Disaster Area

Top 10 Musical Influences #2 – Jars of Clay

I first stumbled across Jars of Clay about the time their second album, Much Afraid, came out, i.e. around 1997. As I was only paying sporadic attention to the Christian music scene and never listened to radio, I really didn't have much of a clue who they were. However, there must have been some buzz about them because I did actually buy that second album.

For whatever reason, though, I didn't listen to it much and never really paid much attention. It wasn't until about 2000 that I picked up on them again when a friend played a song from their third album, If I Left the Zoo, released at the and of 1999. That song, Grace, really captivated me, and it made me search around for more of their material. I remembered that I had that other CD so I tracked it down. And how amazing it was. How did I not pick up on this the first time around?

Book Of Myself: If I Had Any Trouble With Dad...

...Growing Up, It Was In This Area:

Hmm, not much to report here. As my dad was away a lot it was great to see him, and he was always pleased to see us. The only real problem I can see looking back (and it still is to a degree, even at age 77) is his obsession with coal. He spent his entire career working open cast coal mines (that's strip mines for the Yanks). In England, open cast mining is actually a pretty good deal, because typically, the land that's mined is derelict farmland, and the laws of the land require extensive restoration, so farmers can actually benefit quite well, even though they lose the use of their land for a few years (making money off the coal, though, and hey, it's still better than being paid by the government to grow nothing.)

Early in his career my dad worked for big companies, but by the time he was about 50, he started to branch out, trying to put projects together with local investors. This is where things started to go wrong. These guys were always out for a quick buck, whereas my dad plans meticulously.

It's these plans that are at the heart of the problem. If we even dared to mention coal in the house, the briefcase would come out and all of a sudden my brothers and I were looking at the wrong end of a two hour dissertation on coal seams - how thick they were, where they were, how much earth would have to be moved to get at them, how many bulldozers, draglines and Drotts and trucks would be needed (open cast coal mining is a veritable Thunderbirds playground of big toys).

The funniest incident was probably the first time I brought Sue home to meet the family. We were all sitting in the living room, and the topic turned to coal. Sue asked what she thought was an innocent question, but we boys knew what was coming. One by one we made an excuse and left, leaving Sue listening to the extended dance remix of opencast coal mining 101. We even got to peek in through the living room door and smirk at her, as my dad was sitting in the chair behind it and couldn't see us.

Ah, good times, good times.

And Dad, you know we love you :)

Book of Myself: One of Dad's Traits I Admired...

... was his ability to make anything fun. For instance, at Christmas he would hide presents in special places and make a game out of finding them. My most vivid early memory was Christmas when I was eight. My youngest brother had just been born and the family had moved to Scotland. Being the oldest, I was on the verge of not believing in Santa any more, but the consequences of admitting to it were just too dire to imagine, so I kept on "believing" for a while, just for the presents.

The house in Scotland was huge and had two reception rooms and a big dining room. The older three of us (8, 7 and 4 years old) crept downstairs at some ungodly hour and split up to see what was there. Our presents were each in a different room. As we figured out whose was whose, I started unwrapping. Shirt. Socks. School satchel. What the heck was this? Where was the cool stuff? Well, I must have been less smart then than I am now, because it was hidden all around the room, but I think I was too upset to look for it right away. Eventually I found it all, of course, and all was right with the world. I got a cool rocket launching set that I immediately tried out, only to put a nice dent in the dining room ceiling. Oops.

But there was a lot more to it than that. We used to go on vacation every summer to Butlins, a British holiday camp chain. Sort of a cross between Club Med and German WW2 prisoner of war camp. It promoted itself more as the former, but the reality was more like the latter. The great attraction for parents was that the places were set up for mass babysitting - nearly every activity had some supervised activities for kids so parents could frolic with a clear conscience. And at night they had "chalet patrols" that walked around the sleeping quarters (chalets) listening for crying babies. The location of any that were detected were relayed via Tannoy systems to all the parents boozing it up in the various pubs and clubs around the campus.

Anyway, my point, and I know I had one when I started, if only I could find it, is that my dad would come back from a night out (he wasn't a big drinker) with a box of sweets (candy) for each of us kids and slip them under our pillows. These were gifts from a certain "Mr. Fox", who was a character much like the tooth fairy, except no dental work was required to get this particular gift (and a good job too, what with the state of British dentistry...)

Just a couple of glimpses of a great dad.

Book Of Myself: If I Had Any Trouble With Mom...

...Growing Up, It Was In This Area:

Not too difficult to answer. With mom being home alone a lot with four kids, and me being the oldest, my mid-late teens were a learning experience for us all. We were a comfortably off middle class family, but as I hit my late teens, my dad branched out more into being self-employed, which left us a little more financially precarious than we were accustomed to. Not that I knew it, of course, but my mom certainly did.

So when I hit age 16 or so, where in England one can legally walk away from school and get a job (albeit not usually a great one), I get the impression looking back that my mother would have liked me to do that just to retain a bit more financial stability in the household. Being one of the brightest kids in school, though, I had no intention of doing so, nor did I even have a clue such thoughts might be buzzing in my mother's head. So that last couple of years of high school were fraught with lots of high decibel screaming brought on by unarticulated anxiety.

Towards the end, though, I think we both calmed down and it was finally over. Four years later when I graduated top of my class in Aeronautical Engineering at Manchester there was nobody prouder than my mother. She even got the local paper to run a little story. Strangely enough the guy who wrote it invented a sub-story about me moving to Canada, something that actually happened four years later.

Tack on another seven years for my Ph.D. graduation and it almost took guy ropes to keep my mom anchored to the ground.

So the moral of the story is - kids rarely realize the fear and uncertainty that swirls around their parents' lives until it's too late to do anything constructive about it.