Kevin Kling's Holiday Inn (16 page)

All of a sudden, he turns to me and says, “Do me a favor, Kev, look out and see if you can spot the ground.”

I frantically look out my window, still unable to see anything.

Then I hear my dad say, “Kev, it might not be down.”

Dad was never happier than when in flight. It was where he was in his element.

When I was in college he’d send me letters … well, not really letters, newspaper clippings, with headlines like “Actor Starves to Death in New York,” or “Two Percent of Actors Union Employed,” or “Star of Hogan’s Heroes Found Stabbed to Death in Driveway.” There was never a return address or letter enclosed, just a handwritten, “Georgette, send to Kevin” at the top. Georgette was Dad’s secretary. I wondered, didn’t he think I’d figure out where these were coming from ? But that was Dad’s way of saying, “I worry about you in the Arts.”

For years I felt Dad never understood me, but now that I’m the age he was when he was sending those letters, I’m beginning to feel he did understand me. He knew what it took to be a risk taker, and it was his way of saying, “You sure you know what you’re getting into?”

I did. I believe the way I feel on stage is the way he felt in the sky.

Whenever my father had something of great importance to tell me, he did it in the car. It was like he needed a head of steam before relating important information. The facts of life, in a ’67 Mustang. Moving to the country, white Mercury Comet station wagon. Divorce from my mom, metallic blue Chevy on the way home from a fishing trip. And although most of these talks were planned, sometimes he would simply take his eyes off the road and look directly at me and say, “You know, Kev, the day you own a pair of wingtips is the day I stop worrying about ya,” or, “Kev, don’t get killed just ’cuz you know how.”

One time, on the way back from a sales call, he turned to me and said, “Listen to me, now. If you ever get a chance to be an astronaut, grab it.”

“Okay, Dad,” I said, “I will.”

Now, I knew where this came from. My dad grew up on a farm, milking cows, slopping hogs, driving a tractor, never going anywhere except over to the next row. But when he was sixteen he learned to fly from the Clarkson brothers, barnstormers and crop dusters, Crazy Clarksons they were sometimes called. When Dad turned seventeen, he lied about his age so he could join the Navy and fight in World War II. He wanted to fly, and the Navy was the last branch still accepting pilots.

Unfortunately, Dad put on his application that he could type sixty words per minute. The war had already ended in Europe, and the soldiers returning home in droves needed to be processed. So Dad spent the duration of the war behind the controls of a Smith Corona. “Kev,” he said, driving an ’82 Chevy, “never learn to do something you don’t want to be saddled to for the rest of your life.”

He surprised me the most one day when he turned to me and said, “Kev, I’m going to Europe.”

What, Europe?!

He said, “I always wanted to go there, and I’m not getting any younger.”

But, Dad—I mean, up till now my dad’s travel was the Midwest and that was it. I knew he liked to travel, but I always felt it was for the sake of movement, not to actually get somewhere. This is why being an astronaut made perfect sense. Space travel is the ultimate in traveling for traveling’s sake, but
Europe
—that’s a
destination
. I could tell he had his heart set on it, so I offered my tried-and-true advice. I said, “Okay, Dad, lookit, you’re going to England, bring an umbrella. I know this sounds crazy, but once you get wet there, you never dry off. I don’t know why. And don’t eat the food, any of it, especially in Scotland. I ate something there once, and I’ll never laugh at the dog for licking the garage floor again.”

He said, “But I got to eat.”

I said, “For goodness’ sakes, Dad, people from Scotland go to England to eat. Oh, yeah, and be sure to learn the language, a phrase or two. I’ve traveled the world over on two phrases. If you learn these, you’ll be fine. One is, ‘I’ll have another beer, please,’ and the other is, ‘Sorry about the carpet.’ You can go anywhere with those.”

“Well, Kev,” he said, “I’m pretty sure they speak English in England.”

“Ho, that’s what you think.”

As the trip approached, I became increasingly worried. I drove Dad to the airport in my 1967 Chevelle, and now I was the one dishing out advice from the driver’s seat. “Have you got everything? Passport? Umbrella, did you remember an umbrella? You got money? Pounds, you gotta bring pounds, yeah, it is real money.”

I was a wreck until he returned. But when I picked him up from the airport, my dad had this huge grin on his face. “Kev,” he said, “I swear it’s the best time I’ve had since Nixon was in office. Lookee here!” And he handed me a stack of photographs.

“You took pictures?” I’ve never even seen my dad use a camera.

I open the pack and I took out a huge stack of pictures. The first photo was a cow, long matted hair, brown, staring right at my dad. The second photo was a cow, looked like the same cow but a different angle. The third picture was a cow, the same cow, the fourth, fifth, sixth, finally I said, “Dad these are all pictures of a cow.” He said, “Oh, that’s not just any cow, Kev, that kind of cow is where all the cows in this country came from, that cow is the great-grandmother of all cows.”

Now my dad is bursting with pride. I continue looking through the stack of cow pictures from my dad’s trip to Europe, and I realize my dad
had
gone somewhere: he’d gone home. The last picture is of a woman mowing her lawn. I say, “Dad, what’s that doing in there?” He says, “Look at that lawnmower, Kev, isn’t that the darnedest thing? I wanted to get more of it, but I ran out of film.”

Not long after his trip to Europe, my Dad took his last flight. He was diagnosed with cancer, and after a short, hard-fought battle, one morning Dad gave a final breath, and gently stepped from this world to the next. My brother was standing next to me beside Dad’s bed, and he asked if I wanted a ride home. When we walked to the parking lot, I saw we were taking his motorcycle. After being up all night in the hospital with Dad, I knew the fresh air rushing over me would feel good. My brother was about to start the motorcycle when he stopped. “Did you hear that?”

I said, “No, what?”

He walked a couple of steps into the field behind the parking lot. “It’s in here.” He shook a bush—and a pheasant rooster got up.

It flew high up and over a grove of trees, and then glided over a cornfield into the sunrise. We stood there on that cool spring morning, squinting into the sun, watching the pheasant fly. It was beautiful … and then it was gone.

INDEPENDENCE DAY  

I love visiting my mom on the Fourth of July. Her small town has a parade that’s over and done in five minutes, so everyone stays seated and the parade turns around and walks past again. Everyone then follows the parade to the park, where there is usually a long speech in the town square next to the cannon. Why there is a cannon in northern Wisconsin, I don’t know, but if it makes people feel safer, then it’s doing its job. The speaker talks about forefathers and -mothers and struggles and sacrifices and somehow, at some point, you are guaranteed to tear up. One year they read the Declaration of Independence, but everyone got so agitated they’ve gone back to a more nostalgic approach. There are picnics, sack races, horseshoes. The squirrels know it’s just this one day, so they don’t cause a ruckus. The best part is the evening fireworks. Every year the argument ensues: should they be fired off from this side of the lake, or the far side? Every year, this side of the lake wins, and even though they say they’ve moved back farther from last year, ashes and embers still rain on the crowd. People “in the know”—those who have attended before—bring umbrellas, newcomers take to using blankets they brought to sit on for protection. Sometimes an errant rocket will set part of the field on fire. The crowd takes a break from the “rockets’ red glare” to watch the silhouette of an attendant reluctantly dump some of his beer on the blaze. Once it’s extinguished, there is a cheer for the man, who raises his arms in triumph and finishes what the fire did not get. There are oohs and aaahs and a general agreement this display was better than last year’s.

Last Fourth of July, as a mother-and-son kind of deal, I took my mom to the Demolition Derby competition at the Ashland County Fair in Wisconsin. The poster in the Kwik-Stop promised thrills, spills, chills. The picture showed cars crashing into each other, like a multiple exposure photo of an evening at the liquor store parking lot.

We take our seats in the bleachers. The cars face each other in two rows. The rules are simple. Crash into each other until only one car moves, and that’s the winner. Oh, but it is so much more. It’s a medieval joust. It’s the Roman Coliseum. It’s oil and gas and steel. It’s America.

The drivers, like knights of old, approach the arena covered in armor from head to toe. Their steeds have all the glass removed for safety reasons, and are decorated for the event. Half of them proclaim allegiance to places like Dave’s Taxidermy and Oedipus Wrecking Service. The other half, driven by women, are decorated in pinks and greens announcing Jennie’s Hair Design, or A Sister’s Love Coffee and Bookstore. One gentlemen gets in an all-black car with 3:16 on the top and words adorning the sides: “Say Your Prayers,” “Powered by God,” “Show No Mercy,” and “Do Unto Others.” Clearly, he has the blessing of the Lord.

The people next to us are a happy-go-lucky, round-faced family that do the derby to fill up the time that isn’t deer hunting season. Their son, Ronnie, is in the competition. My mom says, “You let your son out there? Aren’t you worried?”

They look at her blankly. “About Ronnie?” Mom obviously doesn’t know Ronnie. The dad says, “You shoulda seen him before. This saved him, I swear. He was gonna hurt somebody.”

Ronnie’s mom is worried, though; she informs us his right rear strut is weak. She says, “Somebody hits him there, and I tell you, it’s good night nurse.”

The whistle blows and Ronnie’s car screams across the field in reverse and takes out a guy’s radiator, rendering him dead in a world of hissing steam.

“Atta boy, Ronnie,” yells his family. “Whoohoo!”

All of a sudden, my mom says, “Oh, my God.”

“What, Mom?” I say.

She says, “There’s my old Nova.”

“What?”

“That Nova from Jennie’s Hair Design, that’s my old car, I swear.”

“No way.”

“Yes. Oh, no,” she says. “What a nightmare. Do you know the care I gave that car? I can’t look.”

“Mom, there’s lots of Novas like that.”

“I ought to know my own car. Look out!” she yells. “Not the fender, not the fender.”

The fender takes a crushing blow. My mom winces.

“Kill ’em, Ronnie, “ our neighbors shout. “Kill ’em, boy.”

Now I see an old Chevy that looks like my first car, my high school muscle car. I loved that car. It had a three twenty-seven engine, Holley carbs, headers jacked up past yer ass, and so much Bondo a magnet wouldn’t stick anywhere. That car could’ve made it past airport security.

Now the field is down to three cars: Ronnie, Jennie’s Hair Design, and 3:16. 3:16 only has one working wheel and spins harmlessly in circles. I can see the driver’s lips moving and he sure ain’t praying. Ronnie decides to take out Jennie in Mom’s Nova.

“Ronnie, get her in the radiator.”

My mom yells, “No, come on, Jennie.”

The family looks over at Mom. “Get her Ronnie, kill, kill.”

My mom yells, “The strut, go for the rear strut.”

The family can’t believe my mom has betrayed them. My mom can’t believe they have the gall to think they love their son more that she loves her car.

Finally, Ronnie delivers a blow to Jennie, and Mom’s car goes silent. We hear the engine trying to restart, but no use. Ronnie methodically puts 3:16 out of his misery, and it’s over. My mom is crushed. “My Nova,” she repeats. “I loved that car.”

We decide to leave before the second round of competition. As we exit, I look at the new combatants, but it’s the same cars. Ronnie, Jennie, and 3:16 are up and running. No, this isn’t right, I think. It’s like Mercutio returning in the fourth act of
Romeo and Juliet
. I’m even more upset that the mechanics had them up and running so fast. My own garage takes over a week for a simple rattle, and my mechanic has a bald spot on the side of his head from scratching it over my engine.

As we exit, I look at Mom. Now there is a fire in her eye. That look in someone’s eye whose life will never be the same. Something tells me we’ll be in those stands again this year, come Fourth of July. Look out, Ronnie.