Thanksgiving: Father’s pride

OPINION:

I grew up in a home where team sports were not encouraged.

Sure, we made half-hearted attempts at Little League baseball and basketball in tube socks and even — horror of all horrors — soccer. But I was uniquely terrible at all of them. Like last-kid-picked-every-time terrible.

Coaches, in particular, despised me.

All I really learned from that half-effort was what brand cigarette I wanted to smoke. My Little League coach and the cranky umpire who never let me leave home plate both smoked Merits in the box with the yellow design. “Nothing halfway about it,” was the slogan.

To this day, there is no sweeter smell to me than that first whiff of a pack of Merits when you tear out the foil flap.

Looking back, I realize that my early failures on the sports field were among my most formative and proudest achievements — at least in my father’s eyes.

Once, I remember asking Dad why we never belonged to the local country club like all my friends’ families did. In addition to a hard-scrabble, nine-hole golf course among cedar trees, it had a swimming pool and several farm ponds with the biggest bass you ever caught.

My father grunted in disgust at the clearly stupid question.

“Hell,” he said. “First, you join some club like that. The next thing you know you’re doing team sports and before you know it you’re a full-blown communist.”

As a family, we were pretty adamant about being against communism in all its forms.

My father’s pride in my failure at team sports was perhaps eclipsed only by the time I got kicked out of Cub Scouts for peeing in the campfire — the campfire in which the baked potatoes were slowly cooking buried in the smoldering embers. My crime was only discovered after everybody returned from some planned activity I had skipped, fished out their baked potatoes and began choking on their befouled legumes.

“These smell like piss!” exclaimed my best buddy as he spit out his spud.

Blame was quickly assigned when the Cubmaster looked around the campfire and I was the only one just sitting there with giant eyes and not eating his potato.

The hatred of all my sports coaches combined was no match for the rage my Cubmaster had for me in that moment as he hauled me home in the bed of his pickup truck and marched me to the front door of our house in the middle of the night.

Mad as my dear mother was — as she apologized profusely under the front porch light — I could see a faint glimmer of satisfaction on my father’s face behind her.

“My boy,” his face said. “He will never go along. They will never get him! He will never surrender!”

Even if Dad had gotten mad, there was not much he could say about it. We lived in a small town where secrets are hard to hide. Everybody knew that he had gotten expelled from pretty much every outfit he was ever forced to join as a kid.

Long about middle school, Dad got kicked out of the local military school in our town for selling guns to Cuban students whose parents had fled after Fidel Castro seized control.

Like I said, Dad has always been pretty ardently anti-communist.

Honestly, everybody in my little town growing up was against communism. I am sure the school administrators were, too. They just thought that Dad selling guns to Cuban students in school to launch a revolution from campus wasn’t the best idea.

To this day, my father remains confused about why it was such a big deal. I mean, we’re not kidding around here, are we?

This past July, Dad turned 81. He was as sure of the world as ever. He was still writing books and peddling news on his Facebook page, where he kept an eye on any nefarious deeds by local public officials. He was still the sharpest editor alive.

On Main Street in Chatham, he was also busy running his rare and used bookshop with a booming online business. Shadetree Rare Books. His motto: “Finding Good Homes for Good Books Since 1999.”

Dad always remained as “independent” as ever. Some people in town use different words to describe him. But many of those words cannot be printed in this newspaper.

After more than eight decades as a shrewd observer of politics and a caustic critic of politicians — including his own son — Dad finally had enough. For the first time in his life, he decided to do something about it and run for public office.

Earlier this month, Henry Hurt got elected to the Chatham Town Council with 60% of the vote. In the town where he was born and everybody knows him — for good and bad.

Fittingly, no party would have him so he ran as an independent.

From his new perch he will continue to torment officialdom — and surely endure some torment of his own.

So, this Thanksgiving, count your blessings. Chief among those blessings is that here in America — in a small town where secrets are few — a fierce anti-communist is still swinging away and getting elected to public office.

There is still hope for us yet.

• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor for the Washington Times.