The First Time I Made Jerky

When our family was stationed in Miami, FL, my Dad was just coming out of an intensive training school in Memphis, TN where we had lived for six months or so. But upon looking around the Opa Locka area where the base was, he and Mom had found the neighborhoods less than appealing for family rearing. So Mom, Angela, and I moved in with my mother's parents in Honoraville, Alabama, a small rural town about 30 minutes south of Montgomery. Granddaddy was a full-time farmer and a substitute mail carrier in the same town in which he was raised. Grandma was working at a hospital in the nearby city of Luverne, but her real forte was home-cooking and teaching life lessons. The two of them lived on some land that had been purchased from the bank after Granddaddy's cousin, Robert, had been foreclosed on.

My sister and I had, until this point, been raised in the city or the suburbs, and were delighted to be around so many animals. I look back on that 7 month period as one of my favorites of my childhood. One summer morning, Angela and I were playing in the yard when we heard the sound of Granddaddy's truck coming down the red-dirt road. He was coming back from checking on his 30000 chickens and doing some maintenance work on the chicken houses. My sister and I ran to greet him as he pulled into the driveway. I love my Granddaddy. There has never been a sunnier human being than Marlyn E. Teague. He isn't just cheerful, he's sunny. Even the way he opened the door was happy. "Hi there, boys and girls!" he always pluralized it even when it was just Angela and I.

His enthusiasm took over his entire body. He picked up his booted feet, walking with a sort of bounce that most men lose when the world has broken their spirit. His arms bent in an L-shape, fists clenched and shaking with the excitement of life, he chimed; "Oh, BOY! I got somethin' for you girls and boys in the back of my truck!" Granddaddy's sky blue eyes shined as his cheeks pushed his eyes into a squint from the size of his smile.
"Whaddaya think o' this?" he asked as he pulled a white plastic bucket out from the bed of his truck. Angela and I gathered around beside the jovial old farmer, as he lowered the bucket. We peeked inside to see a small round turtle poking his frightened little head out of his shell. Angela squealed with excitement, and I let out a joyous "Cooooooool."
"Now you two are going to have to take care of this little fella'."

We named him Michelangelo. It was perfect because I was a huge fan of the cult TV show, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Plus, I was able to convince my sister to go with it, because we were naming him after "both of us" (Michael + Angela = Michelangelo). We played with him for the better part of an hour or so. Mom, Grandma, and Granddaddy got out our yellow kiddie pool, and Angela and I were excited to "swim" with our new friend. We returned Michelangelo to his milk-crate ecosystem and left him on the picnic table under the Alabama Long Leaf Pine trees in the back yard. The summer nights in Southern Alabama were a perfect 70 degrees, so we were assured that our pet would be just fine out there.

The next day, Angela and I arose and rushed out to play with the turtle. He was doing just fine, but didn't look to excited to see us. We weren't too worried about it. Michelangelo accompanied us on our adventures that summer morning. Angela carried him around, as I concocted some story about me being some kind of explorer. Or a ninja. Or a ninja that explored things. But as the morning turned to afternoon, our tummies began to growl. The kiddie pool was still out in the yard, so I put about an inch of water in it so that Michelangelo would be able to swim around if he wanted to while we went inside for our turkey sandwiches and Cheetos. I set him in the water, and he immediately came out of his shell and kick happily through the water.

Lunch was good. We listened to Grandma and Granddaddy talking about people they had seen that day, and all the news about them and their families from the last year or to. It seemed like someone had always died recently. No one I knew, but I paid attention respectfully. After lunch, I decided to take my BB-gun out and shoot the Sun-Drop can I had emptied during lunch. At seven years old, I shot that gun so much and so often, that I rarely missed my target even from 35-50 ft away. Angela played inside, as I spent the afternoon walking with my gun down to the pond on the property. I took out a dozen or so dragonflies, pretending that they were enemy soldiers (just really far away). After saving our farm from the bad-guys, I decided to go in. I was drenched in sweat and the air was so thick, I had to chew it before inhaling. It was probably 4pm or so, and about 88 degrees outside, and humid. The trek back to the house took about 15 minutes or so, and I managed to shoot holes in 3 or 4 more anthills before I reached the yard. I could see the little yellow pool in the back yard from the cow pasture. I wondered how Michelangelo's afternoon had been. I approached the pool excited to at the chance to play with the little guy without my sister wanting a chance to hold him. I looked in the pool, and realized that there was no water in it. The scorching summer heat had evaporated the inch of water I had left in there only 3 hours before. And there in the middle was Michelangelo, limp and unresponsive.

Michelangelo was dead; completely dehydrated and burnt crispy. I turned my turtle into a banana chip. I screamed as I ran into the house calling for my Mom and Grandparents. I cried as I explained to them what had happened. Granddaddy tried not to laugh as he listened to my tale. Mom had the idea for us to give Michelangelo a proper funeral. Granddaddy got out his post hole digger, and took us out to the corner of the yard. I was the pallbearer, carrying the dearly departed to his final resting place. Granddaddy sang "Amazing Grace" as he plunged the post diggers into the ground. I placed my desiccated friend into the ground and we covered him up. I asked Granddaddy to say a few words (since he had known him the longest). I love that Granddaddy was able to somehow be the support I needed him to be, while simultaneously finding this whole situation hilarious. I look back on this experience and laugh now too.

I'm just glad that Angela and I got a whole day to spend with Michelangelo. The time we had was special, and made a lasting impression, I think, on both of us. We are all better for having known Michelangelo, even though his blood is, technically, on my hands. And that's how I learned how to make Turtle Jerky.

I probably should have put more thought into this

After eight years of living in hot, muggy, South Florida, I had grown tired of having my hair "buzzed off" every three weeks. I was an awkward, gawky teenager, and my long, skinny neck was even more pronounced by the lack of hair on my head. It was like a golf ball on a tee sticking out of my shoulders. When Dad retired from the Coast Guard, he went on a search for a civilian job. This search landed us in Charlotte, North Carolina, where, they actually have 4 seasons every year. I decided that it was time for a change. I told my friends in Florida that I was going to do it all differently in my new neighborhood. First, I would begin growing my hair out. I wanted to look like those rockers I so admired. To continue developing my new "rocker" image, I boasted that I was going to beat the crap out of the first guy to mess with me. I wanted to be a tough-guy that everyone respected. The final stage of my plan was to ask out the prettiest girl in school whether she had a boyfriend or not. The new, bold, rugged Mike Vaughan was going to be a ladies man as well as a "Cowboy from Hell."

Well, long story short, I managed to start growing out my hair, and that was about it. No fights until a year or so later (maybe another blog-worthy story), and I had this "jello-knee syndrome" which prevented me from even having a normal conversation with the girls I liked. At least I stuck with the new hair plan. One out of three isn't too bad, right? The thing is, after shaving my head for 8 years, I didn't have much of a part, and I found that, as my hair began to get a little length to it, that I have a mixture of wavy and curly hair, which doesn't translate into a very good look. The "Ricky Martin/duck-butt" hair-do was in at the time, and mine looked more like an afro and a mullet got together at a drunken party and had an illegitimate, red-headed stepchild.

But I had a plan. Oh, yes.

I couldn't put all of my hair back into a ponytail, but I could make a few mini-pigtails that, for some reason, I thought screamed, "I'm tough; I'm cool; I'm METAL!" In actuality, they screamed, "I'm an idiot; I'm an attention-whore; I'm going to be a virgin for a long, LONG time." Every morning on the school bus (because neither of my parents would have allowed me to go out like this) I took the rubber bands out of my back pack, bunched up as much hair as I could from the top-back of my head, and made a little samurai pigtail to show my coolness. Next, for the purpose of looking like a real metal-head (which I was), I put the hair that was in my face into two miniature pigtails that had kind of an "antennae" look to them. Yup, red hair, samurai knot, antennae. I looked like Pebbles Flintstone on acid.

For three months, I walked around school with kids pointing and giggling, and calling me "Haircutt" to my face. I think people talked to me mostly because they felt sorry for this clueless, wannabe-kid trying to make a statement.
"Oh, if only my friends in Florida could see me now."

Mr. Fix-it

When I was six, my Dad gave me my first pocket knife. It was stainless steel, with a hook to connect it to a key chain. It had a bottle opener, a file (which I have never quite understood), an icepick, and, of course, a large knife. It wasn't until I found this knife many years later that I understood why anyone would give a six-year-old a knife to play with. It had been dulled down to near butter-knife sharpness, the tip filed off and smoothed. It was so hard to open it, that my parents had probably figured I would loose interest after a while, and go back to playing with my "little boy" toys. They figured wrong. This determined little boy not only played with that thing, but it became the instrument with which I almost destroyed our home.

Dad was an electrician in the Coast Guard, which meant that not only was he a professional in high-tech helicopter radars and batteries, but he also regularly tended to the electrical work that was necessary in our house. I used to watched dad install ceiling fans, rewiring things, and working with his meter and other tools on a fairly regular basis. As I've written before, my father has always been my hero. I used to imitate him all the time. When he was studying for the tests that the Coast Guard gives in order to gain rank, I would quietly come into the kitchen, sit down next to him with his notebooks and highlighter, and open my big book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes and stare at the pages, concentrating as hard as he was. We sat there in silence for as long as 15 minutes with our foreheads resting on our open palms.
Another example of this that comes to mind is this: Dad was a smoker until I was about fifteen. When I would ride in the truck with him as a little kid, I always carried a cut-off, plastic straw in my pocket. When he would light up and roll down his window, I would reach down and take it our while rolling down my window too. We would go down the interstate, with our elbows hanging out the window taking occasional drags off of our cigs. I don't remember Dad making much eye contact with me when I did that. I think that seeing his eight year old kid pretending to smoke a neon green plastic straw to be like his daddy made him feel bad about smoking.
*Side note: Parents, your kids are watching. That whole "do as I say, not as I do" thing doesn't work. By 18, I had retired my straw and moved on to the real thing--a guilty pleasure I still struggle to control. (Though I don't think it's my parents fault I tried cigarettes, I think they had some influence.)

Anyhow, the instinct to "fix" things was bred into me by my dad. And one day, as my three-year-old sister played in my room with me, I took it upon myself to "fix" the light switch on my wall. I took out my stainless steel pocket-butter-knife, and slid the blade behind the fixture. It fit so perfectly, no resistance at all. I had pushed it about an inch deep, when I heard a loud POP, and about a dozen little sparks shot out from the wall and floated gently down to the carpet. I jumped back, somehow avoiding any painful electric shock. I knew I had done something real bad, especially when I saw Angela's eyes double in size. I reached up and grabbed the knife as it hung from the fixture. Again, how I didn't get electrocuted is beyond me, and probably one of those times when God goes out of his way to protect us from our own stupidity. Angela shot out of the room, down the stairs, and into the garage where Mom and Dad were talking. I followed, a little slower than she.

I remember thinking to myself, "Well, everything's fine. The sparks didn't catch anything on fire. I'm not dead. Do I really have to tell them that I had done something to create an indoor fireworks show?" Too late. Angela chimed in with her amazingly cute little speech impediment (it's a good thing she was cute, because I could have killed her), "Mommy, fy-yoo" (that's "fire," in English).
Needless to say, I didn't see my knife for years after that. I think I was 11 or 12 before I got another one, which, of course, I used to destroy or defame countless other things around the house: furniture, carpet, the wood on the porch, a tree or two. But no electrical equipment. My ambitions of becoming an electrician like Dad had been thoroughly quieted.

It was just a phase

When people ask me about my favorite band, I usually respond by telling them, "I have been listening to Metallica since I was a fetus." They laugh, and I tell them that I have been a metal-head my whole life. The truth is, while I did, in fact grow up listening to hard rock bands like AC/DC, Van Halen, Joe Satriani and, yes, Metallica, I had a few "favorite bands" before Metallica, which I rarely admit to.

I got my first CD player when I was in 4th grade. Growing up in South Florida, I didn't find a lot of friends who enjoyed the head-banging, finger-tapping, heavily distorted thrash masterpieces. I hung out with mostly fans of hip-hop and R&B. In order to connect with my poor, uncultured friends, I forced myself to like their music. What I am about to confess shames me even now, a decade and a half after the fact. My first 3 CDs were (in this order): All-4-One (Self-Titled); Boyz-II Men, II; and the Space Jam Soundtrack. I knew every song on all three of these albums by heart. I sang them in the mirror as I brushed my teeth in the morning. I wrote the names of these bands on my notebooks at school. Because, back me up on this, chicks dig guys who have "Coolio rules" written in Sharpie along the top of his Trapper-Keeper.
At one point, in fifth grade, Stefan Lue, Robert Carbonell, Nick Martinez, and I decided to sing "On Bended Knee" at show-and-tell. I don't really remember how they did, but I'm fairly certain they looked better than my pudgy, pasty, freckled, red-headed self singing this soul-filled romance song. We were really hoping that would set us up for success in middle-school. It wasn't until I moved to North Carolina 4 years later that I finally got my first girlfriend. And I think I still had some "wuss residue" left over from then, because that only lasted a few weeks.
Anyways, I think it was the summer before 6th grade that I was going through some of my dad's CDs while he was on deployment and found Metallica's 1996 album, Load. I took it up to my room and put it into my RCA boom box and cranked it up. With every song, I forgot more and more about Boyz II Men. By the time "Outlaw Torn" was over, I knew that my dad would never see his CD again. And he hasn't. I began listening to a lot of his CDs in my room: Highway to Hell, Surfing with the Alien, 2112. I saved up my money, and before the end of the summer, I had bought myself "The Black Album." I never recovered. It took only a year or two to accumulate every single Metallica LP, either by gift or from saved allowances. I learned the whole history of the band. I mourned over the death of Cliff Burton (who had died when I was only two), and over the reality that I would never get to see him play. And then I began branching out. At first, thrash metal was the only music I would listen to: Megadeth, Slayer, Testament. And then I branched out to bands like Black Sabbath, Pantera, Down, Black Label Society, Corrosion of Conformity. And most recently, the "screamers" as I like to call them: Shadows Fall, In Flames, Children of Bodom.

Over the last few years, my musical tastes have expanded quite a bit (though I have thoroughly washed my hands of the R&B). As I write this, I have my Pandora account cued up to play songs from a mix of playlists including: Bob Dylan, Slayer, Gregorian Chants, Iron and Wine, Derek Webb, and Chris Thile (Holy Wars... The Punishment Due, by Megadeth is currently tearing a hole in my eardrum).
It's funny, a few years ago, I would never admitted to the "show-and-tell" incident above. Now, I wish I had more stories like that.
I'll try to think of some more...