The River Road

On a pleasant, clear with bright blue skies, shirt-sleeve kind of an afternoon in April of 1991, the kind of delicious day that is common to deep south Texas in the spring, I pulled my rental car into the driveway of my old family home in Mercedes, Texas where my mother and father still lived together up until yesterday. I carefully maneuvered the car to one side so that I did not block my Mom’s car in case she needed to go somewhere. Earlier that afternoon, I had flown into Harlingen, the closest regional airport, and picked up the rental car for the twenty mile drive up the valley to Mercedes. Mom had called me last night at my home in Oklahoma to tell me that my father had passed away yesterday afternoon from a massive heart attack and my presence would be sorely needed. As the only son of Clay Baker, I, Alton Baker, was now considered to be “the man of the family” and was looked to for support, guidance and assistance in these kinds of family matters. This was primarily due to my mom’s old fashioned beliefs in the roles of men and women that she believed were distinct and separate, where the man is the head of the family and the woman is subservient, although there were times where she was very assertive and anything but subservient. Growing up, I didn’t always agree with those defined roles but with my tendency to keep quiet, I didn’t make too many waves. My two older sisters had also been notified of Dad’s passing, and would be arriving later that evening. Either of them could have taken over as “the man of the family” and that is meant as a compliment. They are both very capable of handling life events as they have both proven repeatedly through having to deal with crises in their own families. After greeting Mom with a tight hug and briefly sitting with her on the old sofa while we talked about Dad’s last living day on earth, she apologized to me and told me that she was going to have to leave the house for a bit because she had managed to get a hair appointment that afternoon with her current stylist so that she would “look decent” at Dad’s funeral scheduled for later in the week. I was not particularly surprised at her priorities. As she was leaving the house, she said to me, “You will want to go into your father’s office. He has been working on a surprise for you that he felt you would enjoy. He certainly enjoyed the time he spent creating and designing it. I will be back soon. The girls will be coming in later this evening, but for the next few hours, you will have the house to yourself. Starting tomorrow, we will have large numbers of visitors and relatives coming by to pay their respects, so enjoy the quiet while you can.” And then she was out the door leaving me alone in a very quiet house, a house that was full of Dad’s presence and deep memories of my times with him as we negotiated life’s byways. Earlier that spring, my wife, Amy, and I and our two kids had driven down to be with Dad as he celebrated his eighty-second birthday after a good life with relatively good health throughout. At that visit, it was obvious that he was slowing down but also obvious that he was enjoying his retirement after 50 years of work in the education profession, mostly as the principal of a junior high school. Mom was in her late seventies and was in good health although at times she told me and my sisters “Now I know that you think I am healthy, but I am not. I’ve got problems that you don’t know about.” When she would say that, we would often just roll our eyes and move on. Unfortunately for both Mom and Dad, my sisters and I had recently begun to notice symptoms that we were afraid were those of Alzheimer’s disease, which was not surprising, given their ages. Due to our earlier visit to be with Dad on his birthday, Amy and the kids elected not to try to make it to the funeral which I knew would not set well with my Mom. Amy was a school teacher at our home in Enid, Oklahoma where I served as the regional manager for a southwest oil company, Sunoco. Being close to the end of the school year, both she and the kids felt they couldn’t afford the time away from school. And, they had been able to have a wonderful visit with Mom and Dad when we visited earlier for his birthday and chose to remember Dad as he had been at that time. After a few moments of sitting there and thinking about Dad, I made my way down the hall and back to his office to see if I could figure out the surprise. Turning on the ceiling light, I immediately noticed three newly framed shadow boxes made of polished walnut that were evenly hung on the wall in front of his desk. I sat down in his old wooden office chair and smiled as his surprise became evident. Each shadow box was fourteen inches tall by eighteen inches wide by one inch deep with a beveled frame of dark walnut. It was obvious that a lot of care had gone into the creation of the shadow boxes so that they were perfect or at least as perfect as an amateur woodworker could make them. I was not surprised at the quality of the framing, as this is something that Dad had taken up in the years after his retirement and he was quite good at woodworking. The background matt in each shadow box was made of a lustrous, golden velvet material. A brass plate on the front of each of the shadow boxes bore my name, Alton Baker, and a school year’s designation, 1963-64, 1964-65, and 1965-66. Across the top of each matt in an arc was a dark brown banner with the printed words in white, Brownsville High School Golden Eagles, and just under the school name, the words, Track and Field. Each shadow box had space for three medallions suspended from ribbons and evenly spaced across the matt below the banner. Beneath each of the left side medallions were the words District 10A Track Meet, The Mile etched onto a small brass plate. Beneath each of the center medallions were the words South Texas Regional Track Meet, The Mile and beneath each of the right side medallions were the words, Texas State Track Meet, The Mile. In the shadow box on the right, 1965-66, the three medallions included a gold (1st place) for district, a gold (1st place) for regional and a silver (2nd place) for state. In the center shadow box, 1964-65, the three medallions included a gold for district, a gold for regional, and a bronze (3rd place) for state. And in the shadow box on the left, 1963-64, the three medallions included a gold for district, a gold for regional and in the place for the state, there hung by a red ribbon, the hood ornament from a 1948 Plymouth Belvedere, most likely the original from the old family car that we had driven during a significant portion of my adolescent years. As I sat there in the quiet solitude of Dad’s office and thought of him working on the shadow boxes, the tears began to flow. Each of the medallions was earned by me at the various track meets where I excelled in the one mile run. But of all of the medallions, the 1948 Plymouth hood ornament had the greatest impact on my high school years. The 1963-64 school year was when I began to become a member of the human race. Prior to that year, I had just existed and gone through the motions, but in that year I began to find out who I was and began to lay the foundation for the rest of my life.