August 20, 2005

  • Saturday, 20th August, 2005


    7.45 p.m. NZ time


     


    My First Step Dad


    John A. Bunch


     


     


    Sometime in 1942 my mom remarried. Her new husband’s  name was John Andrew Bunch. He was 27 years old, and my mom was 26. I don’t remember when I first met Johnnie. He just seemed, to all of a sudden, be there. He worked as a foreman for a large construction corporation, so we never lived in any one place too long. As soon as a job was finished we’d pack up and move on to the next building site.


     


    Johnnie’s father, ‘Dad Bunch’, as he was called by the family, was an old Texas outlaw kind of a guy. All shrivelled up and wrinkled, tough as barbed wire and smart like a fox. He drank his whisky straight, rolled his own Bull Durum cigarettes and lived well into his nineties. He loved to tell foul, dirty jokes just to embarrass us kids. He also loved playing the horses. I guess that’s where Johnnie learned all his social skills because one day he’d come home from the track with a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels and hundred dollar bills sticking out of his shirt pockets, and the next day we’d be borrowing money for groceries.


     


    Johnnie had two daughters, Nancy and Bonnie. Their mother, just like their dad, was also an alcoholic. So from time to time the girls would come and live with us. They were both older than me. Nancy was a sweetheart and treated me like I was truly her baby brother. Bonnie was stubborn and petulant and used to beat the crap out of me in front of my buddies. How embarrassing was that. One summer Nancy worked for ‘Dad Bunch’, saved her money, and bought me a bicycle, Bonnie beat me up, and that about summed up our relationships.


     


    By the time I was twelve years old my mother had caught up with Johnnie’s drinking habits, and drank herself right into full blown alcoholism. And of course the more they both drank, the more they fought. I mean screaming, cursing, fist punching, nose bleeding, eye blacking, head splitting fights. Then when they settled down a little bit, off they would go to the bedroom to have sex. So that was my role model for marital bliss, get stumbling drunk, have a bloody violent fight and then have sex. My mom and step dad were not happy campers.


     


    I became so filled with hatred toward Johnnie Bunch, for the alcohol and all the violence he had introduced into our lives, that I started working on a plan to murder him.


     


    Then one December day, I came home from school to find everyone all moaning and crying. My mother was sobbing with grief. I said mom, mom what’s the matter. She told me Johnnie had unexpectedly died. He was only thirty three. He was six feet two inches tall, strong and healthy as a horse. But he had an aneurism of some kind, and BAM he was gone. Outwardly I put on a good show of pretended sorrow and sadness, but inside I was shouting, “YES, you got what you deserved you drunken SOB, and you’ll never hurt my mother again.”  I did feel a bit guilty for being so happy that he was dead, but not so guilty as to nullify the relief I felt in knowing ‘he was gone’.


     


    But Johnnie did teach me a few good things that have served me well through the days my life. He taught me how to put on my socks and tie my shoe laces. And by watching him shave, I myself learned how to shave. He showed me how to make what I consider a delicious steak sauce. There are those who don’t care for it, but I love it, (like my wife.) It’s a three, two, one mixture. Three parts Hines ketchup, two parts A-1 steak sauce, and one part Lee & Perrins worcestershire sauce. YUMMY!


     


    And the two most wonderful lessons of all, he taught me how not to drink and how not to treat my wife. Thank you John, for being my teacher in the school of life, and now that I’m older I can understand how you had some deep issues of your own, that sadly you never got to work out.


     


    A friend of mine once told me, as we get older, even the enemies we had in our younger years eventually become our friends, because they were there and did all the things you did.  They walked the same streets, went to the same movies, drove the same kind of cars, ate the same food, and in some cases, even dated the same girls. And like it was with me and my step dad Johnnie, sometimes learning how not to be, and what not to do, is just as important, sometimes even more important than learning what we should do, and how we should act.


     


    That’s it for now.


     


    BMcG