Read Online Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott, Tim Brown - Free Book Online
Authors: Jim Abbott, Tim Brown
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younger sister, arrived. She was still in high school, attending St. Agnes, and so was in the neighborhood.
The marriage having been put off once because of my premature arrival, the wedding party spread across the St. Agnes campus in the hopes of finding someone in a stiff white collar to perform the ceremony. Since it was a Catholic school, the odds seemed good. Father Maurice Olk, a big man whom Mom adored for his warmth and spirit, was on the football field, pacing between the 20s, breviary in hand, waving his free arm, rehearsing the day’s services. He’d forgotten the ceremony. Flushed, he led Mom back to the chapel. Dad had a job to get to, Mom a baby to feed, Cheri an English class to get to, so they’d barely gotten everyone together when Father Maurice was introducing Mr. and Mrs. Michael Abbott. The walk from the chapel’s front steps to the parking lot wasn’t especially long or scenic or romantic, but it would have to pass for the honeymoon.
Dad had quit his job putting the roof on the GM plant. Actually,he’d been asked to leave and he’d surrendered. As was sometimes the case with Dad, it was complicated. While slopping around tar, he’d witnessed a coworker fall from the roof, then be taken away by ambulance. Dad kept reporting for work, but found it gradually more difficult to screw up the courage to get up on that roof and keep his legs under him. The job foreman grew weary of talking Dad up the ladder and suggested a new line of work. A couple weeks later, Dad was on the Chevy assembly line. He stood by as the engines crept past; if there was a yellow mark on an engine, he’d put a yellow part in it. That was the whole job. Later in life he would learn it was a crankshaft, but at the time he had no idea what the part was. If the part fit, great, he’d done his job. If not, he’d wait for the next engine to roll past and examine it for a yellow mark. The work was dirty; the shop smelled bad; he was dirty and smelled bad. He lasted thirty days before returning to a less hazardous position at GM.
On the day he was married and for that month, he worked the second shift on the assembly line, clocking in at two, clocking out at eleven, putting in his time. Sometime after Dad left for work, Mom would report with me to a second-floor bedroom of the big family house in downtown Flint, lock the heavy wooden door behind her, and wait for Dad to get home sometime before midnight. Up there, we were safe from the neighborhood, from what Flint was becoming, and from Mom’s imagination, which had been roused by Dad’s protective instincts. When the three of us had moved in, Dad had walked Mom through the house, pointing out the door that had been broken down during a burglary, then the door a stranger had burst through one night while the whole family was in the living room watching The Donna Reed Show , and the windows that faced the busy road where people and cars passed. “You’ve got to be careful,” he told her. “Lock all these doors and windows behind me.” Instead,she scooped me up, went to the bedroom, locked that door, and read me stories and sang me songs.
When Dad returned, the rest of the house was in play again. We went more than three months like that, killing hours in the Flint panic room. When Dad, as part of his National Guard commitment, reported to Fort Polk in Louisiana, Mom and I lived in her parents’ house. He was gone six months—the first two were infantry training, the second four medical training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They spoke often and Mom sent envelopes stuffed with photos, many of them of me staring blankly into the camera.
In the months that led to his time away and then while he was in the service, Dad yearned to be home. He hoped not to be called to Vietnam, but that wasn’t the reason for his petition to return to Flint before his required six months were over. From the afternoon in the maternity ward when he was sure he was being punished for
The marriage having been put off once because of my premature arrival, the wedding party spread across the St. Agnes campus in the hopes of finding someone in a stiff white collar to perform the ceremony. Since it was a Catholic school, the odds seemed good. Father Maurice Olk, a big man whom Mom adored for his warmth and spirit, was on the football field, pacing between the 20s, breviary in hand, waving his free arm, rehearsing the day’s services. He’d forgotten the ceremony. Flushed, he led Mom back to the chapel. Dad had a job to get to, Mom a baby to feed, Cheri an English class to get to, so they’d barely gotten everyone together when Father Maurice was introducing Mr. and Mrs. Michael Abbott. The walk from the chapel’s front steps to the parking lot wasn’t especially long or scenic or romantic, but it would have to pass for the honeymoon.
Dad had quit his job putting the roof on the GM plant. Actually,he’d been asked to leave and he’d surrendered. As was sometimes the case with Dad, it was complicated. While slopping around tar, he’d witnessed a coworker fall from the roof, then be taken away by ambulance. Dad kept reporting for work, but found it gradually more difficult to screw up the courage to get up on that roof and keep his legs under him. The job foreman grew weary of talking Dad up the ladder and suggested a new line of work. A couple weeks later, Dad was on the Chevy assembly line. He stood by as the engines crept past; if there was a yellow mark on an engine, he’d put a yellow part in it. That was the whole job. Later in life he would learn it was a crankshaft, but at the time he had no idea what the part was. If the part fit, great, he’d done his job. If not, he’d wait for the next engine to roll past and examine it for a yellow mark. The work was dirty; the shop smelled bad; he was dirty and smelled bad. He lasted thirty days before returning to a less hazardous position at GM.
On the day he was married and for that month, he worked the second shift on the assembly line, clocking in at two, clocking out at eleven, putting in his time. Sometime after Dad left for work, Mom would report with me to a second-floor bedroom of the big family house in downtown Flint, lock the heavy wooden door behind her, and wait for Dad to get home sometime before midnight. Up there, we were safe from the neighborhood, from what Flint was becoming, and from Mom’s imagination, which had been roused by Dad’s protective instincts. When the three of us had moved in, Dad had walked Mom through the house, pointing out the door that had been broken down during a burglary, then the door a stranger had burst through one night while the whole family was in the living room watching The Donna Reed Show , and the windows that faced the busy road where people and cars passed. “You’ve got to be careful,” he told her. “Lock all these doors and windows behind me.” Instead,she scooped me up, went to the bedroom, locked that door, and read me stories and sang me songs.
When Dad returned, the rest of the house was in play again. We went more than three months like that, killing hours in the Flint panic room. When Dad, as part of his National Guard commitment, reported to Fort Polk in Louisiana, Mom and I lived in her parents’ house. He was gone six months—the first two were infantry training, the second four medical training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. They spoke often and Mom sent envelopes stuffed with photos, many of them of me staring blankly into the camera.
In the months that led to his time away and then while he was in the service, Dad yearned to be home. He hoped not to be called to Vietnam, but that wasn’t the reason for his petition to return to Flint before his required six months were over. From the afternoon in the maternity ward when he was sure he was being punished for
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