieces of furniture I salvaged after my parents' house burned.

Back two steps: that's my Austin Motorola Marathon coffee mug (with hot tea to help deal with the flu). I feel like a real runner when I use it.

Our Dreams: A Family Tradition

When I sleep, I dream. Not simple, random dreams; but continuous, vivid dreams, from the moment I close my eyes, when the commercials and previews start, until I wake up following the final feature.

Vivid dreams seem to be a family tradition. My dad would talk in his sleep and often would 'act out' his dreams. During a weekend stay at a local Scout camp (I worked for the Boy Scouts for about 20 years), we stayed in cabins; and in our cabin, his side of the bed was up against a wall (apparently his side of the bed at home wasn't). From my room across the cabin, I heard him smack in to the bedroom wall, later learning that he had jumped up in bed and chased someone right into the wall.

I spent my 40th birthday in my dad's hospital room, where dehydration was one of the doctor's concerns. Apparently, hallucinations are a symptom of dehydration. After an evening of zig-zag, sometimes-difficult-to-follow conversation, my dad asked me to get the nurse a Coke. I realized that he thought she was his home-health nurse when I looked at her name tag, and it wasn't the same name he was using.

I went to the nurse's station to ask what to do about his hallucinations. The nurse said to gently bring him back to reality and let him know that he's hallucinating. Some time around 2:30 a.m., I'd pretty much resorted to 'yeah, dad. whatever.'

I've carried on the tradition, in many cases, much to the concern of my wife. A couple of recurring dreams from my earlier parenthood days:

- I'd dive out of bed to keep my kids from falling, a dream that made a trip to the dome of the Texas capital building a nightmare (get away from the railing! Daddy, we want to see!) and a visit to the Grand Canyon a real nerve-tester.

- I'd stand up in bed and reach up to get the kids off the ceiling fan, a dream that significantly improved my wife's sleep-to-alert reflexes (I'm sure her response saved my fingers and the top of my head many times).

My 'favorite' has its own place in the lore of our family history, a story oft' repeated 'round campfires and television sets.

My wife stayed up late to watch a movie with daughter #1, and I'd already gone to bed. She walked into our room, and I jumped out of bed, ran to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. With what I would call my best Jack-Nicholson-'Here's-Johnny' leer, I started shaking her and shouting, 'I've got you now!' My wife's not petite, so fortunately I woke up before she and daughter #1 threw me down the stairs (I did make it a point to tell a friend because I'd heard that sleepwalking was a solid defense for murdering your wife if there's documentation of previous, similar events . . . I have since heard that it's not).

Now it seems like my action-filled dreams are limited to seeing 3-D geometric patterns on the ceiling, usually well-lit, and me waking up my wife to show her and explain the details. She's usually not interested.

But the tradition continues . . .

So far, daughter #2 only talks in her sleep. When my son was much younger, I woke up to him standing next to my side of the bed. Fortunately, my ever-vigilant wife sounded the alarm, 'He's still asleep . . . and he's about to pee!' When daughter #1 was younger, I followed her down the stairs in the middle of the night and caught her pulling down her pajama bottoms as she was getting ready to pee in the middle of the living room.

I have the flu this week, and I left work early Monday. After daughter #2 came home from school, I went upstairs to take a nap while she went across the street to play. Unfortunately, daughter #2 has become quite the 5th-grade socialite, and her friends started ringing our phone just a few minutes after she left. Around 5 p.m., I gave up and called her to come home.

From 5:17 p.m., when I gave her the phone, until 6:35 p.m., when my wife called, there were no dreams.

For somebody who always dreams, that's pretty frightening. When daughter #2 woke me up to talk to my wife, I felt like I had to crawl out of a deep black hole to wake up. And that darkness is all I remember about those 78 minutes.

Pretty scary, although I'm sure the fever prompted that deep sleep; but I keep wondering, where did I go?

Just in case you missed my previous post, only one person can answer that: