Just Wanted to Learn

by William Swafford

  The truck only had a camper shell on it. The truck bed was covered with rust and holes. We slept in our sleeping bags on the truck bed.

  There were a lot of mornings when my brother and I would wake up not knowing where we were. My dad wouldn’t wake us up when he decided to go places. He tried to make like we were camping out.

  He had done things to my family that a father should have never done. I started growing anger and resentment towards him. This was something that I was keeping to myself. I told nobody outside of my family about my home life when I was younger.

  There wasn’t much excitement in my childhood. The family was always poor. Simple things interested me.

  When I was in the third grade, I had gotten a little more inspiration for music pushed into my life. The inspiration for music wasn’t always around, but it was cool when it was. It’s great when you can see some things up close.

  We were living in an old farmhouse and I shared room with my brother on the second floor. Our bedroom was the biggest room in the house. There were more rooms, but they were a mess and couldn’t be heated.

  The old farmhouse was ruined down. We had spent days cleaning the house before we even moved in. Lee and I had to sleep in the back of the truck and they stayed in the camper during that time.

  The house was on a big hill. There were four big red barns. We weren’t allowed in them, but Lee and I would always get into trouble sneaking around in them.

  I would never go to the back rooms of the second story alone. I had always thought that they were haunted. The backrooms were cut off by a door that leads to a hallway. I always got a bad feeling when I went into the hallway.

  The only heat source was a wood burning stove. It was good for heating up the whole farmhouse. It could burn up a lot of wood. Lee and I had to cut wood in the winter time.

  Sometimes my dad couldn’t afford to buy wood. It was either cut wood or has to deal with two things. We would get disciplined by our dad and then have to wake up cold in the morning.

  “Don’t take the axe over your head.” My dad would say. “The axe head keeps slipping off.”

  We were used to work. If we wanted anything in the summer, then we had to work in my Grandma Selby’s garden. We even got a paper route.

  In the summer Lee and I had to always stay outside. The first Nintendo had been released, but it had taken our parents some time to afford one. My dad spent more time playing it than we did.

  We had gone to school one day and had come home to find our room turned into a band room. The room now contained drums, amps, microphones, and a guitar. I had never been around amps and drums before.

  The band never played when us kids where in the house. I don’t know who was in the band or what the name of the band was. That was my dad’s business. I didn’t ask a lot of questions when I was younger.

  I do remember hearing them say that they were supposed to play. There were a couple of nights when my dad would leave. I was always asleep when he got home.

  My bed was close to the drum set. This is how I had to sleep for a month. I always thought it was cool. Lee didn’t show any interest in it.

  This didn’t build the want to learn how to play music. It brought up a lot of questions about music and about my dad. I had no idea who my dad was.

  I always wanted to ask my dad a bunch of questions about the music equipment, but I was always afraid to. I knew that I would just be told that it wasn’t my business or I was too young to understand.

  Chapter Five

  Thirteen is the age when I really got to touch a guitar. It was my grandma’s guitar. I started to get more interested in how to play guitar. This is also the year that my parents split up for good.

  My family had moved into a house that was split into a double. My parents were together when we first moved in. Sometimes bad things can stay hidden.

  The Camaro my dad always had was brought with us. He took out the engine to put into another car that he sold. The car was going to waste.

  My dad had brought home the guitar that always had been at my grandma’s house. He started playing it around the house. That’s when I started picking it up and plucked on the strings.

  He did show me one chord which was Am chord. The other kids would be out playing. I would sit on the front porch and practiced that one chord.

  My parents split up and my dad moved out. He left the Camaro and ended up losing it. I knew the reason why my parents had split up, but was so far in denial that I couldn’t see it.

  Sometimes it was hard living with my dad. There were times when they had split up before, but this time I knew that they wouldn’t get back together. I didn’t know all the reasons behind it.

  I had a hard time dealing with this. There was no blaming myself, because I knew where to place the blame. I didn’t know everything, but I knew a little.

  My dad had moved to a different town, but not too far away. We all were starting to change. This is when I started seeing a different side of my dad.

  He had started getting back into his music and alcohol. He was trying to get to being the rocker that he had once been. It was like he was trying to turn back time.

  He had started gaining some weight and had grown his beard longer. He had suspenders to wear with his pants. He wasn’t worry about staying cleaned up like he had been while with my mom.

  When I say my dad was a rocker, I mean the old school rocker. They were the ones who had short beards with long hair and wore black hats. They were the generation of rockers before the long hair bands of the eighties.

  I hadn’t seen my dad for a while. He had been causing problems with my mom and the divorce. He had time to settle into his new way of life.

  He had a small one bedroom apartment in a town that only had one intersection. His apartment was on the second floor of a house that was turned into four apartments. The place wasn’t in the best of shape.

  When I had walked into the apartment, the smell of old beer and cigarettes hit me. The kitchen was very small and the living room wasn’t much bigger. I couldn’t believe my dad was living there.

  There was a small couch and chair, lamp, and television. It was all the room could fit. Record albums and eight tracks covered the floor. My grandma’s guitar sat on the chair.

  My dad showed me some other chords. I think he done it just for me to have something to do. They went together with Am to do the House of The Rising Sun.

  “It’s the song you should start with,” he said. “It has most of the chords and you will learn how to pick the strings.”

  I didn’t really know the song. I had only heard it once or twice before. I didn’t know how to put everything together.

  We didn’t do much after that. He went to his bedroom and had gone to sleep. I stayed up going the record albums and eight tracks.

  It was cool to go through the albums of all the great bands. I had started life with cassettes and then went through the birth of the C.D. The cassette tapes were coming to an end.

  I stayed up listening to all the music and practiced the new chords. Then I lay down on the couch. It had taken awhile for me to fall asleep.

  My life wasn’t all that bad. There were things going on that I really didn’t understand. I didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to about things.

  I had a hard time dealing with some things. I always felt like I wasn’t like very much by people. I don’t know what put the idea in my head, but I ran away from home again at the age of thirteen.

  I just started riding my bike. I had no idea where I was heading. I thought I would eventually go home.

  I stopped by the graveyard that my step grandpa was buried. I hadn’t known any of my real grandpa’s. They had both died before I was born.

  Then I got on a back road and headed out of city limits. I know I should have gone home. I didn’t want to be the wimp that had gone home crying to his mom.

&nb
sp; It was dark and I was scared, but I wasn’t going home. Every noise that I heard had scared me. Then I was chased by dogs.

  I had gotten off my bike and was walking beside it. All of a sudden I heard dogs. I looked and saw them heading my way. I jumped on my bike and started pedaling. They had chased me for a while.

  A farmer had stopped and asked if I needed a ride. I said no and then lied to him. I said that I lived up the road and was heading home.

  I kept going without thinking about turning around. It had even started raining a little.

  I almost made it across the state line and then a truck stopped. The door opened and a guy got out. It was my dad.

  He had just started a new job hauling a farmer’s harvest truck. He had passed me on the way back to the field. He put my bike on the back of the truck and I got in.

  I had to ride with him to the field where they were working. My dad still had to pick up his load. He had gotten in trouble for having a passenger in his truck.

  While in the situation, I thought that sitting in the cornfield was neat. I had never seen how farmers worked through the night.

  When he took me home, things didn’t get any better. I wouldn’t listen to my parents and I kept being a smartass. Then the cops were called.

  They said I could go to jail and I said I didn’t care. The cops had my dad press unruly child charges on me. I got arrested that night.

  I didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t steal or damage anything, just ran away from home, and I got to spend my first night in a juvenile jail.

  I did not like this experience at all. I was made to put on jail clothes and then put in a cold ceil. I stayed up most of the night scared of what would happen the next morning.

  When they took us out for breakfast, I had seen someone I had known from school. I didn’t get to talk to him. Then I was taken back to my cell where I sat alone till transferred back to my hometown.

  I was in court by the afternoon, and then home shortly after that. I had been put on a year’s probation.

  My family didn’t change any after that. The way I felt about things didn’t change. No one tried to figure out what my real problem was.

  We ended up moving to another house. It was a decent house. It was one the better houses that we had stayed at while growing up.

  I still had to share a room with my brother. I was ready to have my own space.

  Chapter Six

  The want to learn how to play was building up. It was hard to start out with no guitar. The only time I got to touch a guitar was if I had visited my dad and that wasn’t very often.

  I was turning fourteen and my dad had gotten me a guitar for my birthday. I wasn’t as happy as I should have been. I had expected something better.

  It was just a cheap garage sale acoustic that had seen better days. There were bad scratches all over it. The strings were hard to push down.

  “It’s hard to play,” I said.

  “It’ll make your fingers stronger,” he replied.

  It wasn’t what I pictured my first guitar would look like. I did try my best to practice my chords with the guitar. It was all I had to learn on.

  I didn’t play the guitar too much. It had made it frustrating because I couldn’t get it to sound right. I had to try and tune it by ear, which I wasn’t good at.

  The want to play guitar was there, but it still wasn’t able to come out. I had finally gotten a guitar but the guitar made it hard to learn. I wasn’t getting any real support from anyone.

  I didn’t spend much time with my dad. It was only on rare occasions. One time I had seen him I found out he had traded my grandma’s guitar for another one.

  “I needed something better,” he said. “You’re grandma’s guitar is in a safe place. I can always get it back.”

  I didn’t like how the guitar looked. It was a tan acoustic which he had the top painted red with a dove with roses. I didn’t like the paint job. The body of the guitar seemed to be bigger than my grandma’s guitar.

  “That’s Baby,” he said.

  He was proud of his new guitar. I didn’t mention how I really felt about it. I couldn’t tell him what I really thought about the guitar.

  “What?” I said.

  “That’s her name,” he said. I could tell he wanted me to check out his new guitar. “Baby.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Who did you trade with?”

  “The guy who lives downstairs,” he replied. “Go ahead and pick her up. See what you think about her.”

  I thought it was weird that he would name his guitar. I never gave the guitar a chance. I couldn’t understand how he thought what he did was a good idea.

  I was upset that he had traded my grandma’s guitar. I didn’t understand why he would do that. It was supposed to be my grandma’s guitar not his. I wonder what she had to say about his tried.

  He had gotten rid of the first guitar that I had ever touched. He kept trying to make it better by telling me that if something ever happened to him then the guy would give it to me. This didn’t make me feel better about his trade.

  There is one night that my brother and I had gone to my dad’s that really sticks out in my mind. It was the only night Lee had ever stayed there. My brother, our friend Justin and I went to my dad’s to spend the night.

  Our mom had dropped us off. When we got to my dad’s apartment, a couple of his friends were there. We had never met them before.

  One of them was the guy who my dad said he traded my grandma’s guitar too. His name was John. The other guy I thought was in the military, but he wasn’t.

  This guy’s nickname was Serge and he looked the part. He was short and stocky. He had a military flat top hair cut. He was a tightly wrapped small bundle of dynamite that could go off at anytime.

  We didn’t stay at the apartment very long. My brother, Justin and I went down the road to the creek. It was a ten minute walk. We were basically in the country.

  We were down the creek for awhile. We just walked the creek bed and looked around. Smoking cigarettes was the main reason for going down to the creek. Then we went back to the apartment.

  My dad and his friends were leaving when we got there. We were lucky that we had gotten there when we did. They apparently weren’t waiting for us to get back to tell us that they were leaving.

  “You guys stay around the apartment,” he said. “I’ll be back later.”

  After my dad left, we didn’t know what to do. My brother could always figure out something whether it got us in trouble or not. He did find something that could have gotten into trouble.

  “Let’s try this,” my brother said.

  He had found a bottle of Jack Daniels. He had already opened the bottle. He was acting like he had done it before.

  “Hell yeah,” Justin said. I had never thought he would have been into drinking. “What you waiting on?

  I had already tried beer before, but had never been drunk or had whiskey. I didn’t like the taste of beer. I had never even smelled whiskey before. I wanted to be cool in front of my brother and Justin, so I took a couple of sips.

  We couldn’t drink much. We didn’t want our dad to find out. The old dad would have whooped our butts.

  I didn’t want any more anyways. I have never been that much of a drinker. At that age I didn’t see much point in it. I couldn’t get used to the taste.

  There was one more thing that they wanted to try. This was something that I had never thought about trying. I had never given any thought to drugs.

  There were pot roaches in the ashtray. I didn’t know how to smoke them and my brother apparently didn’t either. I honestly didn’t even know what was supposed to happen if we did know what to do with them.

  The roaches were mostly paper and burnt up quickly. It was just a waste of time. I couldn’t help but get a laugh about it.

  My brother and Justin went outside. We were supposed to stay around
the apartment, but I don’t think that they did. I stayed up in the apartment by myself.

  My dad had never come back that night. My brother and Justin didn’t come back in for the rest of the night. I don’t know what they had done that night and I had never asked. I was left all alone.

  I didn’t have a problem with finding something to do. I was left alone with the guitar and the albums. I practiced on my dad’s guitar. I tried to follow along with the albums, but I didn’t do any good so I gave up. I listened to Cheech and Chong on eight-track. I even took another shot of my dad’s whiskey. Then I fell asleep on the couch.

  The next morning my dad still wasn’t home. Lee and Justin didn’t come back into the house. Wherever they had gone, they had made sure to be back in the morning.

  My mom picked us up early. She wasn’t in a good mood. We could tell that there was something going on.

  My dad and his friends had gone out to a bar. There had been some trouble and my dad had gotten arrested. He had spent the night in jail.

  I didn’t see my dad for a while after that. My mom was really upset about the situation. My dad wasn’t being the best influence for us.

  When I did see my dad again, he said that he had gotten into a fight in a bar parking lot. He said that some guys had started trouble with him and his friends. He had gotten arrested for marijuana.

  Chapter Seven

  I was going crazy over not having a good guitar to learn on. I wanted to learn so badly, but every time I tried with the guitar that my dad had bought me I just got frustrated. I didn’t have the money to buy one of my own.

  My mom had bought me a black electric guitar with a built in amp. This guitar was cheap and it sucked, but I thought it was cool at the time. It was my first electric guitar.

  She had bought it for me even though she hated the fact that I wanted to be like my dad. It was the only thing that I kept asking for. I didn’t play in front of her. I tried to keep the volume down all the time.

  I did what I could with the guitar. I bought books and magazines on playing guitar. I tried to learn from them. I wasn’t doing very well.