A Story About my Dad

I am often sad when I think of my Father: Benjamin Bishop Bryant, “Bish” to his friends. He left us early, seventy years ago, at age 53. A sudden heart attack took him a week after he’d passed a physical exam with a “clean bill of health”.

We didn’t really have much of a relationship. But when I consider where he came from, the circumstances of his youth and his martinet of a sire I now understand why. Yet this is little solace.

This photo with Bish, says a lot about “Dad Bryant” as he was known.

Three wives, seventeen children and a very large farm staffed entirely by his seventeen progeny who – except for the last three or four – were forced to leave school as soon as they were old enough to work in his South Carolina fields. Bish made it to the middle of eighth grade.

This was a tragedy because my Dad had one of the most agile minds of anyone I’ve ever known. For example: On our Saturday trips to the grocery as the cashier was close to totaling our purchases, Dad would say a number and he was never wrong, including the sales tax. He would have studied electrical engineering had he been allowed to complete his schooling.

As soon as possible he escaped his home and moved to Bristol Virginia/Tennessee, the town of my birth and took the employment avenue available to him. He became a power lineman. Known in the trade as a “hot wire lineman” he handled live lines carrying upwards of 12,000 volts.

Here’s a brief excerpt from my first book, Three Stages:
There’s an expression about my Dad’s profession. There’s two kinds of hot-wire linemen: good ones and dead ones. Bish was a good one.

In 1946, shortly after World War II was over, Bish flew to California. His sisters, May and Lil had lived in LA for several years and he wanted to check it out. Lil’s husband, Uncle Joe, owned a neon sign business and he offered Bish a job, maybe a partnership, I’m not certain. Anyhow, Dad came back to Bristol severely bitten by the California bug.

Among several of his reasons was the weather. Not that he didn’t enjoy the four annual changes so profoundly noticeable at our latitude but he didn’t enjoy the stress that placed on linemen. In our Tennessee winters it was common for snow and ice to break the overhead electrical lines. Many times he and his cohorts would spend long frigid days and nights repairing the winter damage, hanging on poles doing very hard and dangerous work in subfreezing temperatures. No fun at all.

One of my favorite stories about my dad is related to this harsh weather. Bish was a good sleeper. I have often said that if sleeping was an Olympic event he could have been the coach. So one winter he had been working for thirty-six or forty consecutive hours out in the country when a part had to be gotten from town. It was going to be nearly an hour before it arrived on the scene. His partner climbed down from the fifty foot pole to take a nap. Bish asked for a blanket to be sent up, snugged his safety belt around the pole and napped on the double cross arm. He said he saw no reason to waste energy climbing down then back up the pole.

(By the way, that’s one characteristic I inherited. I can fall asleep damn near anywhere.)

So in the fall of 1948 – in spite of tearful protests from my Mom, Lucy – we packed up our Chevy, and drove to Los Angeles. Before then the furthest I’d been from home was 336 miles to Birmingham so this was an exciting adventure for thirteen year old Benny.

Living with Lil and Joe didn’t work out well so we found a house and Dad was hired by the LA Department of Water and Power as a Journeyman Lineman. And at school I dropped my hated “ny” and became Ben.

As I slowly matured my relationship with Bish did not. It was never hostile, it was simply … bland. When I see a movie wherein a Dad is teaching his son life lessons or just taking him fishing, a lump grows in my throat. The only memory I have of fishing with my Dad was the time I tried a cast and he spent the next hour angrily un-fouling the line I had tangled.

When I became a professional singer Lucy would tell me of times when he bragged about me to his friends but he never gave me a compliment on my work. I don’t think I ever consciously resented it but it sure would have been nice to get the occasional “attaboy”.

And I console myself with the realization that in spite of this lack Bish came a long, long way from the dour Dad Bryant. He did the best he could. He was very affectionate with his adult friends, hugging them and telling them that he loved them. Just not me.

In talking with a therapist once he said that, between my cold father and overly protective mother, it was a miracle that I was not queer.

I’m still not sure what to make of that comment. Happy Fathers’ Day.

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