Raven's Quill

My dad is from the South. He grew up in Mississippi, but his mother is from Louisiana (the Wards), and he has family in Oklahoma and Kansas as well, if I recall correctly.

For a long time, my siblings and I didn't really get to hear any stories from his side of the family. We heard about the olive tree, and eating bread and onions, the grand-uncle (great-uncle?) with the castle now in ruins, the ghost with an ax in its head, and the snake in the middle of the forest path--all stories from my mother, from when she was a child living in Italy. But we never got much from my dad. For a long time, there was a rift with his side of the family.

But time changes most things, and in this case, opened up the lines of communication between him and his siblings. And he started to tell stories, about his mutt named Scraps, and visiting grandparents with a tin roof and an outhouse, why he hates all the Southern food my mother loves.

The thing is, even though there were many years he didn't tell stories, you could still learn a few things about him. He was a Southerner and he spent a lifetime in the army.

One time, he took my siblings and I to a fast food restaurant for dinner, and as we ate, he was telling us something. To be honest, I don't even know if it was a story or just a recounting of some bit of his day. I was younger, maybe not totally paying attention, until he said, "far gone."

At least, that was what I heard, and then it was all I could hear. What was the context? That makes no sense? Did I miss something? Had he said something else that just sounded like that? But then, what could it be? The rest of the details faded as I thought about that drawl which seemed to blend the words together. His Southern drawl had long been a thing wrangled into submission by years in the army--much like my mother, he'd had to learn "proper English" so he could communicate with people from other places--we knew he was from the South, but it rarely made itself so obvious.

To be honest, I don't know how long it took me to figure it out. That it wasn't just the drawl but the words themselves that were unfamiliar. He'd actually said, "fire guard." Like a firefighter. But eventually I figured it out, and I liked the turn of phrase, and it remained a tiny reminder of where my dad came from.

***

Now, I mentioned the army, something for which he felt he had to minimize the way he spoke. But it too added to his lexicon. My older sister and I were in the car with him once, a few years ago.

He was telling us about something, probably work. Complaining about someone who should have known what they were doing and who very much did not. And he ended the description with a soft but fervent, "What the fuck? Over."  [Ooo, deja vu.]

He always said it like it was one whole phrase, though. "Whatthefuck, over." Only the barest pause before the "over."

I'd heard it before, a few times, but never understood why he did it.

After this occasion, when my sister and I were alone, she asked if I had noticed it. I said yes. She loved it as a verbal quirk of our dad, and said she never wanted to tell him. She thought if he realized he did it, he'd become self-conscious and stop doing it, and she never wanted him to stop.

It was something he picked up from the army, speaking over walkie-talkies. And it stayed. He retired from the military over twenty years ago now, but he still says "over," and even more rarely, throws in a "roger."

It's delightful to experience, and feels like hearing a secret.

I never mention it to him, because I don't want him to start feeling self-conscious and stop.


I noticed something in that trip that I'd noticed before, and when she and I talked about it later, she said she never wanted to