...now Get Back In There

While the page loads on my blog continue to pile up I still really have no idea who is following along with my jabbering. I receive very few comments from the readers of my rants. My mom has left several comments throughout my postings, correcting, reminding me or telling the rest of some story I was trying to relay to you Ka’mya. My family is quite odd in some ways, for example. I have had more correspondence with my own mother since I started this blogging adventure this past May then say, in our whole life together. The next story that I am going to dive into has some potential to upset your Great Grandma Charlie, again, but I hope she has the ability to read the whole story before making any judgments. Of course this chronicle is going to be about when I went and hunted down my biological father Bernard Van Wormer. I will have to tell the tale in at least a couple installments due to its complexity and length…


… I never knew that I didn’t have a real dad when I was younger growing up because my Grandpa Buster played the role so well I never was looking for one. My mom remarried when I was about 5ish to Myrl Hickerson. He seamlessly took over the parenting duties really till I graduated from high school. It wasn’t till I was actually attending high school before I started wondering about my real father. Where did he live? What did he do? Did he think about me? I do recall what brought this new curiosity on though. When I played football, after one of my teammates had punched the pigs skin over our goal line for a touchdown there would be a brief moment when I would stand on the field of play and watch as his parents would jump up and down in the grandstands and celebrate with their son. My mom and dad always had jobs that allowed them to attend very few of my sporting events. I don’t recall a single time that my step dad (Myrl) was even at a football game of mine, though I know he must have been there because the ambulance he helped operate was most often stationed on the sidelines. I only remember one time in which my mom was at one of my games because she was yelling at me, not for me.

The high school I attended was quite small. It was hard for us to even acquire enough players to make up an offensive and defensive team so we could run our plays during practice. I was not a star player by any means but was able to hold my own because I had grit. I played middle line backer on defense and center on offense. My job was to stop whatever was trying to come through the line in front of me and to get the other team’s star player thrown out of the game as soon as possible.  I would taunt, degrade, and talk about his younger sister till he would finally break. On one such occasion, the other team’s star player had me on my back while he sat on my chest with my arms trapped under his legs. Because of all the thick pads we wore, to make us look bigger then we really were, he wasn’t able to subject me to enough pain, so he began pounding my helmeted head on the ground right under my own teams bench. I basically am getting the crap beat out of me. I can remember lying on my back looking up from the ground and seeing my mom standing over both of us. She is adamantly yelling at me to, God damn-it STOP FIGHTING Billy. In between the times the other player was slamming the back of my head against the ground I was trying to get out, JUST… GET… HIMMM… OFF…ME… MOM. The ref finally got over there to save me, the other teams star player got thrown out of the game and we went on to lose the game anyway.

I.V. News Picture:

Yep that's me holding the flowers.  Homecoming Team Captain Bill before the Blaze, getting ready to plant a kiss on the prettiest cheerleader in the world during my senior year in high school.  Debbie

On a few occasions I too made some big plays. I can remember standing on the football field hearing other people yell atta-boys towards me but never did I see a dad in the stands hooting and hollering for me. I often wondered, if maybe my real dad was in the grandstands somewhere watching me play in the big game but not wanting to upset the balance of my young life. I can distinctly remember intercepting a pass one time during an important game. I had never scored a touchdown before but I was within striking distance this time. I took off running towards my goal line on a dead run. I wasn’t the fastest guy on my team but I was still twice as fast as I am today. I could almost reach out and touch the white chalked goal line with my foot when my vision turned red then went blurry.

Next thing I remember was someone shaking my shoulder pad while I lay face down in the grass along the far sideline, the someone was asking “young man, are you ok”? It was Ken Mann, our local hometown barber; he always ran the field chains on the sidelines during our home football games. Still reeling from the hard hit I had taken, he helps me to my feet, and tells me “young man that was a hell of a hit you just took, now get back in there” just before he pops me on my butt and shoves me stumbling back towards the huddle. That’s the closest dad thing I ever had offered to me when I played high school football…