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In the Locher household, Independence Day was celebrated in typical American fashion: with the immediate family gathered at a picnic table, with a grill smoking away in the corner, and with approximately two-hundred pounds of illegal fireworks just waiting to be ignited.
My father, Paul, wasn’t the type to run out to one of those shady roadside tents to buy his fireworks mere days before the Fourth of July holiday rolled around. Instead, he would plan trips to surrounding Midwest states earlier in the year to purchase them at discount prices and gradually stock up over time. Once the holiday hit, he would simply haul them out of storage and prepare for his annual display. Whereas normal people might keep massive amounts of fireworks locked up in an outdoor shed, or tucked away in a basement, for some reason my dad decided that his collection was better off being stored in the closet of my parent’s bedroom. For years my family lived, breathed, slept, and ate just yards away from several dozen boxes of gunpowder that with one ill-fated lightning strike could have wiped my hometown off the map. Thankfully, due to a small population, the fatalities probably wouldn’t have made the evening news and instead would have simply opened up enough land on which to build a Wal-Mart.
Once the burgers and hot dogs had been consumed and the picnic ended, it was typically dusk, so Paul would forcefully usher the family out to our gravel driveway for some mandatory fun where we would be subjected to his annual fireworks spectacle. My mother always found firecrackers unsettling and never let my older sister and I get too close. She figured that if my dad wanted to blow himself into smithereens, then that was his prerogative, but she wouldn’t let him take the children down with him. Regardless of how big or small an explosion was, mom step further away with each one and would slowly pull my sister and I with her. She’d stand behind us where we would form some kind of human shield. By the end of my father’s presentation, the three of us were roughly four hundred yards away and quite upset that we hadn’t thought to bring any binoculars with us.
My mother enjoyed Sparklers but anything bigger was what really made my mother nervous. Sparklers were something we could all enjoy together and we humored her by going through the motions of waving them around in the dark, spelling out our names and making various shapes. My mother, like most Americans, was eternally stuck in the same mindset of falsely believing that Sparklers are fun. She liked them because there were no explosions or loud noises associated with them, and that’s precisely why the rest of us found them boring: aside from the off chance that a spark might leap in the wrong direction and set someone’s hair ablaze, there was little element of danger involved.
On the Fourth of July, “Danger” became my father’s middle name. After setting off his bottle rockets, roman candles, and those things that fly into the air and shoot sparks (and for some reason always flew directly at your head), he would prepare his grand finale. From his box of tricks he would produce a small red cylinder with a fuse attached that he referred to as an “M-100,” which later in life I would learn was basically a quarter stick of dynamite. These small but formidable disasters-to-be made a sound reminiscent of what I can only assume were Civil War era cannons firing directly into your eardrums at point blank range. Sometime before I was born, and when they were legal, my father had purchased a lifetime supply of these M-100’s, and as they aged in years, they sometimes didn’t completely function as intended.
Typically when setting off these beasts, dad would light the suspiciously short fuse and then take off running in the opposite direction at a speed that would have put Olympic track and field stars to shame. Knowing what was coming, the rest of the family stood in silence, anticipating the tremendous blast to come. More often than not, the fuse would rapidly burn down where there should have been an earth-shattering quake, and then nothing would happen. After several anticlimactic moments, mom would poke her head out from behind her child-shield and dad would timidly approach the M-100 to investigate the problem. As the rest of us watched him do this, I could feel my mother’s fingernails began to dig into the flesh of my shoulder and I knew her eyes were glued to the husband who may or may not be vaporized in the next several seconds.
Paul would inch his way closer to the red cylinder and if he was able to stand over it nothing happening then he would deem the area safe and apologize to us for lighting a dud, citing that sometimes those firecrackers got old and just didn’t work like they should. When it became clear that my father wasn’t going to be torn apart by the dynamite, the entire family would share a nervous laugh and breathe a collective sigh of relief, my mother’s fingernails finally unsheathing themselves from my skin. Unsatisfied with his grand finale, Dad would stand over the now useless firework and debate whether he should try lighting another one. The danger had passed so we would foolishly let down our guard and naturally, it was right around this time that the dormant dynamite would finally explode.
My father would shriek, disappearing from our vision in a cloud of smoke, dust, and rocks, and in turn my mother would scream bloody murder, instinctively ducking behind my sister and I and once again impaling me with her fingernails. This sudden stabbing would cause me to bellow, half in shock from what I’d just seen, and half in pain from the blood loss that I was now experiencing and my sister would also wail, mainly just following suit with everyone else.
Our Independence Day festivities would end much like a dramatic scene from the 1986 war movie, Platoon. In what felt like slow motion, my mother, sister, and I would sprint for the front door of the house, still screaming, and now enveloped in smoke and debris while a gale of driveway gravel rained down around us like small meteorites. Mom had chosen to abandon my father out in the dark in favor of indoor safety, unsure of where he might be or in how many pieces.
After we had retreated to the safety of the house, our screaming would subside and dad would stroll inside several moments later, a large smile across his face. Mom would immediately begin yelling at him for endangering the lives of his family and everyone in a fifty-mile radius, but based off of the glazed-over look in his eyes, I always doubted that he was listening. He had clearly drifted off in his head, likely congratulating himself for putting on such a great Fourth of July fireworks display. I could tell by the Sparkler-esque twinkle in his eye that he was looking forward to doing it all over again next year.
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I can very clearly recollect the first time I ever mowed the lawn at my father’s request. I remember it because it was summer. The sun was bright, the weather was perfect, and I recall the amazing smell of the fresh-cut grass as it tickled my nose. Mainly I remember it because it was also the last time I ever mowed the lawn at my father’s request.
Growing up, my father had me on a never-ending mission to build character. It was the reasoning he gave for every meaningless chore that was ever assigned to me. Why do I have to split wood? Because it builds character. Why do I have to pick up sticks in the woods? Because it builds character. Why do I have to build a Flux Capacitor? Come on, you’ve seen the pattern here. Because it builds character!
I managed to make it to the end of my senior year in high school before I was finally assigned with the task of mowing the lawn. My father usually took charge of that because he never trusted anyone else to do it correctly. One day I guess he ran out of trivial things to occupy my time and decided to throw a real task my way. He hauled out the big red push-mower into the front yard and proceeded to show me how it was done.
Now, our front yard wasn’t your average small, flat, fenced in area. Instead, ours was quite large and included a steep hill and several obstacles including trees, stumps, a wooden deck, and several flower beds. I was confused as to why I was going to take a trial run at mowing it because I was pretty certain that he didn’t want any of the aforementioned things destroyed. Before I was allowed to mow the grass, I had to be able to turn the machine on. This was no simple task that was done with a power switch or the turn of a key. This particular mower was one that you had to prime, and then quickly and strongly pull the cord to start the engine turning. This was also my father’s demented idea of a character-building right of passage that I completely failed at. I’ve always been a small guy and to be completely honest, I’m fairly sure that my father had more muscles in his left arm than I did in my entire body. I primed the engine and yanked that cord as hard as I could.
When nothing happened, neither of us looked very surprised. My father demanded that I take another try at it while I reminded him of his rule about not being allowed to mow the lawn if I couldn’t turn it on. Several more unsuccessful attempts later, my arm nearly ripped from the socket, he decided to start up the engine for me since daylight was beginning to run out. Once we got the mower into motion my father headed inside, leaving me to tend the yard. Everything was going smoothly until I got to the small hill. I approached it cautiously not wanting to send the mower careening into the nearby flowerbeds. As I started down, I gained more momentum than I expected and before I knew it I was being dragged down the hill behind the mower.
Before I carried out any chore assigned by my father he would give a long-winded explanation of the job and how to do it correctly. I always expected his instructional seminars to be followed by a written exam. Luckily, I had paid attention during Lawn Mower 101 and remembered that if I let go of the handle, there was a mechanism that would kill the engine. I let go of the handle, slamming to the ground while the mower traveled a few more feet before coming to a stop. Hearing the engine turn off, my father emerged from the house to investigate. When I explained to him my tale of woe about not being strong enough to control the thing, he did exactly what he always did: sent me inside and did the job himself.
Several mower-free months later he decided out of the blue that it was time for me to build more character. This time he wanted to throw a real challenge my way. Moments later I had a chainsaw in my hands. I took a look at the primer and the pull cord and knew right then that someone was probably going to get hurt.
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Growing up, it was a tradition in my family that with every birthday that came to pass, the birthday boy or girl would receive not only cake and presents, but also a round of ritualistic birthday spankings. Of course, several years back we had to put this custom to rest because too many family members were getting hurt.
It was impossible to enjoy ones birthday with the constant threat of inevitability lurking around every corner. Just when you thought everyone had forgotten about the spankings this year, you were tackled by a cousin and sat on by an uncle while your father subdued your hands, and grandma pinned your arms to the floor. There’s nothing quite like the feel of getting jumped by your own family. In retrospect, I’m surprised they never stole my wallet in the process. I’ve never seen a group of people go from celebrators to lynch mob so quickly in my life. Once you were down and you had stopped clawing, biting, and screaming in a feeble attempt to escape, everyone would line up and the fun would commence, each member of the family giving you a number of spankings equal to your age. Even my Great Grandmother who was pushing ninety-five and hadn’t walked in seven years would get up out of her wheelchair to join the festivities. It was a weird bonding experience that brought us closer as a family. So what if you couldn’t sit down for the next week and half, as long as everyone had a good time.
As the years passed we saw lots of clever attempts to either diminish the pain of the spankings or avoid them altogether. I remember one year in particular where my sister thought it smart to stuff her pants full of toilet paper so that when she was eventually thrown to the floor and lovingly assaulted by twelve of her kin, maybe it wouldn’t cause the bruises and welts normally acquired during the process. I’ll tell you, there’s something about a girl on a kitchen floor sobbing and screaming at the top of her lungs while family members rip bath tissue out of her pants with maniacal looks on their faces that really burns itself into your memory. Her birthday gifts that year included a pair of shoes, a gift card to her favorite store, and ultimate humiliation.
Another year, my aunt decided that she’d had enough of the tradition. She locked herself in a bedroom and barricaded the door. My father and my uncle spent a lot of time and energy breaking into the room only to find that she had escaped outside through a window. It was only a matter of time until she was dragged inside, kicking and screaming, thrown to the kitchen floor and the cycle repeated.
If memory serves, the final nail in the birthday spanking coffin came one year on my dad’s birthday. As we ceremoniously attempted to clobber him to the floor he put up quite a fight that we weren’t prepared for. Failing to subdue him completely, my uncle jumped on his back in an attempt to take him down so the paddle party could begin. In a single heartbeat my father somehow channeled the spirit of Bruce Lee and flipped my uncle over his shoulder and sent him sprawling face first into a nearby television, his nose immediately became a geyser of blood. For the first time in as long as I can remember, we all stopped. Right then we were completely aware of just how real the situation had become.
Slightly ashamed of ourselves and also slightly disappointed about breaking the tradition we decided to adopt a replacement activity for all future birthdays. It was something about putting candles on a cake, lighting them on fire, and then blowing them out. Overall we found it weird and not nearly as much fun. I guess that’s how normal families do it.
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Like most young boys growing up I was coerced by the forces of evil, also known as my father, into participating in Little League Baseball. In retrospect, I’m surprised that I survived.
My baseball career started fairly young where both boys and girls were on the field together and an adult was brought in to pitch the ball underhanded to the children. This was likely a safety precaution to lower the chances of someone being hurt. However this logic was counteracted by the fact that the games were held at a baseball diamond nestled deep within the grounds of a local mental institution.
It wasn’t enough that I had to worry about playing well and winning the game, but I also had to deal with possibility that one of my teammates could be dragged off the field by the inhabitants of the mental hospital. For whatever reason, most of the patients living there were allowed free roam of the place, and numerous times we were forced to stop our games while the guy who thought he could fly ran out into the middle of everything shrieking at the top of his lungs.
The doctors in the white coats would soon race to the rescue, sedate him, and walk him back inside so that we could continue. At the end of the game it never mattered which team won or lost because everyone was too emotionally scarred to really care. I was never an outstanding baseball player and the only skill sets that I ever really developed in Little League were stealing bases and running from the crazies.
Eventually we grew up and the girls graduated to playing softball while the guys upgraded to fast pitch baseball where my peers were now the ones chucking a rock-hard, rubber-coated piece of cork at my face. This was the beginning of the end for me. The coaches got more serious and the testosterone levels were kicked up a notch. Suddenly the days of standing in the outfield daydreaming and hoping a psychopath didn’t waylay me were a thing of the past.
Since I was quite small and fast I was always counted on to reach a base and then eventually score a point for the team. Even though I was gifted in speed and balance I completely lacked the ability to hit the ball initially. This drove my coach mad. So much so that he once spent an entire practice teaching me how to bunt the ball in hopes that I could get on base and then begged me to retain the information until the next game. I was so terrible at batting that I had earned myself a sort of reputation. Each time that I got up to the plate, the pitcher would call his entire team to move in closer knowing very well that if I hit the ball it would be a complete accident on my part. In order to amuse themselves, the pitchers of all the other teams decided that rather than pitch the ball to me, they would start throwing it at me, seeing if they could hit my rail thin frame and shatter me like a glass vase.
Since getting smacked with the ball equaled getting on base, my coach was never happier and I was able to consistently score many points for the team and we would win game after game. My lack of actual baseball skill paired with my uncanny ability to always be hit with a baseball at forty miles an hour netted me respect from the coach, respect from my team, and an MVP award at the end of the season. Of course, with all the bruises I was getting, I’m sure my schoolteachers assumed that my parents were mercilessly beating me at home.
Eventually I realized two things: The first was that maybe baseball wasn’t for me, and second, I wanted to live to see the age of sixteen. Shortly after that I quit the team to go look for something a little less violent. I enrolled in Tae Kwon Do classes instead.
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I was raised in Ohio where the winters were long and cold and the summers were beautiful and came and went far too quickly. We had to take advantage of the heat while we could and growing up, one of my father’s favorite ways to do this was by tasking my sister and I with manual labor. However, he also enjoyed a good water gun fight.
Back in the days before using a water gun was viewed as a sign that your son or daughter might grow up to be a gang member, my father would regularly challenge his children to a good old H20 brawl. During one particularly hot summer I remember she and I loading up our bright yellow and green Super Soaker 3,000 water cannons and getting pumped for the oncoming battle while my dad was elsewhere loading up a couple of rickety plastic water pistols (and probably entering the initial stages of heat stroke). We would chase each other around the house and unload in a flurry of water blasts and pre-pubescent screams. The only way to really win in a water gun fight is to spray your opponent in the face until they submit. This was the key to victory as it’s the only way to deal any damage. This was also the first summer where the violence escalated.
As we chased my dad, who was completely out-gunned, into the front yard the war waged its way up onto a wooden deck that stood roughly a foot or two off the ground. Running low on ammo and taking constant streams of water to the eyeballs, my father had to make a crucial decision: flee or fight. He decided that fleeing would allow him to get to the nearest water spigot to reload. His exit strategy was simple… shoot what little water was left in the guns at the offspring’s faces and run like hell.
While this process seemed good in theory, he forgot to factor in the deck we were standing on, which as I mentioned, was some feet off the ground. As he made the mad dash for freedom he barreled right off the edge and the ground quickly made contact with the majority of his face and chest. The hands went up in surrender, shielding him from the onslaught that we were delivering and we were instructed to stop as he was possibly injured and we should retrieve our mother immediately or we would regret being born. Now, I always thought myself to be a pretty clever kid and I had been fooled by this charade one too many times. In my mind there was no way that the fall he took could have subdued him, and he was probably just “playing possum” or faking it, and I would prove it. I did what any kid would have done in that situation and began to spray him in the face with my water gun.
In retrospect, I’m sure it looked pretty brutal as I stood over the mangled mass that was my father, using a sort of advanced Chinese water torture on him. Through the gurgles I’m pretty sure I heard him begin to beg for his life and make peace for his trip into the afterlife, but this had to be part of the act. After several minutes I began to take his sobbing seriously and halted. My sister, wide-eyed at what had just occurred, ran to retrieve my mother. It was right around this point where I stood alone over what was left of my dad and realized the gravity of the no holds barred attack that I had just unleashed on my old man. I would be lucky to live long enough to regret it.
Thankfully the concussion that he received from the fall pretty much wiped out any memories of this event. We can all look back on it and laugh. Well, except my father. He doesn’t understand what’s so funny.
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