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that really hurt my feelings or became a call to arms for my soul
Maybe aging is not like this for everyone, but for me, it is a strange mix of forgetting everything I want to remember and remembering everything I ought to forget. This may be an overstatement but not by much.
I have held onto certain comments like a bulldog clenching a bone. Long after whatever marrow might be sucked and gnawed from it, the faces, the voices, and the phrases remain. Past indignities, slights, or hard observations about me that woke me to what I might really be, at least in the eyes of another.
Sometimes, that has prompted change and growth; other times, it has been indignation.
A few of the words I remember
“Why, you’re not lazy at all.”
I was around 11 years old. A cold front was coming, swooping in from the north and set to lock Mineral Wells, Texas in a hard freeze. Dad had recently bought a fixer-upper on a couple of acres north of town. The house sat on pier and beam, with the plumbing in a space between the subflooring and the earth. They were exposed to the elements and likely to freeze and burst.
My grandfather, a pastor who often wore overalls and pitched in wherever needed, and I were dispatched to wrap the pipes.
William Austin Henager–Big Granddad, as we Strother kids called him–was a big man. The space under the house was much too narrow for him to navigate. He lay on his belly and shined a flashlight, directing me to the pipes to wrap. Under his instruction, I wrapped the pipes in insulation and duct tape. The wind howled. I was in a wind tunnel. My fingers, toes, ears, and nose stung but I soldiered on and finished the job to Big Granddad’s satisfaction.
After I finished the job, Big Granddad said to me, “Why, you’re not lazy at all.”
He sounded surprised at his confession.
Most 11-year-olds might have taken that as a compliment. What I heard in it were the conversations that must have taken place between my father and grandfather. I imagined Dad complained to him that I was lazy.
Mind you, I was made to enter the workforce at eleven years old. I was trained to rebuild the batteries that came in as exchange or that Dad bought from other vendors who had taken them in as exchange for new batteries. I was a daydreamer at eleven and none of my dreams included the acrid smell of hydrochloric acid or the welts it leaves when soaked into skin or the way it eats away at cotton clothing. Scrubbing greasy old batteries and cleaning their corroded posts before acidizing them and placing them on a long narrow table to connect them to a line charger was not the stuff of my boyhood aspirations.
The batteries that held a charge and could be resold, I spray painted black
So, my mind wandered, and my production sometimes suffered. Sue me. I was in the fifth grade!
I was eleven. But Big Granddad must have reported his findings back to Dad, right?
Not lazy at all. Maybe a little bit of a daydreamer.
“We’ll never speak again as friends.”
I was wrong. I failed and fell. My former pastor and mentor insisted I follow his prescribed path for restitution. He wanted me to quit and go home. But I was a brand-new pastor in a brand-new town in the San Joaquin Valley in north central California. I would not be quitting anything anytime soon. He took offense and then launched an offensive against me to force me into submission. I would not submit.
The last thing he said to me in 1985 was this: “We will never speak again as friends.”
So far, he is right. I was not yet 24 when he told me that. I am 63 now. Four decades have hurried, meandered, dragged, scurried, and limped by and we have not spoken to one another.
He was forced out of the ministry over something or other. What, I don’t really know or care. Money, I think. It is always money or sex. Always. Years ago, he went to selling funeral plans. He called on my best friend, who is a pastor in Fort Worth.
He said to my friend, “I guess Gene still hates me.”
No. I never did. I still love him. I am still grateful for the things I learned at his feet– the good, the bad, and the ugly.
But we will never speak again as friends.
“That man makes my skin crawl.”
That is a hard one to hear. I heard it second-hand. It was said by a woman in the foyer of the church where I was pastor. She was not a member of the church and seldom attended. Her old man was a member, and the brother-in-law of the former pastor. He thought he was a power broker the day he invited me to Kentucky Fried Chicken to tell me it was time for me to resign. He was not happy with the direction of things. I was not following the path his brother-in-law had set forth.
He was a deacon in the church and he was my landlord. That complicated things a little but it didn’t change my answer.
“I didn’t come here to quit,” I said. “I am not Mr. Jackson (his brother-in-law, and the former pastor). But I am where I belong and I’m not leaving.”
The old coot lost the ensuing church battle and before he left the building in defeat for the last time, his stupid daughter (a forgettable middle-aged woman whose face and name escapes me) said about me to a group of church folk, “That man makes my skin crawl.”
I know I have evoked many emotions from people through the years. We all do. But I have never before or since (to my knowledge) made anyone’s skin crawl. It is a sobering thought and a stark reminder that we do not always know how we are perceived, nor can we control it. Trying to control what others think of you is a waste of time and energy, and, worse, it makes a person manipulative and conniving.
I would rather make someone’s skin crawl as honestly as I know how.
“You ain’t no bidnessman.”
Some time after the fall, after I spent a few months driving a cab and delivering pizzas, I talked myself into a position as a regional salesman for the Larry Dennis Company. The man whose name was on the sign ran the place with a firm (and humorless) hand. Like all new jobs, my experience there got off to a wonderful and promising start. I dug in to learn as much as I could about auto upholstery, and upholstery materials in general. My territories included Dallas/Fort Worth and west Texas. It was a vast territory, which I broke into four segments. This meant I was able to visit each region once per month.
As a salesman, I rate myself fair-to-middling. I do not enjoy sales much, but when I am passionate about a thing, and when I know my subject better than most, I can sell it. I was not passionate about upholstery, and I knew less about it than anyone I was selling to, which mostly consisted of mom-and-pop shops run by the moms and the pops. I did possess a knowledge of people and an affinity for them. I was forming relationships, and the fabric and leathers were selling themselves.
The trouble with selling for Larry, himself an old salesman par excellence, was that he would not sell price. He was higher than most of his competitors on about everything and did not care. His point was that he had the most complete inventory in the industry, so when a customer needed an oddball fabric, he was likelier than most to have it in stock. Therefore, he wanted those customers’ loyalty in all other things. Buy from Larry because Larry has your back.
The trouble is, their pocketbooks demanded that they shop price and when they needed that rare thing, sure, they would call Larry. It was not an impossible sell. Larry had a splendid reputation and a robust business. However, getting shops that operate on razor-thin margins to pay top dollar or to stock up on fabrics they might not need for six months was a challenge.
I met that challenge at first, but as my customers’ stockpiles grew and the holidays neared, my sales faltered.
Larry wanted to talk to me. Maybe a pep talk, I thought. Maybe some insights on how to stimulate growth in my region.
That wasn’t it.
He told me, “You ain’t no bidnessman.”
Then he fired me.
It should not have come as a shock. I had seen every other territory turn over at least once in my year plus at the company. I came to understand the strategy behind constantly turning over sales staff. New blood, new enthusiasm, a few new sells, then onto the next.
Besides, none of the salespeople were ever as good as he was as a salesman. I don’t doubt that, either. He was passionate about that fabric, man.
Larry had a sales meeting every Monday or so.
I remember him repeatedly telling us, “You have to be pacific!”
Angry at being fired, I walked back into his office after storming out, and said, “Larry, I may not be a ‘bidnessman’, but I know you don’t want your salesmen to be ‘pacific.’”
That zinger made me feel better for the two minutes it took me to get to my car, unemployed, facing Thanksgiving and then Christmas once again down on my luck.
That was 1998.
This is 2025.
I am the president of a trade school, vice president of a thriving company, and some would argue, a leader and driving force in the industry.
I would like to visit Larry and give him my ‘bidness’ card.
But he died.
We all do, eventually.
Remember not to forget to get better
Yeah, I remember everything that ever hurt my feelings or made me face myself with the brutal reality of another’s perspective. I remember it but I won’t be paralyzed or embittered by it. I can do better. I can be better. I can prove them wrong.
I am not dead yet.
I REMEMBER EVERYTHING
I remember everything And just the way you said it Every fluctuation in your tone The inflection is what did it I remember everything And just the way you meant it You said it and moved on But I cannot forget it. I remember everything. Remember that, my friend And choose the words you want to stand Until the very end. I remember everything.
