(Some of these things I post on fb too, don't feel like you need to read stuff twice.)

Woke up last night at about 1:30 AM to noise in the back yard. I looked out the window and saw two flash lights coming from my garage, going toward the street. "Someone is stealing the kids' bikes from the garage," I thought. I yelled, "Hey" loud out the window hoping to freak them out. Still mostly asleep I ran down the stairs. It was still pitch black in the house and I slipped down the last few stairs landing on my back in the kitchen. I got up and scrambled to the back door, flinging it wide, and yelled again. All I could see was two flash lights. "Go back inside for bit," a man said. "Jeez!" said another. And only then did I realize these are policemen, as their canine came toward me on the back steps. And then understood the second policeman's reaction, "Jeez!" because I was standing there at the door in only my boxers - and yelling.

I closed the door and let them go back and search my back yard and garage. There were three or four police cars in the front and a chopper overhead. I found an online police scanner so I could listen to it, but everything is code, so it was hard to tell what they were doing. 

Tasha found out more today. Burnsville police were looking for a man and received assistance from local police here. Apparently they found him somewhere on my block and the dog got to him first, so he went to the jail via the hospital.

I am so glad I don't have a gun in the house. I would probably have been smoked last night if I had one. All I could see were flashlights, and at no point did they tell me they were the police.

At a young age my dad was made to stay in a little trailer in his parent's back yard. His father, Mack Henry McFarland, a tough oil field worker, told him it was because he "was too wild to be in the house." When my dad told me about it, he said it very matter of fact, as though he believed it was the right thing for them to do because of his nature. He deeply respected his father and would have believed it was the right decision.

He told me once that when he was seven he lost his virginity to an older girl from down the street who came over to his trailer and showed him "how everything works." Seven years old. He spent the rest of his life looking for validation from women.

The last few years I've been thinking about what it must have been like for him as a young boy to be set apart from his family and how painful that would be. It helps me understand why my father was so distant, why he drank so much, why he didn't seem to know that he could really succeed. Understanding helps me forgive him. They emasculated him. He didn't stop being wild, but I'm sure he never stopped thinking there was something wrong with himself.

Today I was on the road, delivering mattresses to stores and I was thinking about this. I was thinking about a seven year old boy sitting alone in a trailer. That, in itself, is painful enough to think about, but when I imagined the boy in the trailer, it was my son Sammy. Tears gripped me before I could even figure out why and I was surprised at my emotion. I think initially it was that seeing that boy as Sammy made it real. It wasn't just something in a story dad told me. It was a real boy ostracized from his real family - made to feel it was his fault.

"Oh Dad!!" I cried. "There was nothing wrong with you." 

But it seemed that this was only part of the revelation. Why, I thought, am I seeing Sammy in the trailer? It was not only so I could put a real face on it.

I need to support the wild man in Sammy. Last week I called him a little soldier. He lit up. He told me later that day, "I learned something today." 

"What's that Sammy?"

"That I'm a soldier."

He needs to hear this. He needs my approval when he gets the basketball through the hoop, when he learns a new kick, etc. And if I don't, if I don't back him in his wild nature but, as I do too often, chalk it all up to annoying behavior, then he is like my father in the trailer thinking something is wrong with himself.

I felt no shame in my education today. I was encouraged. I felt new love for my father. I felt new hope for raising a boy who will have proper confidence in himself as a man.

My favorite radio station, The Current (89.3), did a segment recently called Songs From Scratch The segment is all about song writing, and opening discussion about the song writing process. What they did is have local artist Adam Levy, from The Honey Dogs, write four lines (based on The Wizard of Oz this year) and local song writers could post their songs (click here) that they have written using Levy's lines.

I got mine in right at deadline, so went back and worked on it more after.

Not the best thing I've written, but here it is:

I'm playing rhythm, lead, singing (not well), hitting a cigar box for a beat, I even busted out the banjo!