His Bark

“His Bark”

“Okay, today Larry (and me two years later), you’re driving.” Within moments of my brother or me behind the wheel, the barrage began. It swiftly escalated to eardrum-damaging decibel levels.

“Give it some gas!” was always immediately followed by “Where’s the fire?!” and “Hope the bra-a-a-akes work!” Interspersed with colorful metaphors and personal insults, my dad gave gallant effort to convince us of our utter ineptitude. This driving instruction continued long after we were both licensed drivers, even into adulthood. I was thankful for the “sober chauffer” adventures when dad was drunk enough, he’d fall asleep in the backseat and mom and I could talk on the drive home.

It wasn’t just driving. My dad yelled. He was a harsh and critical man. Not all, but most of the memories Larry and I share about our father pertain to his fierce temper. As I now try to relate his story, it may seem at times like I hated my dad, or that I still harbor resentment toward him; but that’s not the case. I feared his wrath as a boy. I fervently opposed him on many issues as a teen and adult. His criticism and insults were hard to take, but the drive to attain his approval has made me quite skilled in some areas of my life- music for example.

We learn how to love, whether our spouses or our children, primarily from our parents, I believe. In some ways, we reflect the examples they gave us. Or, as in the case of my dad, I learned to be the opposite of him. Though inversely in many ways, who I am was largely influenced by who my father was.

Harold Victor Mattice was born February 5, 1922 in the general vicinity of Gilboa, New York. I say “general vicinity” because, in the same way my mom didn’t grow up in any town in West Virginia, my father was raised in the hills of western New York. In northeastern Ohio where I have always lived, the “Mattice” name is rare. In contrast, many of the small towns in that region of New York have pages of Mattice’s in their phone books. Allegedly, all Mattice’s are related. My family was apparently foundational in the settlement of that area. I never knew any of my grandparents.

My dad’s father, Goff Mattice, was legendary in the region as being “the meanest SOB around”. He was a bootlegger and farmer. When my dad was thirteen (and undoubtedly unruly), Goff chased him out of the house with an axe, apparently intending to use it if he caught dad, and well- let’s just say that I wouldn’t be writing this story.

Dad never finished school and worked on a dairy farm, self-supporting at age thirteen. Some of the events during the following years of his life are my estimations. Dad told stories and sometimes they weren’t necessarily accurate. But also, when we would visit my aunts and uncles in New York, I listened as they reminisced. Now, years after all who remembered those times are gone, I’m attempting to re-construct.

When my father was about seventeen, his mother died of cancer. Dad’s two youngest brothers, Bill and Frank, came to live with him. They joined dad in his vocation at that time… crime. Bill and Frank would rob homes and my father would sell the stolen goods. Apparently there was also some check fraud thrown in the mix as well. Dad was caught and served time in the New York State Penitentiary. His younger brothers went off to fight the war in Europe.

While in prison, dad became a successful middleweight boxer, and was undefeated in the penal system. Many years later when I was eleven or twelve, dad was teaching me to box, he emphasized how not to get hit in the face. He was proud that he didn’t have a broken nose, nor any of the other common battle scars of pugilism. Then, as he was beginning to demonstrate what to do if an opponent comes toward me with his head down, I jumped ahead in the lesson and delivered an uppercut to my dad’s nose. It wasn’t a hard punch, but it was definitely on-target. And I gave my father the first nose bleed he’d ever had! I expected anger, but instead he laughed.

When dad left the pen, he left New York. I guess he just wanted a fresh start. That fresh start was in Uvalde, Texas on the Rio Grande (although I have no idea why he went there).

As he told it, dad tried unsuccessfully twice to join the army. The first attempt, it was determined that he had “bad nerves”, and the second time the army said he had flat feet. So he gave up on the idea and got married to a Mexican woman named Rose. She was pregnant with their daughter when dad was drafted and accepted into the US Army. Now that he had a reason to not want to be in the army, they wanted him.

He apparently did everything he could to get in enough trouble to get discharged. He was stationed at Fort Knox, Tennessee when he decided he wanted to go to town one weekend. He “borrowed” the only available transportation for the unauthorized excursion. It turns out the army were a bit bothered by Private Mattice stealing a tank to go to town. This was his way out of the service.

It is entirely possible this entertaining anecdote was a complete fabrication by my father. It’s also possible that he was never even in the army. In the last year of his life, when I was information-seeking to determine if he might be eligible for any veteran benefits, the army said they had no record of his service.

However, he did allegedly land in prison again. This time I believe it was in Texas for more of the same shenanigans. During his incarceration, Rose divorced him. Also, my dad began a spiritual journey. He began studying the New Testament with the expressed purpose of discovering what “religion” Jesus was. My dad said he figured that would be the right one, and he would join it. So, after studying, he somehow determined that Jesus Christ was a Baptist, and so Vic Mattice was baptized and joined the Baptist Church. Now, since there are many different kinds of Baptists (and I don’t claim to understand how he arrived at this conclusion), I don’t know which he joined.

But for some years, my father tried to clean up his act. He left Texas and came to Akron, Ohio (again, I don’t know why). He met my mom, and they fell in love. They lived together for a year, and married on October 26, 1950 in Indiana.

Dad learned carpentry somewhere along the way, and went to work for John G. Ruhlin Construction Company in the 1950’s. It would be his career until retiring early at age sixty-two.

The story was told how nearly every Sunday before we were born, mom, dad, and a friend named Curly would go to church… in Clendenning, West Virginia. They were active in that church (they were obviously committed, to make the regular commute!). The legend goes that dad played guitar and the trio sang on the church’s radio broadcast. This story always seemed so remarkable to Larry and me, in light of our non-church upbringing.

My father told the story of his leaving the church. At one time, our parents were involved in an Akron area church. The pastor happened to one day see my dad at work. Across the street from the jobsite was a bar that served good food. The pastor saw dad going in the bar for lunch, and afterward confronted him. He said that dad should not go into a bar, even if he wasn’t drinking. According to my father, it was not only none of the pastor’s business, it was also judgmental. From that time, until many years later when he came to my church to see his granddaughters baptized, my dad would not set foot in any church.

Although he made an honest living (never returning to his old criminal ways), my father dove into a vat of beer, where he swam for many years. He never drank at home or when we traveled. But he most definitely imbibed at the bars. He never drank at work, but frequently after work. I remember many times mom would prepare dinner, expecting him home after work. Sometimes we’d already be in bed before he got home.

When my dad drank, it wasn’t just a few beers. On any given Saturday, he commonly consumed thirty-to-forty sixteen-ounce glasses of draught. Mom didn’t drive, so until Larry was old enough to be the sober chauffer, dad drove in that condition. I think I remember about three DUI’s (Driving Under the Influence), and even a weekend stay at a “Safety School”. He came home from there, drunk. For several years after mom died, he would sleep in the car in the bar parking lot. I guess by then, he wasn’t anxious to go home.

Perhaps alcohol played a part in my father’s rage. He would get furious, yell, cuss, and sometimes he was violent. Punishment was delivered to Larry and me with his belt. Whichever end of it was in his hand, we got the other. Our whippings were not a controlled smack on the rear end sort of thing either. He would flail us wildly with the belt, and then yell at us for crying. “I’ll give ya something to cry about!” He despised crying, and it would further escalate his rage. Dad intended to make men out of his sons, and “men don’t cry!” By today’s standards, he was abusive, but we survived it. And we did not hate him. We feared him and we loved him.
I hear parents today telling their children to stop some misbehavior, and the child continues, followed by “I’m not going to tell you again!” If it weren’t so pathetic it would be humorous. The youth disregards this entirely meaningless warning because they know that the parent will indeed tell them again, with dwindling relevance, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. If Larry or I was doing something we knew we were not supposed to be doing, by the time our father finished saying the words, we had better have already ceased. There was no repeating and there was no grace period. If either of my parents would have heard any parent counting to give their child a time limit to stop misbehavior, mom and/or dad would have slapped the parent. They never had to say that they would not say it again, because we knew they would not.

The result of the strict discipline- my brother and I were courteous and obedient in public. Many adults complemented our behavior to mom and dad. As a parent, I never treated my children the way dad had treated me. I went to great lengths to act in the opposite manner. For example, I found it far more effective to temporarily take something (a toy, an activity, or a privilege) away, than beating. Also, my father never explained his restrictions to us and we dare not ask why. It was simply no because he had said “no”. To enquire for reason was to challenge his authority. I always explained why I said no to my children, whether they asked or not. This practice irritated my daughter when she was a teen who wanted to do what she wanted. I would give her not just my opinion, but biblical reasons supporting my decisions. She didn’t like that because she could not argue with the wisdom and truth of God’s Word. Eventually, she opted for the only route that cleared the path for her own way. Mindy would dispute, “Well, I just don’t know if I believe the Bible.” Even adults sometimes use that excuse when we discover the Scriptures say something we don’t want to hear.

Dad was a carpenter for Ruhlin Construction Company for about thirty-five years, building over one hundred bridges and roadways in Ohio. He was very good at his trade, and often was a project supervisor. Dad also had an incredible memory regarding job details. In 1980, he was sitting at the bar when someone came in and said a piece of a bridge overpass had fallen onto the expressway and killed a family. Dad immediately recalled building that bridge in October of 1960, and correctly identified what section of the bridge had fallen. He also claimed to know why it fell. Twenty years before, dad had argued with the vice president against using an experimental reinforcement method that would cost less. In 1960, my father had said, “It’d be a miracle if the bridge lasts twenty years”. Back then, they built bridges and roadways to hopefully last forever.

For many years, dad was healthy, except a hernia in his upper abdominal wall. He nursed it for about twenty years because my father did not go to doctors. He was drunk, fell on the ice in our driveway and broke his ankle. He wrapped it and borrowed some crutches. But eventually, the hernia was so bad, it tore every time he coughed. He had surgery and took an early retirement at age sixty. He was tired of working and the hernia was getting worse. One day, he made the decision to act like the hernia just happened. The surgeon knew better, but played along. I don’t believe my father ever saw a dentist in his life. By his sixties, he had almost no teeth, but he would not get false teeth.

Dad liked to travel. By the time I was twelve, he’d driven us to thirty-six states, as well as multiple trips to visit relatives in New York and West Virginia. He also liked Florida, so we had been there three or four times. They were family vacations; but at the core, it was really what my father wanted to do and where he wanted to go. We remember many trips, of course with the pressured mandatory starting time of about 3:00 in the morning. Dad would be yelling that we had better hurry, or he’d just call off the whole thing. So, we were all packing for vacation so we could rush out the door in the middle of the night.

I believe it was sometime between 1968 and ’70 that we went out west to Yellowstone National Park, and spent about eight mid-June days driving around the Dakota’s, Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, and Colorado, capturing some of nature’s most awesome wonders with a Polaroid. I kept a trip journal, which I kept for many years, but is now gone. We kept count of the hundreds of elk, bison, and other wildlife indigenous to that region. We hoped, naively, to see bears. Bears were still hibernating in mid-June, and with good reason. As we were driving through some of the highest elevation mountain passes in the United States, a blizzard dropped about three feet of snow in twenty-four hours. Under dry road conditions, these passes would prove challenging. Narrow roads wound up and around the Rocky Mountains, where on one side of the road was mountain going straight up, and just beyond a minimal guardrail on the other side was a straight drop. Larry developed a high fever and was getting very sick. Dad had not smoked in a year, but started again in those high places. The thing about these passes was that, once you started up the mountain, there was no turning back. But, given the weather conditions, I’ll never understand dad’s choice to take the risk. Obviously, we made it, all the more nervously victorious for the experiences.

Because of dad’s fascination with big construction equipment, we would sometimes take Sunday family drives to southern Ohio to coal strip-mining country. We never got tired of seeing the world’s largest dragline (similar to a crane), The Big Muskie. This massive machine was the world’s largest single-shovel digging device ever built. It was destroyed in 1999, however the bucket is currently in a museum in McConellsville, Ohio. I still have pictures from the late 60’s and early 70’s of Larry and I standing inside that bucket, which could hold nine Greyhound buses. The Big Muskie moved by enormous pneumatic feet- it walked. And its steps quaked the earth for miles! We thought it was so cool!

Our toys were Tonka, back when they were made from metal. Larry and had earth-moving miniatures that literally worked. In our front yard stood a pine tree, not more than fifteen feet from the house, and not less than fifty feet tall. We excavated all around it’s base, baring the roots, and even digging below them to create underpasses. When dad discovered the extent we had exposed the roots, he was angry and nervous. He was afraid a strong wind would topple the tree onto the house. He got a pickup-load of dirt from work, and we had to re-bury the roots.

Christmas was stifled in our house when Larry was about nine (making me about seven). Dad sat us down and explained, “Santa Claus is a lie, and we were too old for Christmas anymore”. The observances of gifts and a decorated tree were “childish foolishness”; and so we no longer celebrated Christmas. Dad changed his mind many years later, when it came to his grandchildren.

My father had an affinity for what some may consider “unusual” foods. He wanted his sons to experience variety, so he would “encourage” us to sample what he brought home. Behold, a scenario frequently played out, often word-for-word, at the table of Vic Mattice:
“Here, try this!”
“What is it?” We whined.
“Just try it!” If he revealed it’s true identity, he’d probably have to kill us.
My brother and I insisted we didn’t like boiled orangutan testicles (or whatever bizarre cuisine he was offering). By the way, orangutan testicles are far more palatable sautéed with onions.
“You don’t know. You never had it!” His temper flared.
“We didn’t like it the last time you made us eat it.” Our objections fell on deaf ears.

Sometimes these contentions continued long after the fare in question was cold, but it always concluded the same way, dad’s way. We would gag down the minimum required morsel, enough to emphatically declare that alligator eyeballs do not taste like chicken (at least not when they are cold!).

At this juncture, I should probably explain that, while it is completely true that my father forced us to at least sample some peculiar foods, I have never tasted orangutan testicles, nor have I ever consumed the eyeballs of an alligator. I was just being facetious. Besides, if I named some of the real foods forced on us, you might be sick, dear readers. And I’m not in the market for weird recipes. Some of the foods we hated as kids, Larry and I now like as adults. Perhaps the method of delivery tainted our taste buds then.

As harsh, cynical, and critical as dad was, he frequently told us he loved us. Throughout my life and two marriages, I’ve always been easily forthcoming with the words as well. I have learned that if actions do not confirm the words, then they are simply empty words. I’m not suggesting dad didn’t love us. I believe to the best of his ability, in light of who he was, he loved us.

In 1982, when mom was diagnosed with advanced renal failure, she was given approximately two years to live. The doctor explained how her condition would deteriorate, but that didn’t make it any easier for us. As her dementia increased, dad’s patience decreased. Mom would say something that made no sense, and dad would say, “Honey, if you’d just stop and think about it for a minute, you’d make more sense!” At least outwardly, he never seemed to understand or accept that her brain was malfunctioning because it had been poisoned and was dying. She was dying. My father had never been very good at dealing with sick people. For almost exactly two years, he did all he could for the love of his life, but it wasn’t enough.

I think most adults raised in two-parent homes (once the norm) at some point consider the effect the loss of the spouse would have on the remaining parent. I had long felt that, if my father passed away first, mom would struggle, but she’d be all right. She didn’t drive or work, but emotionally, she would possibly be more peaceful. However, in the more-likely scenario of mom’s preceding dad in death, I was deeply concerned about how dad would go on. Already retired before mom’s diagnosis, he had long left behind any of his former hobbies, like fishing. Since 1980, they had lived in an apartment, so he no longer had a yard to mow, nor a garden to tend. I didn’t anticipate him living long after mom was gone. I feared he would drown himself in beer and soon perish.

About nine of the remaining thirteen years of my father’s life, he drank a lot of beer daily. Often, he’d sleep in his car in the bar parking lot. Then one evening, he judged himself safe to drive home (or maybe it was just too cold to sleep in the car). En route, his car had a blowout. Dad was able to get the car safely off the road, but when he got out, he collapsed unconscious on the side of the road from alcohol poisoning. The Highway Patrol found him unconscious.

Thereafter, my dad never drank. But because his entire social life (other than me and Mindy- Larry didn’t stay in touch with him regularly) was at the bar, that’s where Vic Mattice could be found nearly everyday. He drank Diet 7 Up because he said the “sugared” pop was too sweet for him, and hung out with his “friends”.

Usually about once per week, I would have lunch with him. At times, I did not own a car, and felt bad that I couldn’t see him more often. My father was pretty adept at laying on the guilt trip. Often, it was successful with me. Larry, on the other hand, resented the manipulation and seldom called or visited dad. I would apologetically return the call where dad’s message sounded something like: “Hadn’t heard from you in so long, just wondered if you were still alive”.

From 1984 when mom died, until 1997 when dad suffered his second heart attack, that was how he lived his life. Alone, and grasping. Boredom, depression, apathy, and declining health worked in concert to produce laziness. His apartment became an indescribable squalor. My wife and I worked hard for days cleaning while he was in the hospital. When he cooked, he’d been doing so in dirty pans and eating from filthy dishes using unclean silverware. Dad would not wash dishes. We got him a microwave and plastic disposable supplies. We had to teach him how to use the microwave. He had never owned one because mom had always believed they could cause heart attacks. We gave him a food processor so he could prepare his food to a manageable consistency. Dad was essentially toothless, and required at least what is called “mechanical soft” and perhaps even “pureed”. Dad expressed appreciation, and then I don’t think he ever ate at home again.

Suddenly, I watched my father walk across my yard, using a cane. When had he started using a cane? It took him several minutes to climb the stairs to our second floor apartment. Then he sat on my sofa and was incontinent, but said nothing. Was he unaware he had wet himself, or was he too embarrassed to acknowledge it?

I began searching for an assisted living facility near to us, and started trying to convince the old man to move. Mindy was finally able to persuade dad to move closer, and to at least consider the benefits of an assisted living environment.

Then dad had his second heart attack. He was on the phone with me when I heard him grunt and a crash. After a moment of terrible silence, he was able to get to the phone.

“I was jus’ sittin’ here an’ I fell outta the chair. I’m on the floor, an’ I can’t get up.” He didn’t complain of any pain, just weakness. We called 911.

The next day, a heart catheterization to determine the extent of damage induced a stroke. Kathy was with dad when he awoke after the procedure. He didn’t recognize her. I had no choice but to admit him into a nursing home. Fortunately, it was only about a twenty-minute walk from my house, since I didn’t own a car.

Larry and I went through the overwhelming junk in his apartment, sorting out the “keep able” items, and eventually surrendering to the inevitable truth that dad was never going to use any of that stuff again; and cleaning the place out required far more time and energy than we possessed. We reminisced over much rubbish, gathered a few treasures, and left the mess for the apartment management to address. Dad’s car wouldn’t start, so I sold it for junk and they towed it away. He was angry at me for that. I explained that he could no longer drive and the car wouldn’t run. Being able to drive was one of the final vestiges of his independence. He didn’t want to, but he acquiesced.

His time in the nursing home was short, only a few months. Sometimes he thought he was in a hospital, and he wanted to check out and go home. Sometimes he believed he was at the bar, and it was filled with a “bunch of drunk crazies”. He did not like being taken care of, and was frequently agitated. I am certain my father was very difficult and rude to the staff. In my job experience in the healthcare field, I have found that people who already had a grouchy disposition, who are disoriented and thrust into a life where their freedom to make personal choices is compromised, they become angry and depressed. Wouldn’t anybody?

I frequently visited dad and assisted in his personal care. Larry, like dad, was never very good with being around sick people. He had a hard time when dad might not recognize him. My brother’s visits were brief and infrequent.

One day while I was cutting his hair, dad asked, “Didn’t I have a wife?” Larry was there, but left the room at that point.

“Yes. You were married to Mom for thirty-four years,” I answered.

“Where is she?”

“Dad, Mom passed away thirteen years ago.” I was nearly in tears.
“It seems like I was jus’ talkin’ to her.”

“I know.” What more could I say?

During his time in the nursing home, three friends and I did a concert for the residents. We played some old country songs, including some I knew to be my father’s favorites. Dad had always been so critical of my music. But when we finished, he told me, “I never realized you were so good. I was proud of you.” I had labored for many years to hear those words from my father.

On Palm Sunday, March 23, 1997, dad had a major stroke. He was hospitalized. He was no longer able to speak and had difficulty breathing. It was bad, but no doctor had told us how bad. Tuesday or Wednesday of that week, several of us were visiting him. Mindy and her boyfriend Greg came. It was difficult for my daughter to see her grandpa in such condition. A nurse came in and remarked something about dad still being with us.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The nurse was surprised by my question. “Hasn’t the doctor explained to you that he will probably pass at any time?”

Mindy burst into tears and ran out of the room. I felt bad for the nurse, and I felt angry at the doctor (who we had never met, and never bothered to inform us of anything). She apologized that we found out in such a way. Mindy and I cried and held each other in the hallway for a long time. Then I told her she should probably go in and say goodbye to grandpa.

My pastor had visited dad in the nursing home, and my father prayed for salvation. During that week, Pastor Sam visited dad. He said “Vic, I know you can’t speak, but if you are still trusting in Jesus as your Savior, blink twice, if you can.” Sam told me that dad looked directly at him and blinked twice.

On Good Friday, March 28, 1997 Harold Victor Mattice left this world about 4:00 in the afternoon. I was just starting out the door from work, and I heard the phone ring. Normally, I would have just left it ringing; but somehow I knew it was for me. On the night my mom died, when I laid down in bed, I suddenly looked at the phone beside the bed and became frantic. I knew dad would call in the night to tell me she was gone. In the same manner, I knew this call at work was the news.

I was twenty-four years old when my mom died. I was deeply shaken. Years later, I realized that part of my difficulty with mom’s death was uncertainty about her eternal condition. We never really discussed spiritual matters, and I don’t know about mom’s relationship with God. All these years, I have hoped and do hope that she is in heaven, and I will see her again someday. But the knowledge that dad, like the thief on the cross beside Jesus, died trusting in the Lord, helped me deal with his death.

However, when both parents are gone, there is an “orphan” feeling. Suddenly, Larry and I are the elder Mattice’s.

I was angry about several of the events surrounding dad’s death though. I called the man whom dad had considered his best friend for years, from dad’s hospital room, within an hour of dad’s death. This friend had never visited my father in the nursing home, not even called him. This friend did not attend dad’s memorial service, nor send any flowers or anything.

Dad had wanted his body donated to the Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine, the same as mom’s had been. And after they were finished with it, the remains would be cremated, at no expense to us. Unfortunately, NEOUCOM would not accept dad’s body. So, without any insurance benefit, I had to foot the $1000 cremation bill. Larry refused to help me with it. He said, “Don’t pay it! You don’t have to!” Actually, yes I did. Although they couldn’t use his corpse at that time, NEOUCOM were willing to bury his ashes in the same general grave where mom’s remains had been buried. They were going to be reopening it soon, and would not charge me for the burial. That was a blessing.

There were two collections taken for me: one from my church, and one from my work. I was angry because my co-workers took a collection that more than tripled the collection my church family gave.

At this writing, thirteen years have passed. I have let go of the anger. I write of my father, I think, with understanding. I find myself often quoting him. I think of him often. As strained as our relationship was for so long, I still miss him. It’s astounding how profoundly his criticism, fears, and ethics have affected who I am. In many ways, I am the opposite of my dad. But in many ways, I am very similar.

He was a harsh man, who lived a hard seventy-five years. I want to see at least that many years.