“What do you want to be when you grow up?” asked his grandmother.

“I want to be a famous writer,” said the 8 year old.

“Oh, no, you don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?” he asked, puzzled.

“Because then they’ll call you crazy, and lock you up.”

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The Tiger Unveiled

As they sat down at the restaurant, what went through his mind was, “Oh, my God, this feels like an Intervention.” There were six of them, and one of him. They had gotten him out of bed that night - woke him up late - and said they wanted to buy him dinner. From the first his intuition was that something was wrong. The people who came to his back door didn’t fit together - some of them didn’t even like each other. And they wanted to buy him dinner? This late? But he had gone along with them - because he trusted them, gave power to their words - in a sense because they were family.

Why would I later say this experience was a huge blessing?

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We were beginning to explore our paths during the heyday of the Men’s Movement. My friend Pat brought me a magazine called the Utne Reader, which had an article about healing old wounds with your father. I still have that article. It stated that to heal the wounds, you should go heal the wounded father within yourself.

It made sense at the time, and led to me exploring the story I’d never followed before - what happened to my Dad when he disappeared for about a year after his drinking bottomed out? I began to explore the story, and after writing the first two chapters, I realized I had a powerful story - a story of hope. I was already seeing my Father in a different light.

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I had begun to write a story about the time when my Dad disappeared. He had lost his job, lost his family, lost everything; he had reportedly gone to work on the wheat harvest, which he had done in high school. He returned to Fort Worth, and after fumbling around for a while, sobered up in AA, and eventually got a job in his old industry, put the family back together, and had altogether a different experience than I would have expected when he disappeared.

The missing piece for me was that I had no idea what it would be like to be on the wheat harvest. I mentioned it to the guys at dinner one night that “someday, if I’m ever going to finish this book, I have to go work on the wheat harvest.”

My friend Pat said later that I had mentioned that three or four times before he said anything. In January of 1991, he quietly said to me one night, “Someday, if you ever want to go work on the wheat harvest to finish your book, I have relatives in Oklahoma who work the harvest every year. I could probably get you on with them.” I did a huge mental gulp at hearing that, and reacted like I usually do when I’m in shock, sat there with a stunned look on my face, saying nothing. I thought about that for a long time, because I felt like the spiritual ante had been greatly upped on this whole book project.

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Nothing Left to Lose