Dad's First Cuss Word

I was always taught that there were certain words you didn’t say for any reason. My dad was never much of a cusser. I was in junior high the first time I heard my father utter a profanity. Just like we did on most Saturdays in the summer, Dad and I got our fishing equipment together and headed out to find a new fishing hole. We’d always try to find some unknown hole in a creek or river where 5 - 10 pound lunkers hid in the deepest water. We were rarely successful. This particular Saturday was no exception.

We had fished up a river for several hours with only a couple of small bass to tell our family about when we got home. We were having a good enough time that we failed to realize how far we had walked. With the sun starting to go down, Dad decided we could take a short cut across a field saving us valuable daylight minutes.

A couple of miles of waist-high, tick-infested hayfields later we came across a barbed wire fence. It was tight, well strung, and included a double electric cable running approximately six inches to either side of the barbed wire structure. We could hear the voltage running through it, but wondered if it was enough to hurt. Having crossed dozens of such obstructions in the past, however, we weren’t too concerned.

On fences like this (where you can’t just slip between two loose cables) I was usually expected to take the lead. I was a long jumper on the junior high track team and could get pretty good elevation when I needed to. Dad’s job was to hold down the top wire as much as he could, while I would get a running start and hurdle the fence. The plan worked well. Getting dad over the fence would prove to be a little more challenging.

I’ve heard (from hours of “glory days” stories about Dad’s brilliant athletic career at Calvin, Oklahoma) that my dad used to be pretty athletic. However, I am only now starting to understand the impact that Twinkies, Cokes, cheese dip, fried chicken, milk, and lack of exercise can have on your vertical leap. My dad understood this very well. He decided that if I held down the top of fence for him, he could simply straddle the fence and step over.

I got a good grip on the top of the fence and pushed it down as far as possible. I was very careful not to touch the electric cord on my side of the fence with my exposed shin. Dad pulled up his left leg and carefully put it over the top of the fence. He was moving ever so slowly to try and keep from touching either electric cord (which would be within a couple of inches of either knee when his first step was completed). My arms were getting tired at this point.

What happened next I will never forget. Dad lost his balance while he was straddling the fence and kicked the electric cord. The cord, which I would discover had plenty of volts running through it to cause extreme pain, hit me against the shin. I reacted as any person would when confronted with that sort of pain; I got as far away from the source of pain as I could.

I guess I sort of left my dad hanging, so to speak, straddled on the fence with a few thousand volts running through both legs. Actually the barbed wire fence he was straddling and the electric cords had become tangled together by this time, so the entire fence was alive. Because the fence picked his feet up off the ground when I let go of it and his mobility was hampered, he had a heck of a time getting off that fence. It was during those couple of seconds that my dad shouted an obscenity that could be heard in all of the four surrounding counties. Just like him, I was shocked.

Since then, I have determined that there are a few occassions where a cuss word, while not entirely acceptable, can at least be forgiveable. Later this afternoon, I will be journeying to the revenue office. Forgive me if I cuss.