If you do exist in this great world, I sincerely apologize for the credit issues you may or may not have experienced due to events stemming from my childhood. You see, Diana Carmack was the fictional name that was created by my uncle Arthur.
Arthur was the youngest of my mother’s siblings and by far the most interesting. He was shockingly intelligent, so funny, and managed to live his life without bothering with things like rules or society norms… and he was also one of the most genuine people that you could ever have the pleasure of meeting.
Arthur was my mother’s youngest brother and the only other child of a brood of 5 still living at home when their mother suddenly passed away when my mother was 13 years old. She quickly became his surrogate mother. My mother is a very mature and driven woman and have no doubt that she stepped up and into the role of caregiver with the best of intentions and determined to shield this shy young man from the hurt of the world. Arthur was a very shy, introverted man and it only worsened as he grew older.
My mother was divorced early from my father and my brothers and I lived with her in rural Tennessee where she worked as a nurse. She was a very hard worker and what assistance she did receive with rearing us was from a babysitter/surrogate grandmother and from ole’ Artie. Not only was Arthur intelligent, loving, caring, and a constant in our lives, he also wad very unique both in stature and in personality. Arthur was very slim, long legged, and topped off with a full head of ginger hair. At home with us he was animated and boisterous, and but in public he was very quiet, very reserved and struggled not to be noticed.
Arthur never married nor did he have any children, and essentially lived with us for the majority of our lives. He was essentially our oldest brother as opposed to our uncle. He was probably one of the worst influences and one if the the best influences in my life. Arthur was always reading, he was a voracious reader and whether is was books, magazines, or a box of tampons, I have no doubt that he could have conversed easily in regards to any topic that arose from the migratory patterns of Canadian geese to the dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome.
As I mentioned before, we were very financially limited, not because my mother didn’t provide but because she was a single mother of 3 children. My mother worked full time as a nurse and at times added extra hours, a part time job, or even occasionally cleaned houses on the side in order to make ends meet. We had everything we needed, and a lot of what we wanted, but she worked a lot in order to provide for us. As we grew older and resisted going to the “baby sitter’s”, Arthur became more of a “adult on the property” when my mother was at work. Now I did not say caregiver, nor did I say responsible party. He was an adult on the property.
Arthur’s life was a series of highs and lows that we witnessed first hand. This is the reason I refer to him as one of the best and worst influences of my life. Arthur struggled with drugs and alcohol his entire life.
His anxiety was crippling. Should he have to be seen in public he would try to dress as inconspicuously as possible, which meant he dressed like someone who was trying to make himself obvious. For example he’d wear jeans, a long sleeved hoodie, and a ball cap just to go in to a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Granted that doesn’t sound all that odd, but imagine a person donned in that outfit in the middle of a blazing hot and humid Tennessee July day.
Arthur was clever, inventing games for us to play, games where we changed the lyrics of popular songs in order to create funny and inappropriate substitutes, exactly the kind of games kids love to play. For example the Sheryl Crow song “The first cut is the deepest”, he changed it to The big slut is the cheapest, or the Bad Company classic rock hit “Feel like making love”, instead we sang Feel like taking drugs.
I still can’t listen the original song lyrics of most of the tunes he changed up without singing the altered lyrics and laughing. Another past time he invented was “the changing of the signs”. This game consisted of rearranging the letters on the old fashioned lighted signs outside of business’ that would advertise a sale price or upcoming event. Oftentimes we would scour town looking for the rearrangeable signs that were so popular in those days, staring at the letters we had available, and coming up with the most clever, and usually offensive substitutes. After dark was when it was safe to rearrange the letters to advertise a different sort of event! Oftentimes the signs would remain unnoticed by the proprietors for days while we complimented each other on the cleverness of the alternative message. I would also like to believe this game boosted my performance in Scrabble, but I may be drawing at straws.
Arthur was so intelligent, in fact I believe he was probably the most intelligent person I ever had the privilege of meeting. Unfortunately along with that intelligence was accompanied by an inherent sense of unworthiness, a lack of self esteem, a general feeling of being less than zero. Why such an intelligent man feel that way, I have no idea.
Arthur worked doing carpentry work in a factory until a work related accident left him physically disabled. I believe that it was during that time his recreational drug use became more than recreational.
Because he was not physically able to work he was around the house more towards the late 1980’s to early 1990’s. He was very ritualistic. You could literally set your watch by his habits. He rose early, made coffee-black with lots of sugar, and went to the bathroom for his morning BM where he remained for the next hour chain smoking Camel non filtered cigarettes and reading from the enormous array of magazines that we received via monthly subscription. We had subscriptions from Time, Life, National Geographic, Reader's Digest, basically any magazine that wasn’t devoted to articles about cosmetics, or how to tell if he really loves you, etc. Arthur never turned off the television. Ever. Should he be asleep on the couch with the sound off but the tv on and you powered it down, he would be awake in seconds.
Inevitably by the time he emerged from his hour long dump, followed by a shower, shampoo, and blow dry of his gorgeous ginger locks, we were waking from our slumber and forming a line to use our solitary bathroom. As he emerged along with a cloud of cigarette smoke that would have rivaled a pyrotechnic theatrical smoke from a Kiss concert, he would be fully dressed including shoes, and have a perfectly feathered ginger coiffure. He had worn his hair long, feathered, and parted down the middle for WAY too long. I believe that his long hair was yet another part of trying to remain inconspicuous and like his other antics, it only served to make him that much more noticeable.
My brothers and myself were very well acquainted with the tricks and ploys he used to torment us as children. We were only familiar with them as we had all separately fallen victim to his antics. For instance he’d emerge from his morning bathroom ritual and casually ask “does anyone know whose ten dollar bill that had fallen behind the toilet” and inevitably whichever one if us overhead the question bolted to the freshly tainted bathroom in hopes of procuring the cash that had obviously previously belonged to some irresponsible, obviously wealthy person who hadn’t even realized they had lost a TEN DOLLAR BILL, only to realize that you’d been lured into ground zero where there was no money but there was the overwhelming stench of a freshly pinched loaf.
He was truly a master, both he and my mother were able to tell tall tales just as straight faced as any career criminal, and lure us into a joke. There were a lot of very hard times from my childhood, but I also remembered the extraordinary amounts of laughter from our home. My mother, Arthur, and all three of us, my brothers and myself. We each honed our story telling and practical joking, putting our own spin on the presentation.
Now along with the endless supply of up to date reading materials, we also had access to nothing but the finest selections of music. I credit Arthur and my mother for my love of music. There are songs that take me right back to some of the happiest and some of the saddest periods of my life. I couldn’t resist smiling and singing aloud to “Dixieland Delight” or control the flood of tears when I hear “Hey there Mr. Tinman” by Miranda Lambert. Music is one of the essential aspects of my life. I’m so very affected by music. I’m amazed something as benign as an arrangement of notes accompanied by lyrics can catapult my emotions from one end of the spectrum to the other in seconds. The memories associated with music and songs can literally dictate my mood. MOST of the time I can use that to my advantage and pull myself up from the depths of misery with a well arranged playlist and others can reduce me to the deepest depths of despair.
My mother and Arthur enjoyed different genres of music. My mother preferred classic country like Alabama or Ronnie Milsap, while Arthur loved classic rock including the Eagles, Foreigner, Pink Floyd, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. So in the mornings when we would be roused to get dressed for school there would be 98 WSIX playing our favorite mix of classic country, but after school when we stepped off the bus and into the house we were greeted by Pink Floyd and Bad Company.
We ALWAYS had the greatest selection of record albums, and as records became more obsolete we had cassette tapes. Now I’m sure you’re probably wondering how a single mother of 3 children managed to budget for subscriptions to expensive periodicals and the most amazing collection of music that I would ever have access to until the invention of iTunes… that’s where Diana Carmack enters the picture.
Anyone who was born and raised before the early to mid 1980’s is sure to remember Columbia House Record Club. In every periodical that was delivered to our home on the Hilham Hwy were crammed full of prepaid postage return cards simply yearning to be completed and returned to Columbia House. The offer was so tempting, for only one penny, one single solitary red cent, a member of the Columbia House Record Club could receive up to 7 albums/cassettes of the members choice, delivered right to your front door!
Now obviously there HAD to be a catch… in the tiny fine print Columbia House executives revealed the binding terms of the deal that seemed too good to be true. Should you choose to become a member of the prestigious Columbia Record club you would be obligated to purchase 4 additional albums/cassettes at full price, plus shipping over the next 24 months. So essentially said member would have to order an additional album/cassette at full price plus shipping every 6 months. Upon closer inspection you realized that the cost of a full price album/cassette tape was upwards of 24.99$ plus shipping. Now to put it into perspective, a 10 gallon tank of premium gas would cost than 10$. Even that amount of money every 6 months was an exorbitant amount to pay for music, even as a young child I realized that.
Leave it to my ever resourceful uncle to find a way to accommodate both our love of music AND a way to bypass those pesky “obligations” to buy additional units. Thus Diana Carmack came into our lives.
Ms. Carmack was a very generous woman. She had all sorts of periodicals delivered each month keeping our household abreast of world events, medical breakthroughs, basically everything that was worth knowing about. There were periods that we did not have a television, but we were probably more abreast of world events than most, all because of the generosity of Diana Carmack.
Not only were we privileged enough to receive the gift of knowledge, but Ms. Carmack also valued the importance of music. Bundles and bundles of albums and eventually cassette tapes were delivered regularly to our home where we began to amass a commendable music collection.
Because we had periodicals delivered constantly, and those periodicals were stuffed full of Columbia House Record club postcards just yearning to be completed and submitted with our music selections and that single penny taped to the postcard as a gesture of her goodwill and commitment.
As faithful as the very postman who delivered our mail, those packages full of the music we loved and adored, all addressed to Diana Carmack. I’m making a blind assumption about the communication in the Columbia House Record Club was not very good as Ms. Carmack was able to continue to receive those spectacular bargain offers of 6 albums for only one cent!
Our periodicals also continued to arrive in our mailbox, each subscription lasting at least 12 months before the magazine publishers finally realized that Ms. Carmack although a very well informed, well read and worldly woman, was not as diligent about keeping her accounts receivable current and eventually after a few years we no longer received the wonderful musical selections and the magazines keeping us abreast of all of the worlds events.
I didn’t realize as a child and young adult that making up a fictitious name and using that name to procure items or services was illegal. The realization occurred to me while telling the story of Diana Carmack to a friend reminiscing about childhood memories and funny anecdotes; While I understand that these things were wrong, I cherish the wonderful memories and life experiences that were created.
When Arthur passed away my brother Brandon and I put together a playlist of songs that we believed more appropriate for his wake, and his funeral services. At the funeral home on the afternoon of the wake there was a mixup and in the background the music playing was typical dreary funeral home music. The atmosphere was just miserable with people openly sobbing and my mother trying so very hard to greet and comfort others while her heart was obviously breaking.
Crowds of men and women stood on clusters all around the funeral home formally greeting each other and making obligatory, forced conversation. The tears escaping from the eyes of the people who knew and loved him only emphasized the loneliness and emptiness we were all suffering from.
I approached the funeral home staff in regards to changing the generic stoic music that was remarkably uncharacteristic of the man we had gathered to mourn and comfort each other. They were finally able to broadcast the playlist that my brother and I had compiled and it was as if the sun had suddenly come out. The tears from the people gathered to mourn the loss of Arthur instantly dried up, nervous smiles emerged, and just as we had intended when we made this playlist, people began to reminisce about the unique and sensitive man that we all had in common.
Suddenly there was laughter instead of tears, and I found the circumstances much easier to deal with. I floated from group to group interacting with others, exchanging funny and clever anecdotes, celebrating the life of Arthur. As the anniversary of his death is upon us, these anecdotes and fond memories linger a bit longer on my mind. For the people in my life who never had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know him, I try desperately hard to explain the multifaceted man who was technically my uncle, but was my friend, my ally, a collaborator, my brother.
