Somebody keeps keying cars in my neighborhood and I would like nothing more than to watch the son-of-a-bitch die. That may sound like a harsh statement to read. Even to me, as I read it back, it seems like a harsh statement but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t true. Should I feel this way? Probably not. Do I deserve it? Probably. Without going into any of the self incriminating details, I’ve done enough vandalism in my day to deserve plenty more than a scratch in the paint of my car. Yet I can’t help but fantasize about catching the motherfucker in the act. The pure joy I would feel in being able to seize the, all too rare, moment of teaching somebody a lesson they would never forget.

Of course, I’ll never get to fulfill this fantasy. Even if I did catch the asshole do it, I’m not sure what I would do. Probably something lame like call the cops. Let’s face it, we as a society have become so impotent and litigious, that justice can only be dispensed through the justice system. Street justice has been corralled and sectioned off from our civilization, only to be practiced by the most criminally indifferent. In short, I wouldn’t have the balls. But I know somebody who would. Somebody who has never been restrained by the conventions of society. Somebody who grew up in a time where an eye was truly for an eye and sometimes even a head was for an eye. Who is this somebody, you ask? Well I’ll tell you. It is my Dad.

To call my father old school would be like calling Abraham Lincoln a politician – a gross understatement. He is the epitome of old school. Born on a farm in Louisiana in 1935, he grew up in a time and place where you handled your own and you got what was comin’ to you. My Dad’s biography reads like a Jim Croce song and to this day, people still know him by name in the small town of Natchitoches. Now, I’m not going to write you a report about my Dad, my hero. I just wanted to share a couple stories with you about my childhood and what it was like to grow up as the son of “The Badest Man on Cane River.”

We moved to Kent, Washington in 1980. We lived in one of those suburban housing developments where every house was identical to the fifth house away from it and everybody’s mailbox sat in a quaint little maibox house complete with its own little shingled roof. For whatever reason, the lot across the street from our house was never built on and it served as a playground for me and my friends for several years until a developer, much to our chagrin, finally decided to build two more houses on it. As is often the case with track home developers, certain details went overlooked and our new neighbors moved into a house with no mailbox and, more importantly, no little mailbox house. It needs to be mentioned that on our block, the little mailbox house sat in front of our house, right next to our driveway. I needed to tell you those details so I could get to the real story.

It took about two weeks before our new neighbor attempted to remedy his mailbox dilemma by nailing a 2 X 4 to the exterior of the mailbox house and mounting an ugly aluminum mailbox to it, jutting out from the quaint little mailbox house like an undeveloped fetus of a conjoined twin. Unfortunately for us, but more so for our neighbor, the 18 inches of new mailbox stuck directly into the path of our driveway. Being the fair man that he is, my Dad left a note in the mailbox, explaining our problem with the driveway obstruction. A week went by. Nothing happened. My Dad left another note. Another week. Another nothing.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning in the summer. The sun was shining. Everybody in the neighborhood was outside mowing their lawns and watching their kids play, including our neighbor. My Dad went outside too. But instead of bringing a lawnmower, he brought a saw. Very calmly, he walked over to the Siamese mailbox and began slicing his way through that 2 X 4. Our neighbor watched the whole time. He did nothing. What could he do? After my Dad cut through the 2 X 4, he turned and, with mailbox in hand, walked about halfway across the street. He stopped, looked our neighbor in the eye, and threw the mailbox at him. It came to rest right at our neighbor’s foot. My Dad turned and went back into our house. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. A few weeks later, our neighbor put up his own quaint little mailbox house right in front of his own. We lived happily ever after.

Until…

Another time my Dad was disrespected only this time it was by kids. We lived very close to an elementary school. I went to that school. My sister went to that school. It was cool because we could ride our bikes there. In fact, right next to our house was a bike trail that would lead to the school. Dividing the bike trail and our front lawn were 10 small pine trees, about six feet tall and separated every three feet. I was in high school when my Dad, who was retired, began complaining about some sixth graders who would venture off the bike path, ride through the pine trees and through our front lawn. They would power slide and skid and basically tear up the lawn. Yes, my Dad became that old guy who would tell the kids to keep off his lawn but he was justified. The kids would either ignore him or flip him off or laugh as they rode off. Being a man who didn’t take kindly to being disrespected, my Dad devised a plan. One day he was watching television as school let out. He didn’t get up. He didn’t rush to the window. He waited and waited, patiently. Then he heard the crash. He, very calmly, got up and walked out the front door to see the kids sprawled out across the lawn, bikes mangled, faces horrified. You see, when riding a bike full speed through six-foot pine trees separated every three feet, it is very difficult to see the metal chain strung between each one. Those kids never rode through our lawn again.

I can go on and on. There are a million of these stories about my Dad and I love each and every one of them. A man who never took any shit from anybody. A man who lived by a simple rule, don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you. As I sit here typing this, I wonder how he would handle the mysterious keying cocksucker that is roaming my neighborhood. Actually, I don’t wonder. I know exactly what he would do but like I said earlier, I don’t have the balls. Still, maybe one night soon, I’ll stay up late, wait in the shadows, and try my best to impersonate my idol.