MY FATHER: MY OLD MAN, Part 2
by Charlie Steel

Join us in the continuation, as Steel shares this very personal tale about the strengths of "his old man".

To me, as a child, my father seemed invincible. He came home tired, but I didn't see it - he always ate and talked and joked a lot with mom at the dinner table, and after supper he would go in the tub to soak. What I hated most were the times mom was busy with the dishes and he would call on me to scrub his back hard with a wet washcloth. I was embarrassed and I hated being in there. It required two rinses of the bath water to get him clean. And, still, always, he smelled slightly of raw oil and gasoline no matter how hard he tried to get clean. For me, it was a traumatic thing to have to scrub with both hands on that freckled, deeply tanned, huge muscular back. I was glad to get out of there. It just wasn't right for a son to have to scrub his father's dirty back. That was a job for mother.

The older I get, the harder these bittersweet memories tug at the inner recesses of my mind and emotions. Today, 50 years later, I compare my life to my old man's. I see now what I could never have seen then. My father led a better life, worked harder, and was braver, stronger, and truer to his ideals than I would ever be. In fact, to this day my old man - my father - stands out above any man I have ever known. What is a man anyway? What principles, what guidelines and what substance form the makeup of a living human being? Thoughts of my father, years later, bring me back to these questions. It was his simple, methodical, and everyday life that instructs me on what I missed in my own life. Simple his life was, but far from ordinary.

Dad was right. A man only has so much time on this earth to do what he can, and then it's over. Too bad I didn't take my father's words at that early age and apply them. I can tell you about that later. Anyway, if you think I'm over romanticizing my old man, let me tell you a true story.

I was 16. I needed a car and I needed money. The fastest way to get it was to work for my father's boss, my great uncle. The problem was, he was mean, filthy-mouthed, hard and the most crooked old man I ever met. He made millions out of the wells he drilled and out of the stripper wells he pumped. He hired only older men who worked harder for less pay and for longer hours. Well, only the hot dreams of youth made me go to his house that day and it took a fistful of courage for me to knock on that forbidding oak door. I told him about the car and, after some stiff talk from the old man and a promise from me to work hard for him, he agreed I could work until I made the money.

Dad and I ended up working together. We were drilling a well and worked over part of a slush pit. It was deep, over eight feet or more, and represented significant danger to anyone up on the platform. When the bailor came up to clean the cuttings out of the hole, often crude oil would slosh onto the platform. When that happened, they knew they were hitting the oil vein. Dad called for the drilling platform to be cleaned of slippery crude oil. Up came the old man - the boss - and interrupted.

"You men get back to drilling," he yelled, his head shaking with Parkinson's. "You men get back to drilling."

"Too dangerous," answered my father. "A man could fall in that hole and drown, or a fire could start. We need to clean up the rig."

"You get up there and work on it. I'll decide what's dangerous or not."

Reluctantly, Dad and the Uncle's brother, Cecil, got up on the platform and began returning the long bit to the hole. I was slipping and sliding around and getting covered with crude as I tried to clean the floor of the wooden platform. All of a sudden, up on the platform Cecil slipped and fell over the edge into the crude oil and sank into the slush pit. The boss ran up on the platform and began wringing his twisted old hands.

"No! What do we do now?" yelled the uncle. "We lost him."

My father raised the lid of a bench and from inside took out a rope. He quickly tied one end and handed me the other.

"Here, when I tug, you two men pull us up." He nodded from me to my uncle.

I watched in horror as my father went to the edge of the hole and jumped in. His entire body disappeared into the black stinky pool of crude. I held tightly to the rope, and then I felt a tug. I began to pull and the weight was too much for me.

"Uncle Jim!" I yelled to my uncle who was still standing there. "Help me, please! I can't raise them both alone."

Slowly my uncle came over and half-heartedly began to pull on the rope, as if he was hesitant to get the dirty crude on his hands and clothes. The rope was slippery now with the crude oil and we were both losing our grip. Slowly we pulled, and then I saw my father's head come up above the pool of oil. His head was encased in the goop. I watched him take one hand and arm and skim it away and then take a slurpy breath as he tried to see with one eye. He wiped his eye and then grabbed onto a piece of the scaffolding and raised Cecil with his other arm.

"Here! Grab him!" yelled my father.

By now my father held himself up on a piece of metal girder with one greasy hand while with the other arm he shoved Cecil's oil encased body against the wooden platform. My uncle grabbed the oily clothes of his brother and then I watched as the old man let his brother slowly slip from his hands and back down into the pool of crude.

"No!" yelled my father.

In horror, I watched as my father took another deep slurpy breath, let go of his hold on the girder, and slipped down into the deep pool of crude. I ran to catch the rope but it was now coated with oil and, as I tried to grab for it, the end slipped over and into the pool. Seconds, a minute, several minutes ticked by and I felt hopeless terror. I knew it was impossible for any man to live, survive or climb up out of that giant pool of crude oil.

"They're gone," stammered my uncle, again ringing his hands.

"You killed them," I shrieked, fighting the urge to push the old man into the black pool.

Be sure to look for the continuation next month.

Those interested in reading more about Charlie Steel's work may visit www.condorpublishing.com.