My Daddy Was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun by Lewis Grizzard

Author:Lewis Grizzard [Grizzard, Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lewis Grizzard, humor, columnists, social commentary, My Daddy Was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun
Publisher: NewSouth Inc.

CHAPTER

10

IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT EITHER OF MY PARENTS would many again. Mother first went out with an ambulance driver who showed up to take her out in his ambulance.

He tried to make friends with me, asking if I would like to hear his siren.

“I’d like to hear it on the way out of here,” I said.

Later, he tried to make friends again by taking me along on a date with my mother. We went to the Alamo Theatre, in Newnan, where there was a documentary about Bonnie and Clyde. Outside the theater, they even had the actual car in which Bonnie and Clyde had been blown to bits.

I might have had a nice time had it not been for the fact one of my friends spotted me getting out of an ambulance with my mother and her date.

“Who’s that man?” he asked me.

“I forget his name,” I said.

“What are you doing in an ambulance?” he went on.

I was terribly embarrassed for one of my friends to see my mother out with a man, not to mention the fact I was riding in what was known at that time as a “meat wagon.”

I made up this wild story that Mother and I were driving to see the movie, and we had this wreck and the ambulance came to take us to the hospital, but we got a lot better on the way and decided to see a movie instead. I knew I was hovering near the bounds of my credibility, but it was better than admitting the truth.

By the way, the movie stunk, and I don’t think that was Bonnie and Clyde’s real car, and the ambulance driver wore white socks with his blue suit. The night was a total loss.

I was jealous of my mother. The fact she was seeing other men made my hopes of parental reconciliation grow dimmer still.

Mother went to a dance in Newnan with my aunt and uncle, who were visiting, and she met a man named H.B. Atkinson, an appliance salesman.

They were married October 25, 1956, five days past my tenth birthday. I was against the marriage, and I said so in a number of different ways, such as throwing temper tantrums and trying to kick my mother’s fiancé in the shins.

They ignored me the best they could and got married anyway.

It was only after H.B. proposed to my mother and she accepted that she went ahead and got a divorce from Daddy. I knew a little about divorce and I asked an older cousin if people got divorced and they had a child, could the child decide which parent he wanted to live with. She said that was correct.

I announced to Mother I was going to live with Daddy.

“You want to leave me?” she asked.

“You got what’s-his-name,” I said, or something to that effect.

“You’ll get used to H.B.,” she went on.

No, I won’t, I thought to myself, and I decided at that point to make H.B.’s life miserable. I also found out my cousin didn’t know anything about divorce.

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