Matthew Nath – Author

Chapter 4

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	Well, from what I remember, I grew up on a small farm on the edge of a little town.  And when I say little, I mean little.  Like, 40 people little.  And my family moved there from the city.  Well, I should say my dad brought my mom there from the city.  Sorry, I should back up a little more I guess.

	My great-grandparents were homesteaders, who moved out and stole the land from the Native Americans.  They claim to have bought the land at a fair price from the U.S. Government, but it was still the same thing, right?  They bought land that wasn’t rightfully theirs and removed the people who used that land to hunt and travel through.

	But, as it happened, my great-grandfather was a pretty good farmer.  He seemed know how to work the land, better than his neighbors even.  Over just a few years, his farm land grew to one the largest in the area.  My grandpa was born and raised on that farm, working alongside his dad to develop a pretty sprawling and productive farming operation.  My dad was born into that the middle child of three kids.

	He grew up on the farm just like his dad, but didn’t take to farming near as well as his older brother.  So he focused on other things, like getting out of the tiny town.  He loved cars and studied how they were made.  He worked with a mechanic in a larger nearby town but was told he didn’t have “the feel,” whatever that means. When he graduated high school, he was fired instead of promoted to be a full-time mechanic.

	I promise, this will all become relevant soon.  So, instead of staying close and working he went off to college.  That’s not a big deal now, but this was much harder when my dad did it.  Loans were nowhere near as easy to get.  You had to convince someone to invest their money on you, and if you were just a kid who didn’t know what he was going to study, that’s a tough sell.  But that’s exactly what my dad did.  He applied for a new government backed loan and was accepted. He moved to Chicago and started at the University of Chicago with a general major.

	That’s where he later met my mom.  She grew up in Chicago and also had a government backed loan, but she was studying sociology with the hopes of becoming a therapist or social worker for the poor and disenfranchised.  She actually had a gay sister and saw the struggle she went through before she later killed herself.  My mom really wanted to find a way to reach out to other teens struggling with their gender and sexual identities and prevent what happened to her sister from happening again.

	Anyways, my dad started school and found out there was a program for drafting cars.  He had always enjoyed art and thought it might be an interesting course.  He fell in love immediately. He spent the next 4 years studying how to build car model parts from clay that would then be used as models for crafting body parts of cars.  The month after he graduated, a new computer program was introduced that did the same thing for half the price.  My dad’s entire field was cut over the course of one year, leaving him with a completely worthless degree.

	While going to school he had met and married my mom.  They had my older brother, Aaron, and had bought a house on credit, expecting my dad to take one of the many open jobs in his field. When all of those jobs disappeared overnight, money got tight.  They sold the house and moved into a small apartment.  My mom’s education had been put on hold so she could raise my brother, leaving my dad to work whatever odd jobs he could to make ends meet.  It wasn’t going well.

	Then I came into the picture.  I guess when my mom found out she was pregnant with me, she couldn’t even call my dad to tell him because he had forgotten to pay the phone bill.  She had to wait until he got home.  She thought about walking to the abortion clinic, but decided to wait for my dad to get home.  If it wasn’t so far, she would have driven, but it really wasn’t safe for her to walk with Aaron that far.  So she waited.  I guess she wished she hadn’t, but I don’t know.  That’s what my dad always used to say, anyways.  That she never wanted me in the first place.

	So, as you can see, she didn’t get an abortion.  I should probably mention here that my dad was raised a strict Catholic.  No abortions.  It doesn’t matter that we never went to church, didn’t pray at night or over our meals, hell didn’t even own a Bible.  All that wasn’t important, the only important thing was that we don’t have abortions.  My mom and dad argued, but my mom eventually agreed that it would be better to have me.

	Things did stabilize for a while.  My dad was able to get a job at an insurance company that paid well enough.  He provided a good enough life for my mom to have a social life outside of raising us kids.  He wasn’t very fulfilled at work, but he did what he could with us.  I don’t remember this much, but Aaron told me some stuff about it.  Anyways, my mom was one semester short of graduating with a Bachelor’s degree when my dad got a call from home.  His brother died in a farming accident.

	After the funeral, we had to decide what would happen to the farm.  His wife was not able to work the fields and my grandpa couldn’t keep up with the work alone.  He agreed to teach my dad what to do if he wanted to come back home.  So, our family relocated from Chicago to Florence (named after my great-grandma).

	I was 4 years old when we moved back.  I spent most of my young life on that farm.  It all seemed pleasant enough when I was going through it, but looking back I can see the tension.  My dad did not take to farming.  There was just so much to learn, and my dad struggled with learning as it was.  He had land to manage, weather to monitor, employees, taxes, and on and on and on.  He couldn’t keep up and my grandpa would never be called a patient man.

	It took a few years, but eventually my dad had to sell the farm. He couldn’t keep up with the work.  Unfortunately he had also mismanaged is money so badly that he didn’t make a dime on the sale of the land.  We had the house, but everything else went to debt.  I honestly don’t know if my dad and my grandpa ever really talked again.  My dad knew he had disappointed my grandpa and never even got a chance to make it right.  My grandpa died about a month after my dad sold the farm.

	My dad kept working on the farm as a hired hand for Daniel, the man he sold the farm to.  He worked hard and things got somewhat more stable again, but my dad was never the same.  My mom helped my brother and I make the best of things.  Aaron was three years older than me and we really did have a lot of fun growing up.  My dad kept most of his frustrations at work so it didn’t interfere with my young life too much.  I remember trips to the park, swinging on swings, bike rides, fishing, and sledding all with my big brother.  Mom was there most of the time, laughing alongside us.  Dad was there periodically but not usually in a fun way.  Take my 10th birthday, for example.

	We were having a party and my mom had invited two of my friends from school.  The plan was to have my friends over after school and then for a sleepover.  The rest was open.  As soon as we got home we went to the basement, our usual hang out spot.  My parents pretty much left us alone, there wasn’t much we could get into there.  The house was unbelievably old in some places and amazingly new in others.  We would occasionally find some interesting things that had been left behind.  Some old saws in the rafters, extra wood, spare vent pieces, and, as my friends and I discovered that night, a porn stash.

	We were honestly looking for boards to build a fort when my friend came down holding a bag.  We put it down between us and opened it to reveal a treasure trove of boobs and butts.  Tight, tanned skin and lips and sweat.  Everything a prepubescent boy needs.  We all ogled silently for at least a minute before we dove in.  We took no regard for what we were doing or where we were.  We each just grabbed whatever we could get our hands on and started devouring.

	It was at this point that my dad decided to come home.  The first thing he always did when he got home was sit on the toilet in the basement, so I knew he would be down and we only had seconds. I frantically grabbed the magazines from my friend’s hands and shoved it in the bag, sliding the bag under the couch.  I turned as my dad came down the stairs.  He grunted in our direction and then turned the knob to the bathroom.  I sighed in relief as the door clicked shut.

	That relief was immediately replaced with terror as my dad’s voice called from behind the door.  “Tyler, could you come here please.”  The door opened and the first thing I could see was a naked man.  My dad was holding a magazine that must have fallen out of the bag as I was bringing it to my friends.  I hung my head in shame and my dad had his answer.  He rolled up the magazine and smacked me in the face with it.  “Not my son,” he said as we walked out into the basement.  

My friends looked on in horror as my dad followed me out of the bathroom.  “Mr. Miller, don’t-“ Brock said but he was cut off by my dad’s face as he turned to look at them.  My dad took a quick, short breath and then said to my friends: “The two of you, get your things, you are going home. Now.”

I watched on in silent fury as my friends gathered their things.  We didn’t do anything wrong.  We looked at a few magazines, what was the problem?  Why was my dad being like this?  Confusion, disappointment, anger, resentment, rage all swam in my head as my dad brought each of my friends home.  He explained what had happened to each of their parents while I sat in the car by myself, waiting, my embarrassment and anger growing with each minute.

We rode home in silence.  When we got there he parked the car and then looked at me.  “I may have over reacted,” he said earnestly.  “Look, kid, you can’t get into that stuff.  You can’t start with that stuff or it’ll be stuck with you forever.  I wish I could explain it better but I can’t.  That’s all I got.  All I know is what my dad told me and that I wish I had listened to him.  I didn’t listen, but you try to, OK?  You try to be better than me.”

He let a silence ring in the car for a moment.  I had no idea how to respond or even what to think about his rambling, so I didn’t say anything.  After a minute he got out of the car and told me to come in when I was ready.  I sat by myself for over an hour going through what had happened.  All my little brain seemed to be able to understand was that my dad is an asshole.  And that I liked seeing people naked.  There was a whole mix of stuff in there.