My father and I were never close.

I was the last of his seven children. Two of which I never knew. A car accident had taken them from him.

By the time I came along, he was too old and I was too young.

To me, my father was the stern-faced man with heavily starched shirt that came home every night after dark, downed a double negroni then ate dinner alone in his study. His children having been fed some hours before.

Water was our only connection. A former Navy man, he made sure all of us were sure and strong swimmers. Growing up, any body of water I thought I could swim, he let me.

Any save the Mississippi.

To which my constant protest was of course I was strong enough to swim across it.

Then, early one morning, while everyone was still asleep, my father roused me and we drove north into Shelby Forest. Turning off of the main road, we came to a stop at a sandy beach with glass slick water.

He pointed out across the water. “Race you to the sand bar.”

And then, as the sun rose, we swam the Mississippi River. Together.

Memphis Note
Hidden under the lush green of Shelby Farms is a stretch of the Mississippi River where the water shallows and the current slows. Sand bars and long beaches appear, and for a fleeting moment, you would never suspect that these waters belong to one of the most powerful natural forces in the world.

“She’s dragging the family down, Dad.”

They sat in the study of his father’s Florida retirement estate. The mansion was a long way from the house his father had grown up in with over a dozen siblings, and an even longer way from his political legacies in Memphis and Washington.

“I think the family’s done a good enough job of dragging itself down. Myself included.” His father had his feet up on his desk, and was studying a news paper through his reading glasses. “She’s just following in our very well tread path.”

“You could talk to her, get her to rein it in. Not act like such an entitled princess in front of the press. Her crap’s making it hard for me to do anything at a national level. It filterers up, you know. Gives people a bad association when they hear my name.”

His father gave a haughty snort. “That’s my name, too, son. It belongs to all of us. And, near as I can tell, the only thing it guarantees you in this world is that you’ll never want for anything…save a normal life.”

Sighing, his father put the paper down. “You just can’t pick family.”

Memphis Note
There is a certain political family that’s been operating in the Memphis area for more than four decades that I won’t specifically name, but they just can’t seem to get out of the way of scandal. Drug and alcohol abuse, shady dealings and criminal charges have hounded them since the early days. But, sure enough, they’ve somehow managed to create a political dynasty that’s a local equivalent of the Kennedy’s.

They’d gotten the cancer out of his prostate, but it had fought back in his balls. Ultimately, they removed his testicles, instead of risking a recurrence of the cancer and the embarrassment of hypogonadism. Instead they left him with the embarrassment of a piece of bendy metal in his johnson.

“Feels weird,” he said to his son, on discharge day. “Like I’m always at half mast.”

His son started to respond, then stopped, his mouth open, malformed words awkwardly stuck in his throat.

“So,” he eventually managed to get out. “What’s next?”

“Back to the track, I ‘magine. Gotta get ready for the drag races in spring. Stock parts, check the car, all that. Kinda miss the MIR, you know?”

A stern look shushed shushed his son’s forthcoming protestations.

“Son, I love you, but your mother’s dead, and you’re a father of your own now. I’m in the bittersweet position where I’ve got no one left to live for but myself.”

He took one last look around the hospital room where he’d almost died. He swore he’d never be back here again.

“And, if it’s just the same to you, I’d rather feel alive with the time I’ve got left.”

Memphis Note
MIR is the abbreviation for the Memphis International Raceway, formerly the Memphis Motorsports Park. The MIR is one of the few places in the Mid-South that gearheards can get their fix. They specialize in drag races and amateur events. And when their doors are open, you can hear the roar of engines for miles.