As Dad and Mom began their crafting career in the late 1970s and early 1980s, money was almost always tight. That lasted for more than a decade before the business really began to take off in the early 1990s.
I wasn’t aware just how tight the tight was until I interviewed the old man a few weeks after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. During one of our talks, he mentioned that we got by from January through March (the offseason in crafting) largely on credit cards once the money from the Christmas show ran out.
“You talk about pressure, son,” Dad said. “We had to put food on the table, and you never knew how shows were going to go. Fortunately, we had credit cards. We had to rely on those while we built up stock and the shows started.”
That was an “aha” moment. For years, I just assumed many of the things we did were more about my dad being frugal than financial struggles. One of those things was his aversion to staying in motels while we traveled to craft shows.
The alternative? Up until my teen years, we’d sleep in the back of our van, which Dad outfitted with a makeshift bed in the back. When he had the truck, we’d sleep in the back of the truck.
One time, we slept in a tent about 100 yards off the Mississippi River during the Festival of the Little Hills in St. Charles, Missouri. Predictably, it was 150 degrees and rained for hours. The mosquitoes nearly ate us alive the next day.
To say sleeping in the back of a van or truck is uncomfortable would be an understatement, especially during muggy summers in Missouri and Kansas.
“The shows were fun, most of the time, but there were bad times,” Dad said. “It was rough, but I’ve seen worse.”
That he had. The last time I wrote, I mentioned that the old man was in and out of trouble for years. He spent a significant chunk of some prime years (age 15 to 29) incarcerated for burglary and other non-violent crimes.
Imagine entering your teen years, when you should be learning how to drive and experiencing your first kiss, in jail and later prison.
“The first few years, I hardly slept,” Dad said. “You have to prove yourself right away, and you can’t trust anybody. Had to sleep with one eye open.”
For years while we were growing up, my brother and I knew to be cautious when we were waking the old man up. You didn’t get close. You didn’t tap his shoulder. You simply said “Dad” until he woke up. Even then, he’d wake up startled, with his fists clinched ready to fight.
“Sometimes, I was worried something was going to happen when I went to bed,” Dad said. “And sometimes, I was having a bad dream about the joint.”
Dad almost always woke up that way and did until the final days of his life. When he spoke about sleeping in jail, it put sleeping in the back of a van in perspective.
Ironically, enduring stressful, and on occasion, brutal times in jail, prepared Dad quite well for life on the road. During one monthlong trip to North Dakota for four craft shows, Dad stayed in the back of a Volkswagen van for all but one day.
“I did four shows in four weeks and made $850 and brought home $800, so you do the math,” he said. “I slept in the van. I took showers in the state parks. Every park had one up there. I ate sardines and crackers twice a day and a peanut butter sandwich once a day. Once a week, I got an Egg McMuffin. I stayed in a hotel for a day.”
If you’re doing the math, you realize that even with cheap gas and cheap meals, there’s no way you’d have enough to stay in a motel once. And, you don’t know the old man.
“One time during that trip, I just wanted a bed and a shower,” Dad said. “So I found a shitty motel in the middle of nowhere, where I knew they needed the business. It was $20 a night, and I told the guy I’d give him $10. He wasn’t happy, but he took it.
“The room was what you’d expect. It wasn’t all that clean. It was plain. It had a TV, but the TV didn’t work. When I took a shower, it clogged up and flooded. The air conditioning didn’t work. But I was worn out and just wanted to sleep, so I had a beer and went to bed.
“In the middle of the night, I felt something run across my chest. I jumped out of bed and turned the light on … it was a fucking mouse! Son, you get what you pay for!”
Somehow, Dad got back to sleep. When you wake up in jail every day for a decade, a ballsy mouse doesn’t seem like a big deal.
BEDLAM IN BARTLESVILLE
In all the years I went with dad to craft shows, which was hundreds of trips, I can only remember staying in a motel once. In 1985, we were in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. After the show ended, Dad suddenly decided we absolutely had to watch Game 6 of the World Series, which we’d been listening to in the van.
Eventually, after discovering that several motels were booked, Dad found one just outside of town. We made it into our room in time for the eighth inning, when the Cardinals took a 1-0 lead.
For years, Dad told the story of me hiding under the covers and crying as it appeared my beloved Royals were going to lose the series.
“Then they get a hit. And then another. And you start peeking your head over the covers,” Dad said. “And then they had the bases loaded and got that hit …”
Ten minutes after crying under the covers, I was jumping on the bed. So was the old man. Thirty years later, it’s the favorite memory of my childhood. Dad picked a hell of a night to get a motel.