© 2020 Randy Lindsay
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lindsay, Randy, 1959– author.
Title: The milkman’s son : a memoir of family history, a DNA mystery, and paternal love / Randy Lindsay.
Description: Salt Lake City : Shadow Mountain, [2020] | Summary: “This memoir traces one man’s journey through his family history when a DNA test reveals that his dad was not his biological father”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019044950 | ISBN 9781629727387 (hardback) eISBN 978-1-62973-924-3 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lindsay, Randy, 1959—Family. | Fathers and sons—Biography. | DNA fingerprinting—Popular works. | Birthfathers—Biography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC HQ755.85 L564 2020 | DDC 306.874/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044950
Printed in the United States of America
Publishers Printing, Salt Lake City, UT
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover art: Mopic / Shutterstock.com; Katsumi Murouchi / Getty Images
Book design: © Shadow Mountain
Art direction: Richard Erickson
Design: Heather G. Ward
To learn more about this book
and to see photos of Randy and his family,
visit MilkmansSonBook.com
Contents
Author’s Note
Ghosts of Family Past
Where’s William?
The DNA Results
I’m Not in Egypt, So This Can’t Be Denial
Forget the Duke; Meet My Dad
Oh, Brother
The Milkman’s Family
DNA Test Round Two: Like Father, Like Son
Another Skeleton in the Closet
The Joke’s on Me
Stalking the Family
Florida
Hello, Joe
Tammy’s Story
Dad, I’m Home
Not Enough Time
Post-Family Depression
Family Feud
The Dreaded Call
Returning Home
Shelly’s Story
Surprise, Surprise
My Dad Is Still My Dad
About the Author
Author’s Note
It turns out that if you tell people your dad is not your biological father, you’ve officially invited them to play twenty questions. Although the order in which they’re asked varies from person to person, the first few questions are always the same
“How did you find out?”
“Have you met your real/biological father?”
“How did your siblings react to the news?”
And . . .
“What did your mom say when you found out you have a different father?”
My mother did a wonderful job of raising me. I had an intimate relationship with Misfortune, and Mom remained calm during my frequent childhood trips to the hospital. Like the time one of the neighbor kids pushed my face into the mud, and my eyes were so covered with dirt I couldn’t find my way home. Mom followed my cries until she found me, and nearly started crying herself when she discovered why I hadn’t come to her when she called. Then she drove me to the hospital. Despite my mother’s urgings to break off my relationship with the God of Incidents and Accidents, he and I had regular dates until I was well into my twenties.
Mom tolerated my emotional teens and all the minutia-induced drama that comes with that stage of life. No matter how far down the ladder of self-doubt I traveled, she shone a spotlight on my positive traits and convinced me that I mattered as a person.
I was one of the original nerds—back before being nerdy was popular—a weird kid who liked Godzilla, dinosaurs, and space aliens. To my mother, however, I was a creative kid, one who was unafraid of exploring new frontiers where the rest of the family dared not venture.
If a life-sized poster of unconditional love exists in the halls of human achievement, then it has my mom’s picture at the center—short, smiling, and beautiful.
But this isn’t a story about my mother.
This is a story about me and my two dads. I share this portion of my life with the world because it is a tale that will become more common as technology continues to improve. All anyone needs to know about my mother is that she loves me and I love her.
Chapter 1
Ghosts of Family Past
The dastardly thing about a life-changing event is that it can disguise itself as a normal day. Months, or even years, later you discover that what looked and felt like an ordinary Monday was the first step on the road to what-happened-to-my-normal-life?
At the far-from-youthful age of fifty-seven, I found out that my dad, the man who had been a vital part of my life since the moment I arrived in the world, was not my father. Most people I tell about my situation find it . . . surprising. While to others the event is an amusing anecdote, for me it represents the sudden destruction of my sheltering concept of family.
I load the four youngest children into my minivan. It isn’t even 10:00 a.m., but the temperature is over a hundred. The inside of the van feels like an oven, but my kids are troopers and don’t complain when the air conditioning fails to reach the back seats. Only my oldest daughter, riding in the front seat, endures the drive with any sense of comfort.
The trip to the far side of Phoenix to visit my dad takes almost two hours—most of it freeway. I bring the children with me because Dad loves to see them. They don’t have a chance to see one another very often.
I turn down the dirt road that leads to his trailer home in the desert. Even though the windows are up, I can smell the dust. Gravel and stone crunch under the tires as I pull into my dad’s personal five-acre slice of desert. In addition to the mobile home, his mini cowboy kingdom has a barn, a horse in a pen, and a roping corral complete with a donkey to rope. The familiar stockyard smell of my youth sneaks past the closed windows.
As soon as the van stops, the kids bail out of the vehicle. I yell to them to watch for rattlesnakes, but they’re too busy petting my dad’s horse to pay attention to me. These are suburbanite kids—members of the YouTube generation—who know nothing about rattlers. Or lizards. Or scorpions, for that matter. When I was their age, I scoured the sand and scrub for snakes and lizards. I knew the difference between the harmless and the poisonous varieties of wildlife living among the desert shrubs and usually had the sense to stay away from the dangerous ones.
The plywood floor of the back porch sags dangerously as I walk across it, making me wonder whether my next step is going to smash a hole through the ancient building material. Various bits of tack and harness hang from the walls of the enclosed patio. Cardboard boxes clutter the dusty floor. I slide open the glass door to Dad’s trailer and shout, “We’re here!”
Dad struggles to push himself out of his easy chair and then hobbles over to give me a hug. With his Tom Selleck mustache, a tan cap advertising the local grain-and-feed store, and his long-sleeved western shirt, he looks every bit the cowboy. “Good to see you, son. Where are the kids? I made sure
we stocked up on Popsicles.”
Popsicles. Dad feeds them to the kids until they can’t eat any more. I tried a couple of times in the past to stop them after eating two, but Dad just points out he’s my father, this is his house, and the grandchildren can have as many Popsicles as they want.
My dad mentions Popsicles, and the children, as if guided by some mystic sugar radar, file in through the back door. Within minutes the kids are lounging around the living room with rainbow-colored lips.
Dad and I visit for a few minutes before his attention is drawn away from me and to the television like the Millennium Falcon was dragged aboard the Death Star. My dad is riveted to the bright colors and loud screeching sounds of SpongeBob SquarePants. Not that it makes a difference. Our conversations follow the same pattern every time we meet.
“What’s new, Dad?”
“Same as always. Nothing ever changes around here.”
And for the most part, that’s true. His life consists of reading Louis L’Amour books, watching the national rodeo finals on television, and driving down to the local steer-roping event to compete with men half his age. He has his second wife, a dog, and the livestock to keep him company. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, he drives to one of his children’s homes for the holiday and is the first to leave because he needs to get back home and feed the livestock.
My siblings and I tease him that he loves his animals more than his own children. There’s a strange sense of comfort in the ritual. That’s the way Dad has always been, and if he acted any different, we’d worry something was wrong.
But Dad doesn’t return to watching cartoons with the children. Instead, he turns and stares at me with his good eye. The blue one. The green one watches me too, but it hasn’t worked properly since he almost lost it in a BB gun fight as a kid. Dad tilts his head to favor his undamaged eye. He rubs his hands together. I can tell he has something to say and is working it out in his mind before he opens his mouth.
“I’ve been having dreams,” he tells me.
A chill creeps along my arms and down my back. Dad tells stories about his youth in Long Beach or his time in the marines, but he doesn’t talk about his dreams. Why would he? They aren’t part of his regular world. He deals only in reality.
Dad’s as tough and stable as they come. I can’t imagine any dream has the power or imagery to bother him, but obviously, this one has.
“I see ghosts,” he says.
Now I’m worried. Ghosts, like dreams, are not a part of my dad’s world. A spooky tale for him involves the billing department of the divorce lawyer he used when he and Mom split. He might even go as far as describing the interactions with his doctor as nightmarish, but his mind places anything from the realm of the supernatural into the category of children’s fiction.
“Most every night when I go to sleep,” Dad continues, “I close my eyes and see all these faces in my mind. I don’t know any of them, but some of them look alike. They resemble my dead relatives.”
The theme music from The Twilight Zone plays in my head. For a moment, I feel as if I am standing outside of time, wondering what I should make of Dad’s ghost story. I know he isn’t insane or losing his mind. The Lindsays may not always make the best decisions, but there’s no history of dementia or mental illness. And I don’t place much stock in stories by average people who claim to have had revelatory visions.
My natural sense of disbelief for ghost stories wavers, though, when it comes to encounters with family members who have passed on. That is something my dad could possibly experience.
“What do they say to you?” I ask.
“None of them speak.” Dad pauses and rolls a cigarette. His hands shake, and I can’t tell if that’s from his age or because of his dreams. “They float above me and look down.”
He lights the cigarette, draws a couple of puffs, and then continues. “I keep having the same dream. The faces of my ancestors look down at me while I sleep. When I wake up, I know they want me to do their family history.”
I lean back and rub my face. Despite my reluctance to believe in ghosts or dream visions, my dad’s telling of the dream sounds reasonable. At least the motivation behind this sort of encounter with the supernatural makes sense. If the spirits of dead family members had the ability to contact the living, they might want to have their genealogical work done.
Then again, it might be nothing more than my dad’s subconscious compelling him to put together a lovely, filled-out family tree. Print it. Frame it. Place it on the wall.
Either way, the conversation leaves me feeling off-balance. Why can’t he stick to talking about who’s in the bull-riding finals this year? My gut instinct tells me to change the subject, but instead, I ask him if he plans to start researching the family history.
“Nah.” Dad shakes his head and then flicks his ashes into a porcelain bowl one of the grandchildren made for him during art class. “I’m going to have you do it.”
Chapter 2
Where’s William?
Dad and my stepmom have a “computer” in the house . . . at least that’s what they call it. My new smartphone has more computing power than the antique box of electronics gathering dust in my stepmom’s office. Not that it matters. Dad has never operated a computer; and with so much of the current genealogy work being done online, he’d be lost as to how to find the ancestors visiting him in his dreams. But he knows I can do it.
As the oldest child, it feels like my responsibility to help my dad do what he is unable to do himself. I can bring our family together—the living and the dead occupying the same glorious pedigree chart! A thrill passes through me at the prospect of tracking down family members. I’ll be like a high-tech Indiana Jones, exploring the dusty catacombs of data storage for the names of unknown ancestors from distant lands. The excitement is only slightly tinged by a dread sense of having agreed to a Herculean task better suited to a team of historians or research specialists.
“Here you go,” says Dad. As if that’s all he needs to tell me. He officially passes me the torch with only those three words. The man can spend hours telling the most amazing stories . . . when he’s in the mood. But when it comes to giving instructions, he tends to stay on the sparse end of the conversational scale.
Dad hands me the few documents he gathered years ago, during his own attempt at family research. The information fits into a nearly pristine manila folder and contains copies of birth and death certificates for Dad’s parents and grandparents, a couple of baptism certificates, his parents’ marriage license, and an affidavit attesting to the birth of my great-grandfather as given by his older sister, along with a few other documents. These documents represent my only link to family members long-since dead. The contents of the folder are likely to be the only help I can expect in my search.
At least Dad doesn’t expect me to conduct the research here. On my stepmother’s electronic antique. I can take the files with me and work from home.
Later, I herd the kids outside and load them into the van. Dad waves goodbye from inside the back porch, then turns around and carefully ambles inside. A couple of questions burn in my mind. Who are the Lindsays? And why do they want their genealogy done so badly that they would visit Dad in a dream-haunting?
It takes the better part of a week to open an Ancestory.com account, search the internet for the right family history software to record my findings, and prepare my mind to dive into the work. Dad has already provided me the names, dates, and places for my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ births, marriages, and deaths. The dates on the documents are years old and had to have been assembled the old-fashioned way—by writing letters and visiting courthouses in person.
But this is 2005. Tons of data is available online. I can search the internet from the comfort of home, never leaving my chair or abandoning the cool beverage strategically positioned within easy reach. And thanks to Dad, I have
a pair of names for family members four generations before me. My great-great-grandparents: John Crawford Lindsay and Minerva Leedom.
Crawford?
Crawford strikes me as an unusual middle name. I like it, though. The name has character. Immediately, there’s a connection between me and John Crawford Lindsay. I want to find out more about him. Then I pause and wonder if he, wherever he is, knows about me. I imagine him gazing down from the heavens, urging me to work faster.
The great Lindsay mystery lies before me, waiting to be unraveled. Each name is a piece of a grand jigsaw puzzle. Every family has its own unique shape that makes it stand out against all the other Lindsay, Williams, and Jones families in the Missouri/Arkansas area. A picture starts to form, becoming clearer with each name that is added to the family record. My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents form only a small section of that family portrait, but it is beautiful.
I fill in the family tree with the more detailed information my dad collected. Then I type in my great-great-grandfather’s name on Ancestry.com and hit the search function. Let the treasure hunt begin.
There are no entries for John Crawford Lindsay.
I look through the documents again to make sure my information is correct. The birth certificate for my great-grandfather lists his father as J. C. Lindsey. With an e . . . not an a like my family spells it. After another pass through the documents, I find that the marriage license for my great-grandfather displays his last name as Lindsey. Both of these records scream of a clerical error.
At least I hope it’s only a misspelling.
My family believes the a in our name means we come from Scotland; an e would make us English. While there’s nothing wrong with England, my family embraces a Scottish ancestry. My brother wears a tie made with the Lindsay tartan pattern. He gave “Lindsay with an a” ties to Dad and me for Christmas one year. The collective family mind firmly believes we hail from the land of fighting clans and kilted pipers.
The Milkman's Son Page 1
