He was not the best father, a father's lament

Dad, Jerry and I,  Manzano Mountains, 1950s

But he was the only one I had.
 Neither am I, but I have tried.

Terrence Miller Clark, 1914-1973.

I've written about him a lot, the talented artist with a wooden leg, coming up out of the dirt poor Oklahoma Depression and red clay town of Comanche, Oklahoma, the oldest of five boys, all of whom fled that town to become successes. 
He could draw before he could walk, I think, and I have so many questions I'd like answered. You never asked as a child, and if it weren't for stories from my now late Uncle Mike, I'd know a lot less.
I want to know more about hopping the freight train that cost him his leg in Tucumcari in 1933. I want to know more about his playing football. I want to know more about his art. I want to study art with him. I want to know what his favorite drink was. I want stories of his teen years and 20s. Alas.
He was incredibly talented as an artist, but he had many flaws...an awful temper, an overbearing selfishness, a wandering eye...and more.

Easter Sunday, Albuquerque

I spent a good portion of my life trying not to follow in those steps, but I too have many flaws and failures, but I've really tried to be a good father, providing for my children, being respectable, being loving. I think he had more excuses, or reasons, for his shortcomings than I do mine, but as I get older the genes and art have kicked in and I know I treasure his influence, his life. He had hard-won guts, even speaking out loudly in church in one Sunday sermon, telling a preacher, "You're wrong."
I see so many posts this weekend from wonderful people saluting their fathers, as the best fathers ever. I am touched, and envious, and guilty, I guess. 
Keep posting those photos, keep mentioning those memories. Keep telling your fathers how great they are, regardless of flaws. You are so fortunate. My wife, with parents in their '80's, says it's hard to believe my parents have been so long gone.
I am not the best father...but I am so thankful my children and grandchildren still love me. All these years later, I'm in his debt, even with his many flaws.
My brother Jerry has commented that I should attempt a family history. That stumps me in many ways, but as I looked back at the previous posts on our father on this blog, maybe I've started.
Consider these articles:

My dad had a wooden leg 
Fathers' Day in black and white 
Fathers' day musings 
Pages from beyond death 
Pages from the past 
Ghosts from the past 
A spooky view of the past 
When iris bloom 
Forbidden art from long ago 
Of time and mortality 
Sitting still, portraits in time 
100 years ago and more 

Stumpy's Spur--'A Crutch to the Crotch'

Chapter Two

Stumpy had tried to jump a freight train in Tucumcari when he was 18, slipped and fell under the big steel wheels of a boxcar. He’d pushed himself away and that had cost him his little finger too.

“Came home to die—couldn’t rodeo anymore, play football, nothing,” he said when Greg Caldwell asked about the leg. “But my coach told me to quit feeling sorry for myself. He bought me a crutch and took up a collection for my wooden leg.”

“Worst part is when my big toe itches. I can feel it, but it ain’t there.”

Newcomers to town would be shocked when they’d see Stumpy without his wooden leg on the rare times his stump got irritated. He’d hobble down the sidewalk with a pant leg penned up, hopping along on crutches with a peculiar clop-plop sound, alternating with the one cowboy boot.

But if he was crippled, he wasn’t handicapped. Caldwell had heard his father Don, owner of the Panhandle Index, tell one story over and over.

Several years ago,  a drunk cowboy had been thrown out of a downtown bar and landed at Stumpy’s foot as he hobbled along.

The cowboy stood up, cussing loudly as a crowd gathered at the door of the bar. People from the adjacent Phillips department store watched from the window and he started threatening them.

Stumpy told the drunk to shut up and leave, that he ought to be ashamed.

The cowboy turned on Stumpy and pulled a knife.

What happened next happened so fast people weren’t sure it did, and the legend grew. Greg’s dad had been in the department store and saw it all.

Balancing on his one leg, Stumpy swung one crutch and quickly caught the cowboy in the groin. As the drunk bent over in pain, Stumpy brought the crutch around and slapped him on the side of the head with a loud pop, knocking off his dirty Stetson.

The cowboy slumped to the pavement, out cold. Stumpy hobbled over to his rusty pickup and drove off, while the bar owner called the police.

The next day the Index carried the story, with the headline: "A Crutch to the Crotch." The first two sentences still made Greg smile: “Stumpy stomped a drunk, leaving him out cold. He may be handicapped, but he’s not foot-capped.”

Stumpy was so proud of the article he had it laminated and tacked to the wall behind his cash register.

“That’s when we became friends,” Greg’s dad told him. “Only time he got his name in the paper. 'Course it embarrassed your mom to use such language in the paper, and the ministerial alliance thought I was giving him free advertising.

“They’re all for the First Amendment when they agree with it,” Greg said.

“Yeah, remember to put out the paper for the little people—the Stumpys,” his dad had said.

Stumpy's Spur--a story

Chapter One

Stumpy Clark wore wide-striped suspenders,  had a wooden leg and walked with a limp. But he was the fanciest  two-stepper in the Panhandle. His dance hall at the north edge of town, Stumpy’s Spur, reeked of beer, cigarette smoke and urine. Attracting country and western bands and dancers from all over West Texas,  the Spur was Darling’s biggest attraction, although the  chamber of commerce wasn’t too proud of it. The gravel parking lot covered two acres, and would be packed with pickups and cars every weekend.

Stumpy always drank Long Island teas, mingled with the crowd, picked the prettiest bosomy blondes  to dance with. His favorite songs were “Great Balls of Fire”  and "Red River Valley." When they were played at least twice a night, Stumpy would be at the center of the wooden dance floor, two-stepping to the wild music with some big-haired, boot-wearing girl in tight jeans. There was plenty of talk about how many sweet young things he’d taken upstairs in the office behind the DJ’s booth afterward for encores.

Somebody would yell across the room at him, after the dance, “Hey Stump, how ‘bout an encore?” He’d turn, tip the edge of his worn straw cowboy hat, wink, and lead his partner off the dance floor.

Old photos, cabins, art and genes

The table, with a "stump sock" just above my recent painting.

My brother Jerry and his wife Cathrina coming to town yesterday for a concert was a rare and welcome gathering for the two of us. They live in Lubbock and we're lucky to see each other once a year these days.
He reminded me that I need to send him some scanned photos of the cabin our folks owned in the 1950s in the Manzano mountains southeast of Albuquerque. So today I went through the old family album, digging out old black and white photos, and sending them to him. It reminded me why I have this attraction to cabins, to painting them and dreaming about them. But that's another post.

Jerry and I and the table, 1953

While doing it, I came across a lot of photos of he and I in those same years, which I also sent to him. But one really stood out to me. We were gathered at our dad's old oak art table.
That's where I paint today, 61 years later. So here is a photo of it today, including the last remnant I have of one of Dad's "stump socks" as a rag. Dad, as I've told you, had a wooden leg--his right leg a stump at mid calf--and he bought stump socks to make the leg comfortable. I use the rag as a sort of sponge for my painting, and I think Dad, the real artist, would approve, especially since he must have cut it up for that use years ago.

61 years later, last night, me, Susan, Cathrina and Jerry, OKC

On a wing and a prayer

Six months before D-Day, this 9" by 12" birth announcement was sent out by my parents. My dad, a technical illustrator at Consolidated Aircraft between Dallas and Fort Worth where the B-24 Liberator bomber was built, drew this stork flying in, with a B-24  radial engine. 
"Coming in on a wing and prayer," was the war-time phrase of many bomber crews flying home with planes shot up in combat and perhaps with wounded on board. So here it is, glued to a  brittle and yellowing page out of a family album.
Dad drew the announcement, had some printed off, and then did the color paints individually. He didn't go to the war, like three of his four brothers, because he had a wooden leg, having lost it under a freight train in Tucumcari 11 years before. That's probably why I'm here at all. If he hadn't lost his leg, he'd never have met my mom. His example led me to do individual birth announcements for each of my children, but they were never works of art.
Seventy years later, I'm still trying to wing it, and praying.

Ghosts, new stories, email and the CCC

Dad--"without work and without any resources
to which rely on for a living."

      The email address and subject line grabbed my attention as I scanned the usual barrage of soon-to-be-deleted daily stuff.
"Researching 1930s artists," and "cccstories@gmail.com."
The message from "out of the blue" brought back ghosts, and new information about my Dad, and his brother Louis from those hard times of the Depression in Oklahoma and Texas.
The sender, Kathleen Duxbury, explained she was doing research in the National Archives on a special group of artists assigned to the Civilian Conservation Corps to make a pictorial record of the work.
"I have come across information etc. regarding a young artist by the name of Terrence M. Clark who was age 22 and in his third year of college (art) in April 1936." she wrote.
"It seems a Terrence M. Clark of Lufkin, Texas was once approved (October 11, 1935) for a CCC artist position but declined because he was attending school. In 1936 he was in Norman Oklahoma and made a second application but was declined, by the Army, because he had an amputated right foot." 
Somehow she'd come across my blog about Dad having a wooden leg, and wondered if this was my father. http://clarkcoffee.blogspot.com/2011/06/normal-o-microsoftinternetexplorer4.html

Because of a notebook full of my Dad's old drawings, I knew he had been in both art school at OU, he never finished, and in Lufkin. His drawings usually mentioned dates and locations as he traveled around the country, his wooden leg not slowing his peripatetic life style. But I never knew he'd applied for the CCC. It's too bad he didn't get the job, because he could draw the human form  and portraits quickly and accurately, as you can see.
I also knew that his younger brother Louis worked in the CCC helping build that old highway over the Arbuckles in southern Oklahoma, (I've seen an old group photo) but didn't know he'd gone to Lufkin too. I contacted Louis' first wife Lily on facebook, and today she wrote back that she had a letter Louis had written to his mother with return address "Texas District CCC, Lufkin, dated 9 December 1934." Ah, stories not known and questions not answered.
I wrote Ms. Duxbury asking for information on sending me those documents, and she obliged--four letters from 1935 and 1935 that fill in a few pages of my Dad's life.
Ms. Duxbury's father worked for the CCC and going through his papers incited her interest into what must be a lifelong work now, recording the impact of the CCC on millions of lives in 48 states, then and now. She says she just has to find the "who, what,when and where" of those stories. Talk about a natural link with this old journalist/blogger.
Her sophisticated website just overflows with stories and information. Be sure and click on it and read away... you'll also find ghosts and stories. www.newdealstories.com 
What's remarkable to me is that she does this with her own funds, and asks for donations for the material she gathers. She didn't ask me, but I'll certainly send a check.
She mentions  that her research leads off on tangents. I'm glad she took the tangent on the artists. 

Letter from Ms. Roxbury's files with my uncle Louis' name on it.

Letter of rejection because of his amputated foot
(There was no Americans with Disabilities Act then).

My dad had a wooden leg

Dad, at right, with wooden leg. Mom in center, between Jerry and I. Grandmother and husband Worden.Uncle Rex and Edna. Oklahoma summer in the 50s at Thackerville

My dad had a wooden leg.

The Oklahoma teenager was trying to jump a freight train in Tucumcari, New Mexico in the Depression when he slipped or missed the handhold on the boxcar's open door.

The big steel wheels sliced off his right leg between the ankle and the knee and his little finger on the right hand. Somehow he lived, not bleeding to death, not dying from the pain.  I guess you could say he suffered the rest of his life for that moment, though he didn't talk about it much . . . I never asked him.

I remember him talking about coming home  "to die" and about "feeling sorry for himself," until someone chewed him out and got him "back on his feet again."  He hobbled on crutches for awhile and then eventually got a wooden leg.

It must have been quite a shock emotionally, because a few months earlier, he had been "Iron Man Clark" on the Comanche Indian football team.  Short at five foot nine, he was husky, thick-chested.  He played tackle. You didn't get by him on that scrimmage line. He and a friend went to Juarez to celebrate graduation.

And now, well now he was a "cripple."

My uncle Mike, who has two degrees, said he was inspired by Dad to go to college. Mike came up to visit Dad at OU, and there he was, on crutches, pants leg pinned up, washing dishes to pay room and board and tuition.

Later he'd joke that the graduation trip to Juarez was worth it.

But once he learned to walk again, the wooden leg didn't slow him down.

The family was poor, as were most in Oklahoma those days, but despite the leg, he went to college to study his first love . . . art. They said he learned to draw before he learned to walk.  If you see his early work and sketches from art school, you'd believe it.

     Dad specialized in portraits, later at landscapes.  He never completed a degree--probably running out of money, or perhaps just being too interested in art to finish the other requirements.

     He headed west again and earned a bachelor's living in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Taos, Carlsbad, in bars, hotel lobbies and nightclubs across the state. There he'd do "quick sketches" of whoever would pay, and some who wouldn't.  But 50 cents for a sketch would buy beans and gravy and more in those years and Dad was doing what he liked . . . drawing and traveling and meeting people and talking and living free in "God's Country."

When the War started, instead of going off to fight the enemy like his brothers did in the Pacific, he stayed at home . . . although he tried to enlist.  The Army didn't want a "cripple."  Perhaps the wooden leg saved his life, and is responsible for my brother and I being here. But he did his part, getting a job with Consolidated and North American Aircraft in Fort Worth, doing some of the drafting on the big B-24 Liberator bombers and the sleek P-51 Mustang fighters, aircraft that helped win the war.

And the cripple also drew a portrait of famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle with a background war scene.  That portrait sold a million dollars of War Bonds in Dallas in 1944, and Ernie Pyle autographed the portrait for the "crippled" artist.  The portrait was given to Pyle and ended up in the correspondent's Albuquerque home, where his wife eventually burned it.

Years later, Clark and his family moved back to New Mexico where he could draw and paint landscapes in his leisure time.

His wooden leg became the brunt of jokes, which he enjoyed.  Even though he was a cripple, he went deer hunting in the New Mexico mountains with some archer friends one year. Someone wrote a humorous poem that if Clark didn't kill the deer with his arrows, he could beat it to death with his wooden leg.  He laughed.  We all did.

And the joke was on the others too.  Like the big dog that tried to bite his leg one day when he was riding to work on his motorbike. "You should have seen his expression," Dad laughed.

     Most people didn't know about his leg. But every once in awhile when the wooden leg started acting up or a blister on the stump would form because of a slipped stump sock, he'd have to go to work or to church on crutches, his right trouser leg pinned up. People would stare in horror, thinking that something horrible had happened.

It had, a long time ago, but Dad had learned to live with it and if he was a cripple, it didn't affect the way he lived much.

He was a talented landscape and portrait artist with a keen eye for details, color and realism . . . that was his love, that and the big blue skies and rolling vistas and rugged mesas and mountains of New Mexico.  Everywhere he went there was beauty to be captured by his paints, his pencils.

That was before they had invented the use of the words "handicapped"  or “disabled.” Dad was neither handicapped nor disabled.  He was so nervous that he had to hold his hand still as he painted, but he was not handicapped. Certainly not disabled. He was a cripple, physically, but he worked around it and most people never knew.
With only a small portion of the talent Dad had, and the more I try and study, I'm more and more amazed at what he could do.

There's no disgrace in being a "cripple" or in the word itself.  I look at Dad's paintings and art work every day in my home and my office and see no disgrace, and rarely think of the wooden leg.  "Cripple" may not be a pleasant word--it is jarring, perhaps painfully accurate--but it describes nothing disgraceful.

You see, Dad had a wooden leg.  He was a "cripple."   So what?
Terrence Miller Clark is buried in Fairlawn cemetery at on the north edge of Comanche, just a mile or so from where he was born. On his gravestone: "His spirit lives in his paintings."
Yes, it does.