Mooh: No Baah!!

I certainly caused some serious disruption in my family when I was younger, and was estranged from them for a period of close to fifteen years. But, I never really felt like the black sheep of the family. When I look back on who I was as a teenager and young man, my one prayer was that I wouldn't get any kids like I was. It was mostly answered, although the teenager years with my two songs had their moments, we were always close and no one ever doubted the other's love.

It was my father who was the black sheep. A status symbol he worked hard to earn. He came from a family of six brothers and a sister. They all did well in school, went on to college, one became a minister and the others all had professional careers. My father was setting pins until all hours of the morning when he was eleven or twelve years old, fought his way up to take over the best street corner in town to sell newspapers, bought a model T and paid cash for it when he was still in High School, slept through half of his classes, drank heavily as soon as he was old enough to get his hands on a bottle of beer, and hung out with a cursing, drinking, loudmouth, no-count bunch of guys. I don't know why, and I don't think he ever did, either. I spent many years trying to figure out why he felt so rejected and bitter, and finally had to realize that I would never know. He would just start off on a rant about the time a couple of his brothers set off some of the fireworks he'd saved up to buy, or some similar tale of misstreatment. Being the black sheep was a self-fulfilling prophecy for my father. And yet, there was a warm, giving side of my father, an honesty and a desire to do things "right," that while he would never admit probably came from his Mother (who he fought with bitterly.)

Folks are sure enough hard to figure out. Ourselves, most of all..

Jerry