The day my father lost his innocence.

The Fall of The Reverend James Hicks.

I was extraordinarily fortunate to grow up with a loving and lovable dad.

My father was a clergyman, who encountered the world with this kind of positive (some might say naive) expectancy. He believed in the essential good in human nature and just expected to encounter it wherever he went. It was for that reason, when I became an adult, I often found myself wanting to protect him from what I perceived to be the real world.

The collision between the world he seemed to inhabit and “the real world” occasionally produced amusing results. This is what inspired the piece below, that I wrote and published in 2003.

I dedicate this to my beloved dad, who died in 2018, and to all the loving dads out there celebrating Father’s Day.

Enjoy.

My dad, Jimmy.

The Fall of The Reverend James Hicks

Despite their age, my parents were rarely content to be guests in our home. Instead, they preferred to be “handy-people” in residence.

My father, “Jimmy” puttered. He was a geriatric Mr. Fixit, happily finding things that needed doing. Fortunately, our home was a Mr. Fixit paradise. It was this innate need to be useful that motivated him to shuffle to our compost bin on a frigid January morning, arms full of wet kitchen waste.

Our bin was located underneath a broken rain gutter, which Jimmy eyed that morning the way you might scope out your next project. As a result, he failed to notice the sheet of black ice on the driveway. On making first contact with the ice, his feet flew out from under him, hurling him with a rapid and violent crunch on his back, snapping his head back and knocking it hard on the pavement.

When my mother and I found him a few minutes later, he had somehow struggled to the kitchen and was slouched over the table, chalk white and teetering on the edge of consciousness.

At first, I wasn’t overly concerned because Jimmy was a fainter and tended to teeter on the edge of consciousness whenever he was in pain. He also had a talent for falling, having fallen off more than one ladder and down several flights of stairs in his long life. But as I assessed the scene -- my father moaning softly and my mother wringing her hands convinced he was taking the last exit off the highway of life -- I decided to drive him to the hospital.

This was as much for my brother, Larry’s, benefit as for Dad’s. Larry was a physician, (or as my mother called him, “my son, the doctor,” which she always said with much more reverence than she ever said, “my husband, the clergyman.”) I knew, at the first opportunity she would call him for a consultation but given he was working in California, four times-zones west of here, that would leave Larry trying to determine if Jimmy had a subdural hematoma by the level of panic in my mother’s voice. Even if my parents wouldn’t trust a physician who could actually see and touch Jimmy, I knew Larry would appreciate “a first opinion”.

About half-way to the hospital and facing the prospect of being handed over to the medical establishment, my father announced that he was feeling better. I looked over at him and to my annoyance, the color was, indeed, returning to his face. But I knew better. This was a case of the “white coat phobia miracle cure,” and despite his pleading look, I wasn’t falling for it.

By the time we arrived in the parking lot, he was downright perky.

“Yup, I feel pretty good!” he declared, as he leapt from the front seat like a 20-year-old.

“That’s nice,” I said. “Let’s go in.”

At triage, a friendly nurse gave him the once over. She checked his vitals. They weren’t normal. They were ideal. It now seemed clear that other than a purple bruise forming on the top of his otherwise shiny bald head, what we had in front of us was a 76-year-old man in mint condition and a sure ticket to the bottom of the emergency room waiting list.

So, off we trudged to the waiting room. “Oh good,” I said to him noticing the large television in front of a bank of chairs. “T.V. At least we won’t be bored.”

It was 11:00 a.m., a new show was about to begin, but because I usually worked during the day, I didn’t recognize the opening segment. And there just happened to be two chairs available right in front. Dad and I sat down and watched the screen expectantly. Soon, my enthusiasm was replaced by foreboding as it became clear that the show in question was “The Jerry Springer Show.”

“Who’s Jerry Springer?” Dad asked with polite interest. It is important to note here, that Jimmy Hicks and Jerry Springer did not, in any way, inhabit the same universe. Dad, the Reverend James, belonged to the Polly Anna School of Life and saw the world through a pair of rose-colored glasses permanently welded to his face. Jerry’s glasses were of a decidedly darker and more salacious shade.

Did I dare get up and change the channel?

Perhaps not. It seemed that we had a sizable contingent of Jerry Springer disciples sitting behind us, their eyes glued to the screen in anticipation.

We were not to be disappointed.

This morning’s insightful, social commentary was entitled… “My Wife is my Pimp!”

Dad looked confused. I looked desperately around for another seat, but the waiting room was full. I considered diving on top of him and covering his face and ears, but he’d already had one shock that morning. There was nothing I could do to shield him from this particular form of “reality” T.V.

Jerry’s featured guests were a very small, slender man and his spouse / business manager, a 280-pound trailer park dominatrix. To give us a taste of this man’s life, Jerry kindly played a video of him dropping his pants on command before the fine ladies of the trailer park, who gave him the once over with the dispassion you might peruse the produce aisle in the supermarket. They appeared singularly unimpressed as they offered his wife/pimp between 20 and 50 dollars for his services.

I looked over at my father and watched his face progress from confused, to riveted, to appalled. At one point, Jerry invited one of the man’s “regulars” to the stage. The “Jean,” another hefty, buxom woman, implored him to leave “this bitch” and run away with her. Jerry let the shouting of profanities build for a bit, and then, for his pièce de résistance, he surprised them all by calling the Jean’s lesbian lover to the stage. The newest guest had apparently watched the video, in which her girlfriend was the winning bidder, for the first time with the rest of the audience. She stormed the stage and immediately flew into a rage.

Trying desperately to think of something funny I might say to break the tension, I glanced over at Jimmy, who now had closed his eyes and, to my non-professional eye, was either slipping into a coma or trying to lose himself in prayer. I was just beginning to contemplate calling for help when the nurse called his name. He leapt to his feet and bolted for the treatment area.

An hour later, the medical examination was complete. He’d be a little sore for a while but other than that he was just fine. The doctor offered my father some Advil, which he refused, and sent Jimmy on his way – a fallen man of God – sore, forever tainted, and newly wise in the ways of trailer park madams.