“Has anyone ever told you the story of how Daddy got his nickname?”
She looked up at me, with a quizzical look on her face.
“Isn’t ‘Daddy’ uh nickname? His name is Lair-rie.” Being a seven-year-old only added to the beauty and thickness of her southern drawl.
I couldn’t help but to laugh at her simple logic. “Fair enough. But I’m talking about his other nickname: 'Bear’.”
“Oh.” She giggled and cast her eyes to the side. “I thought it was 'cause one of our cousins looked at him one day and thought he looked like a bear, because'a how big and hairy he is.” She said, emphasizing the imposing figure of our father by holding her arms out from her sides, imitating a body-builder’s stance.
“Well you see, that’s the story they’ll tell you,” I responded, with a dramatic strain in my voice, “but only because they don’t remember what really happened.”
With that I leaned back, rested against the porch swing, and began to rock us back and forth; relishing in the warm, humid, mid-evening atmosphere that permeates the Alabama countryside. To our front, the sun was setting, and the sky was alight with varying shades of pink and purple clashing against hues of orange caressed by blues that darkened as they receded to the eastern horizon behind us.
The crickets were just beginning their nocturne when she finally spoke up.
“Well then? Where did he get the nickname from?!” she asked, arms impatiently held out in front of her in that manner indicative of one who has clearly been waiting for some time for an answer.
“Oh! You don’t know?” I feigned surprise. “Well, you see it happened a long, long time ago. Daddy was still just fifteen in fact. Do you know how many years ago that would make it?”
“Weehhhllll……” she drew out the single syllable as she rolled her eyes up to the roof of the porch. “He’s fifty now… sooo… twenty-five? No! No, danggit! Thirty-five! Twenty-five would be forty. I got it confused for a minute,” she finished with a giggle and a smile.
I couldn’t help but to smile with her. “Precisely. Thirty-five years ago, so that means our story happened in 1979.”
At this point she interrupted, “And that was a looong time ago!”
As we shared a laugh, I continued, “Not all that long, but not quite short either. Now, the winter coming out of 1978 started particularly early and lasted longer than it should have going into 1979. And do you know what bears do in the winter?”
“Uh-huh! They hiber-date,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“Close.” I corrected. “They hiber-nate.”
Another giggle, “That’s what I meant. That’s where they eat up lots-an’-lots of food, and plug up their butts so that they can sleep all winter and still stay so fat!” she explained, with full dramatic expression through interpretive signage; read that: brandishing her arms as if she were guzzling down pounds of food and then mimicking the expansion of her stomach by spreading her hands away from her belly.
Throwing back my head in laughter, I couldn’t help but to cherish the wonderful, ever-so-classy child that I had come to call my sister as I continued.
“Yes, yes, that’s where they eat a lot and store up energy so that they can sleep through the winter. But you see, that was the problem. This winter had lasted too long! Much longer than most winters. It started at the end of October in '78, and was still going strong at the beginning of March in '79! By the time the spring equinox came around in March, many bears were still sleeping! Word got out that the bears hadn’t awoken and well Dad was rather concerned for their well-being. So, you know what he did?”
“What?” She asked, her voice and eyes filled with wonder.
“He went and woke 'em up.” I simply stated.
She laughed. “You’re silly, Cory. Daddy, didn’t go and wake up all the bears. There’s too many!”
“He did so!” I objected. “He started on the spring equinox! It was March 21st that year, and what’s more is: it took him an entire week to do it! He didn’t finish until March 28th, and then his work still wasn’t done! You see, Em; all of those bears had been asleep for so long that they went and forgot how to fish. So you know what Dad did then?”
Not waiting for a response, I continued as her jaw dropped slowly more and more, and her eyes ever-so-slightly began to widen.
“He spent the entire day teaching each and every one of those bears how to fish again. It took him all day and night to do it. I imagine it would take any lesser man longer than just one day, but not Daddy. He started early on the morning of the 28th and finished before supper. Not that he had any appetite to eat anything, mind you. He’d been throwing his head into a river and biting on salmon all day, only to spit 'em out and bite down on another. He still won’t eat salmon to this day. Says he can’t stand the taste of it, and that was thirty-five years ago.”
“But Cory, if Daddy really did all of that, people would have done something for him. They would have tried to say thank you or have at least told the story on the news,” she said, thinking she had outsmarted me.
“You know, you’d think they would have. And to be honest, I believe that some people were genuinely wanting to. But on that day, March 28th, 1979, there was a really dangerous thing that happened at a place called 'Three Mile Island’ in Pennsylvania. A nuclear reactor had a coolant leak and there was a partial meltdown; which is a way of saying a lot of people got really scared, really quick because there was a big risk that a bunch of people would get hurt. The story was so big, that it was all anyone could talk about, and everyone overlooked the fact that one man from Alabama single-handedly saved the entire bear population from extinction.”
She slowly turned her face toward the horizon; at this point, nothing more than a tiny spot of orange and light blue being encroached upon by the inky-blackness of night.
“What, you don’t believe me?” I asked.
“Well go ask him! See for yourself. Just ask him if he likes salmon, and see what he tells you.”
Without another word she rushed to the door and ran inside. I could just barely hear her through the open windows as she found him across the house in the kitchen and asked, “Papa Bear! Do you like salmon?”
“Hell no!” He responded in the playfully gruff voice he always uses when the kids refer to him as “Bear”.
“I ate too much of it once, when I was younger.”
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