Lessons To Be Learned

When I was born in June 1973, my parents were only 19 and 18 years old. Mom, the older of them by two weeks, began feeling labor pains on her 19th birthday, three days before I was delivered, and Dad would turn 19 just a week and a half later. If anyone reading this wants to make a movie of it, take this note: I was NOT the birthday present they wanted, but I was the best damned birthday present they were going to get! Be sure the actors know to look mildly disappointed but also miserably resigned to their fates. Got it? Okay.

Brenda and Rusty had “fallen in love” their senior year at Dry Prong High School, where they were each something of a local basketball star on their respective varsity teams. (Where those sport-inclined genes went is beyond me.) Somewhere between all that jumping and dribbling, somebody scored a real three-pointer, et voila - I was made! The sperm must have wriggled and gnawed and battered its way into that egg late in the fall of 1972 as Brenda was settling into her dormitory suite and beginning a very short-lived college career studying art at NSU. Once she could no longer hide the baby bump, they were rushed quickly but quietly into a family church wedding and then forced to start our dysfunctional little family in a tiny little house on a great big hill in the middle of Kisatchie National Forest.

"Rusty" Murdock

My dad took a job as a rookie police officer, which it turns out suited him pretty well. His temper and resentment of being trapped in a marriage with a kid served him well with the department, and between routinely beating my mother unconscious and narrowly beating charges of sexual misconduct with underage girls while on duty, he began his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Pineville Police Department. Spoiler Alert: Last I heard, he still works there. Like I said, the job suited him.

Melvin Alvin Hataway

One of my earliest memories is of being given a bath by my grandfather during a weekend visit when I was three. I clearly remember feeling apprehensive about being truthful when he discovered red, blistering welts all over my legs, buttocks, and back from a beating my dad had given me with a switch. He had warned me in no uncertain terms not to let my grandparents find out about it, and here I was, a wet, naked stool pigeon spilling my guts to my pappaw.

Pappaw dried me off, dressed me, and drove the fifteen miles or so to the Grant Parish Sheriff's Office for a meeting with my great uncle, his brother, Sheriff Pop Hataway. I was asked to retell the story and then they pulled down my pants and photographed the welts for evidence, and we all drove back to my parents' house. Uncle Pop, as I recall, had the good sense to keep Pappaw away as he brought me inside to confront my dad.

I remember the house being so dark and foreboding, even though it was still a fully bright mid-afternoon outside. Dad worked nights, so that meant he had to sleep during the day. Our house was to be kept cool, dark, and silent when he was sleeping, otherwise we paid the price for waking him.

2nd Street Home, Dry Prong, LA

My eyes stayed locked on the pattern in the atrocious red plaid carpet that extended from the front door into the sunken living room. It was red, I know it for a fact, though in such perpetual dimness, I don't know how anyone could have guessed its true color.

L.R. "Pop" Hataway

I listened, eyes down, hands clasped behind my back, to Uncle Pop tell my dad that he understood that kids sometimes got sassy and needed a good spanking so they'd learn to be better. But Dad would be better off, he went on, if he'd stick to using a hand or a belt rather than drawing blood with a switch. He warned Dad that if he had to come back out to discuss more bloody welts on my butt, it would be as the Sheriff and not as family.

The bright, yellow-orange sunlight from outside struck my down turned eyes and I looked up in time to watch the back of Uncle Pop sauntering out the door and through the yard to his car. In a slow, angular way, it was pinched back and pushed out by the closing door, my dad's anger radiating from the shadows as his hand left the door knob and went to his belt.

Did I mention that my dad and his two hippie brothers fancied themselves leather artisans who made big, gaudy, embellished leather belts and watch bands in their free time? Oh, yeah. They totally did. I wonder if Uncle “Here’s-My-Advice-About-How-To-Beat-Your-Kids” knew that when he made his recommendation that day. My dad's favorite belt was a thick, ugly, brown one adorned with little brass sea shells that punctuated his circumference every 6 inches with a glint of tarnished gold and sounded like a tire rolling over rumble strips on the shoulder of the road when he took it off.

Those shells didn't break the skin like a switch. But neither did they give him the immediate satisfaction of a kid well beaten. It took hours, sometimes a whole day for the enormous purple and green lumps to fully ripen on my skin after a belt beating. And often, that meant that a belt beating could last much longer than a whipping with a switch, because there was no blood to indicate when he'd done it properly. So, not long after that visit to Uncle Pop's office and having my first set of naked photos taken in front of several men I didn't know, we packed up and moved out of Uncle Pop's jurisdiction and into to Dad's. Switches were back on the menu.

Before I’d started kindergarten, I had been thoroughly trained in the art of switch selection. It was a sort of tortuous ritual my Dad had had me learn. I could always feel his glare on my back, watching and savoring my terror as I traversed the length of the back yard to select a worthy instrument of pain for him.

Not too wispy; not too thick. It needed to be roughly 4 feet long, slightly thicker than a pencil's width at its base, and it should be green and mature, but elastic enough to allow its end to wrap around my hips and thighs many, many times without splintering or breaking to pieces.

At age four, I knew to have it stripped of all its leaves by the time I handed it over to him. I also knew without being told that I was to turn around, pull down my pants, grab my ankles and be silent while he inspected the switch I'd selected for my own whipping. I knew that my silence was to be held onto for as long as I could, in order to show that I understood the specific reason for each punishment and had accepted my responsibility for what was happening to me. To cry out too soon only showed weakness and a failure to reflect appropriately on my errant actions. Not crying at all was seen as obstinance, and obstinate was not the same as contrite. Failure nor obstinance would do. I would be taught. He was teaching me. I would learn.

I was a remarkable learner, even before enrolling in school. By the time my kindergarten teacher, Miss Tynes, welcomed me into my very first classroom filled with other students, I was already a perfectionist and a devoted student. Being a fast learner afraid to make mistakes before the age of five served me well in school, but I can't say I can recommend the Rusty Murdock Head Start Program. It's not for everyone.