An autobiograhy of James Arthur Casey (Part 6)

 An autobiograhy of James Arthur Casey (Part 6)

originally written on September 18, 1995

Slightly revised on August 23, 2021

My brother and I got used to being alone together. My mom had to take a job at the Sooner Cafe and she would have us stay in the car for a couple of hours until her shift ended. This was NOT fun, for one reason our car was a tiny Ford Maverick. We needed more of our own space but there was nothing to help matters. It was the family car and it got great gas mileage and I eventually learned to drive in it. I thoght of it as my car for a long time even though it still belonged to dad and Charles drove it at times as well (I think). 

Sometimes we were allowed to come into the Cafe if it wasn't too busy and we stayed out of trouble. That's where I saw one of the first jukeboxes I ever saw and heard. I definitely remember playing Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle" and The Doors "Love Her Madly" which didn't seem much to me even then as dining music but they were in the nationwide top 20 so their popularity got them through the door and into the jukebox service guys box of stocked 45s. Sometimes when a record "ran it's run", as it were, falling off the charts or whatever reason, the juke box guy would sell them for a pittance. This was circa 69-70 and most of the records were crap pop music we were growing out of. The Osmonds was a band you grew out of. The Jackson 5 was a group you grew out of. No matter how many more hits they made there was a point in time when they, to coin an outdated Internet term, "jumped the shark" and became completely irrelavent to us, consigned now to the nostalgia factor, resurrected now by Google on YouTube if you really want to make yourself feel old because you actually find something in those jubilant young faces, still too young and innocent to know that the world has in store for the aging musician. 

I seem to remember we were out in the car, and expected to stay there, much more often than when we were welcomed into the Sooner, out of the way. Oh well.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

[the following portion of the original manuscript has been touched upon in this revision but I will copy it here faithfully because it is of such importance]

My mom and dad fought a lot. I never saw violence but they sure did wear thin on each other's nerves. My dad would often try to drag Charles and myself into these fights and this, my mother has told me, was the main reason she left him. In retrospect that reason, even when she told me at the time, was pretty lame. My mom is still alive, praise the Lord, but she's locked herself out of my life as I see it as well as the life of my wife, my son, and for all I know my brother and his extended family. That's a lot to lose out on...but on the other hand I have not felt right reconnecting with her either. As I get older I try to understand her better and I think I do to a very good extent (although obviously not enough to go pay a visit). She is probably where I get my love of reading from, God knows she wanted me to be a doctor or a scholar and let me know it from a very young age. She likes to read Harlequin romance books and she reads them voraciously. She will sit on the floor on a blanket and smoke pack after pack of nasty cigarettes (the gross kind made with tobacco har har har). I don't judge her for that, I actually kind of admire the ability to enjoy something as simple as a cheap subscription romance novel that she buys in garage sales and I'm sure at the library sales here in town. I was thinking of her the other day when to the library and out of the blue I got the urge to buy her as many romance novels I could fit into a large paper bag at our library sale. Our sale is ridiculous, any book for 5 cents and 50 cents for a huge paper sack filled with your choice of what they have to offer. I'm not sure how often they rotate and add new books but lately I've been going more often and I'm finding more that interests me. The only down side to the library sale is that I don't have room for all I would eventually buy if given the oppurtunity (and at those prices it is easy to buy stuff I know I'll never read just to have them in my collection. Like an entire World Book encyclopedia for instance which I can't even read because the print is too small...did I tell you I have a voracious "quest for knowledge", as it were? I've found Wisdom in God, now I want to understand his works through schooling. Which is my way of saying I want to go back to college and pick up where I left off when my first wife left me...that's a story I'm not looking forward to telling and probably won't in this Autobography, at least not for a long time. Divorce is one of the most painful emotional responses one can live through on both sides...but it's water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned).

She walked away from home, from her most immediate family, in December 1977. I was 17 and you can quote any statistic you can find from anywnere and by anyone, doctors and psychologists, counselors and gurus, if any one of them tells you 17 is old enough to deal with a parents' divorce I will call you a fool. Is there an age when divorce is going to be just a-okay by everyone involved? Maybe. For me 17 was the age when my world was turned upside down.

Sure, things had been bad with lots of arguing leading up to her leaving but I suppose I'd become immune to it because it didn't take me by surprise and I feel like maybe it should have been discussed by all of us together...but no, the last I saw of my mother while she still considered herself a CASEY was before I left to vent in the truck. 

She left and I took it fairly well at the start. I broke down and cried that night during choir practice at the First Baptist Church where I'd been attending at the behest of a friend (I'm pretty sure it was my best bud David McCurley). The music director was also the youth director, a tall skinny dude named Alan Tinsley. He pulled me through that first wave of pain and though I've fallen from grace with him I have to confess that I appreciate what he did all those years ago. Thing is I don't remember what it was that HE did. Nowadays I give glory to God for using Alan as a vessel to bring some healing to me and I know it was the Holy Ghost (aka Holy Spirit) that brought me to the other side of those bad times filled with pain and sorrow, insecurity and fear, so deeply hurtful that they would cause me to tell the pillow that I hated him and I may have said those words but if I did I've blocked it out because what I now realize I felt was summed up in one word: PITY. 

No one should feel pity for their own father. No one should be put in that place where it feels like pity. That's where I was though. And my pity turned to revenge and I started listening to music that bled pity and revenge, aimed at no one necessarilly so it was easy to assign it to my dad since I suppose I blamed for the whole mess. I still love those old punk records I had currently streaming on Spotify of course but Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Psychedelic Furs had come to replace the Be Bop Deluxe, Cheap Trick and a good chunk of everything else. Nowadays I listen to black metal to cleanse my soul but I wouldn't do that if I didn't know that I have the Holy Spirit in me to protect me from the negative vibes that are part and parcel of most black metal. 

Black metal...can believe that? Just another aspect of my morbid soul.