The following was written by me in September 2008. Keep in mind it was four years before we lost our son:
For years now, I have thought about writing a book. Friends and family have encouraged me to do this. I have felt, at times, a calling to write a book. Why? Several reasons come to mind including that I have had a lot of varied life experiences, have met and am related to some interesting people whose stories should be told, and I have a keen, sometimes odd sense of humor that can be entertaining. But most of all, I have been moved to write because I have lost all five members of my immediate family, four of them to drug or alcohol related car collisions.
As a result of that last sentence, I am sometimes asked how I handle such tragedies, what helped me escape such an ending, why are you different, Stan? etc. My answer to that is Jesus Christ and the following is our story – mine, my family’s and my relationship to God, my Heavenly Father.
In 1966, my father was working for a construction crew that was building the California Aqueduct canal. At that point, the work crew was working near Firebaugh, CA. My Dad worked all week there, staying in a motel near the worksite, and would come home after work each Friday. In August, Dad stopped off at the local bar after quitting time and got drunk before driving the 80 miles back home to our house in Ceres, CA. Somewhere just out of Firebaugh, he crashed his old station wagon. A twelve pound sledge hammer in the back slid up and hit my father in the back through the seat. The sledge crushed several vertebrae, severing his spinal cord in the process. As a result, my once very active, strong and virile father lost the use of his legs; he was rendered a paraplegic.
I was nine years old when Dad got hurt and have several memories of him during the next two years. Dad was in and out of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) hospitals where attempts were unsuccessfully made to repair the damage to his spinal cord. During the time he was at home, he spent most of his time in a hospital that someone had set up in one of the bedrooms. I often slept next to him on the floor on a pallet because I loved him so much and wanted to be close to him as much as possible. Being the oldest of four siblings, I felt like I needed to help my Mom care for my father in whatever way I could.
One of those ways was to sometimes help him out of bed and into his wheelchair and then into the bathroom to bathe and assist with his bowel movements. Even then, I was big and strong enough to lift Dad out of his chair and get him into the bathtub. I would then press on his lower abdomen to force the excrement out, after which I cleaned it up, threw it in the toilet and helped him to wash up. Afterwards, I got him back to his bed and we went on with our day. Doing this for Dad did not phase me at all and I was proud to help him, but as a man I now understand how humiliating this must have been for him.
Another memory recalls Dad’s independence and his refusal to just lie in that hospital bed. One time when all his kids were at school and Mom was gone somewhere, he got up, wheeled outside and took a shovel and one of the handsaws out of his toolbox. He sawed off the handle of the shovel to about a three foot length, got into our family car, which had an automatic transmission and proceed to use the shovel handle to operate the brake and accelerator pedals. Dad spent the day driving around the county, sightseeing and looking up several friends who were undoubtedly surprised to see Gene driving around in a car all by himself!
In order to help people understand my history and upbringing, I plan to tell stories to illustrate these things. All of us are shaped into the beings we are through the influence of our family, associates and life experiences. The first one I have is about who my Dad was and how we related to one another and the world view he possessed and passed on to me. I have to say up front, these are not the most positive or healthy of things, but they are my reality.
Harold Eugene Faddis was born in Arkansas in 1926. He was the third of nine children-eight boys and one girl. He was called “Gene” by most as well as his nickname, “Weiner.” I have never learned why he called Weiner, but I can guess it was because his was somewhat of a showoff, a “hot dog”, if you will. Sometime during the Dust Bowl years his family moved to California. My grandfather, Leonard Faddis was rough man with his children, sometimes disciplining them with a belt across the back, a slap or punch to the head or by picking up a rock he to throw at one of them if they were too far away to reach by hand. Grandpa was also a moonshiner in the hills of northwest Arkansas prior to the move west; not exactly a pillar of the community, nor the type to teach good morals to his many children. This, of course went on down the line to my siblings and me through our father.
As I stated earlier, my father, after becoming a paraplegic was treated in VA hospitals. He was a veteran as a result of a stint in the U.S. Army. I do not know when or why he was in military service and can only guess he was drafted during World War II. While he was in the Army, my Dad lost the middle finger of his left hand. The official story was that he was cleaning his .45 caliber sidearm when it went off and shot him in the finger. Recently I learned from my dad’s only living brother, Jim, that Dad intentionally shot off his finger so he could get out of the Army.
My father ended up with a hand that, when balled into a fist, was nothing less than a weapon that served him well as he participated in one of his favorite pastimes – bar fighting. Dad and his brothers loved going to bars where they would drink beer, play guitars and sing to entertain the other patrons, chase women, and – most of all fight other tough men who were there to do the same. Dad’s left hand was given a name. It was referred to as “Old Crip.” I have never been told why, but I suppose it was either because it was crippled or because he used it to “cripple” his opponents.
There are many stories I have heard about his prowess and skill as a bare knuckles fighter. The most memorable one occurred around 1957 shortly after I was born. We had just moved to Turlock, CA from Redding, CA where I was born. Upon arriving in Turlock, my Dad began to ask around about who was considered to be the toughest man in Stanislaus County. The answer was always, “Manuel Victor.” My dad wanted to know this information because it was his goal to be known as the toughest man in the county which could only be accomplished by besting Victor in a bar fight. Don’t ask me why, but that’s what he aspired to.
One Saturday night, Dad went down to the 99 Club where he knew Manual Victor hung out. Victor was the president and leader of a local outlaw motorcycle club called the Barhoppers. He walked into the barroom which had a lot of Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles parked out front. The story goes that Dad sat down at the bar and the bartender asked him, “Can I help you?” Dad responded by saying, “Yeah, my name is Gene Faddis and I’m here to kick Manual Victor’s [backside].” Victor just happened to be sitting next to my father, heard the comment and immediately took him up on the offer. They went over to the dance floor and were quickly in the center of a large group of the Barhoppers who formed a boxing ring of sorts. The end result was that my dad beat and bloodied Victor by knocking him out, and, in turn, his “right hand man” who was, as tradition dictated, the president’s bodyguard.
From that day forward, my father proudly wore the unofficial crown of the “Toughest Man in Stanislaus County.” He took on all comers, and there were many; never losing a fight to any of them. Manual Victor took the defeat pretty well. He tried to get my father to join the club and be his new right hand man, offering to build my dad his own Harley. Dad was not interested in being a “biker” and never joined.
When I was born on April 2, 1957, my father went to a bar in Redding he knew well – Stan’s Place, his favorite beer joint. All of his buddies congratulated him and bought him drinks. Someone asked him the name of his new son. Dad explained that he and my mother had not picked one out yet. The owner of the bar laid a $100.00 bill on the bar and said he would give it to my dad if he named his son after him. Thus, I was christened Stanley Eugene Faddis.
My dad was tough and he was determined that all three of his sons would be tough, too. It was important to him that we lived up to the reputation of our last name. Around the towns of Ceres, Turlock and up north in Susanville, where he and his brothers had grown up, the name Faddis was synonymous with being able to not only handle oneself in a fight but to be able to whip everyone we fought. He told my two brothers, Jeffrey, Kevin and me that if he ever heard of us backing down from a fight, he would whip us. He also discouraged our losing a fight no matter how big the opponent.
My dad’s job in construction required him to work from 7 in the morning to around 3:30 p.m. One evening after work he was socializing at a bar in Ceres called Doug’s Den. He got into a fight with a guy whose three buddies jumped in when they saw Dad beating up their friend. They gave him a bad beating using pool table cues. Dad drove home and called two of his brothers, Jim and Dick, in Susanville which is a five hour drive. They jumped in a car and made the drive to Ceres in a little over three hours. They went back to Doug’s Den and beat the living daylights out of the four men. This was their mentality – family sticks by family, and you don’t mess with us, especially in an unfair fight.
Another thing that Dad was popular for was that he would break bottles over his own head to get a laugh and a reaction out of people. I saw him break many bottles this way including beer and soft drink bottles. He could even shatter those thick, spiral Pepsi bottles in this manner. Many times he got cut on his scalp and his head looked like a road map from all the scars. It was estimated he had broken hundreds of bottles on his skull, maybe as many as a thousand. I do not know why or how he started doing this, but the crowd he ran with loved it and my dad loved the attention it got. Gene was the life of every party he was at.
In November of 1968 Dad was at the Long Beach VA hospital following a third operation to repair the damage and to help relieve the pain he almost constantly suffered from the injury. It did not work. In order to relieve the pain, the doctors had prescribed morphine to help Dad cope. On the evening of November 20, he called us from his hospital bed and talked to each one of his four children and then Mom. He said he loved us and to be good- the usual things a father might say to his kids. We had planned to go see him at Christmas time during our break from school, so we also talked about that. We learned the next day that after ending the phone call, Dad went to sleep. Approximately a half hour later, he took a deep breath and died from a massive coronary. He was forty-two years old. I was eleven then.
After I got older I began to wonder how a man who had been so physically fit could die of a heart attack at such an early age. I now wonder if Dad took his own life by saving up a handful of morphine and, after telling each one of his children he loved them and to “be good”, swallowed it and went to sleep forever. As I stated earlier, having to be cared for in the manner that was required must have been very humiliating for him. Facing the facts that the surgeons could not fix him, the constant pain he suffered and coming home to be taken care of by his wife and kids could have been too much for him to bear. I just don’t know.
After this, Mom was faced with caring for her four children, ages 11, 10, 8 and 6. Her income was from Dad’s Social Security and Veteran’s pensions – approximately $400.00 a month. We lived in a Housing Authority (HA) residence, a four bedroom, 1 ½ bath for which our rent was about $65.00 a month. We lived in a cul-de-sac of other HA homes. There were a total of six houses and one duplex, so, eight single family homes in all. We had approximately 30 kids on our street and we all got along famously.
Mom did not have it easy. She was thirty-three when my father died and she raised her kids the best she knew how. But I know it was difficult. Foremost, she had three sons who had been taught to be tough, even to the point of meanness. She possessed a high school education and a cosmetology degree, neither of which helped much as she had relied on my dad to handle the discipline. When necessary, she wielded a 2-inch wide belt to lay across our backsides, which was often. There was never any doubt that she loved us as much as any mother could possibly love her children. To me, she was the greatest mom in the world. To be continued....? We shall see. Thanks for reading.
For years now, I have thought about writing a book. Friends and family have encouraged me to do this. I have felt, at times, a calling to write a book. Why? Several reasons come to mind including that I have had a lot of varied life experiences, have met and am related to some interesting people whose stories should be told, and I have a keen, sometimes odd sense of humor that can be entertaining. But most of all, I have been moved to write because I have lost all five members of my immediate family, four of them to drug or alcohol related car collisions.
As a result of that last sentence, I am sometimes asked how I handle such tragedies, what helped me escape such an ending, why are you different, Stan? etc. My answer to that is Jesus Christ and the following is our story – mine, my family’s and my relationship to God, my Heavenly Father.
In 1966, my father was working for a construction crew that was building the California Aqueduct canal. At that point, the work crew was working near Firebaugh, CA. My Dad worked all week there, staying in a motel near the worksite, and would come home after work each Friday. In August, Dad stopped off at the local bar after quitting time and got drunk before driving the 80 miles back home to our house in Ceres, CA. Somewhere just out of Firebaugh, he crashed his old station wagon. A twelve pound sledge hammer in the back slid up and hit my father in the back through the seat. The sledge crushed several vertebrae, severing his spinal cord in the process. As a result, my once very active, strong and virile father lost the use of his legs; he was rendered a paraplegic.
I was nine years old when Dad got hurt and have several memories of him during the next two years. Dad was in and out of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) hospitals where attempts were unsuccessfully made to repair the damage to his spinal cord. During the time he was at home, he spent most of his time in a hospital that someone had set up in one of the bedrooms. I often slept next to him on the floor on a pallet because I loved him so much and wanted to be close to him as much as possible. Being the oldest of four siblings, I felt like I needed to help my Mom care for my father in whatever way I could.
One of those ways was to sometimes help him out of bed and into his wheelchair and then into the bathroom to bathe and assist with his bowel movements. Even then, I was big and strong enough to lift Dad out of his chair and get him into the bathtub. I would then press on his lower abdomen to force the excrement out, after which I cleaned it up, threw it in the toilet and helped him to wash up. Afterwards, I got him back to his bed and we went on with our day. Doing this for Dad did not phase me at all and I was proud to help him, but as a man I now understand how humiliating this must have been for him.
Another memory recalls Dad’s independence and his refusal to just lie in that hospital bed. One time when all his kids were at school and Mom was gone somewhere, he got up, wheeled outside and took a shovel and one of the handsaws out of his toolbox. He sawed off the handle of the shovel to about a three foot length, got into our family car, which had an automatic transmission and proceed to use the shovel handle to operate the brake and accelerator pedals. Dad spent the day driving around the county, sightseeing and looking up several friends who were undoubtedly surprised to see Gene driving around in a car all by himself!
In order to help people understand my history and upbringing, I plan to tell stories to illustrate these things. All of us are shaped into the beings we are through the influence of our family, associates and life experiences. The first one I have is about who my Dad was and how we related to one another and the world view he possessed and passed on to me. I have to say up front, these are not the most positive or healthy of things, but they are my reality.
Harold Eugene Faddis was born in Arkansas in 1926. He was the third of nine children-eight boys and one girl. He was called “Gene” by most as well as his nickname, “Weiner.” I have never learned why he called Weiner, but I can guess it was because his was somewhat of a showoff, a “hot dog”, if you will. Sometime during the Dust Bowl years his family moved to California. My grandfather, Leonard Faddis was rough man with his children, sometimes disciplining them with a belt across the back, a slap or punch to the head or by picking up a rock he to throw at one of them if they were too far away to reach by hand. Grandpa was also a moonshiner in the hills of northwest Arkansas prior to the move west; not exactly a pillar of the community, nor the type to teach good morals to his many children. This, of course went on down the line to my siblings and me through our father.
As I stated earlier, my father, after becoming a paraplegic was treated in VA hospitals. He was a veteran as a result of a stint in the U.S. Army. I do not know when or why he was in military service and can only guess he was drafted during World War II. While he was in the Army, my Dad lost the middle finger of his left hand. The official story was that he was cleaning his .45 caliber sidearm when it went off and shot him in the finger. Recently I learned from my dad’s only living brother, Jim, that Dad intentionally shot off his finger so he could get out of the Army.
My father ended up with a hand that, when balled into a fist, was nothing less than a weapon that served him well as he participated in one of his favorite pastimes – bar fighting. Dad and his brothers loved going to bars where they would drink beer, play guitars and sing to entertain the other patrons, chase women, and – most of all fight other tough men who were there to do the same. Dad’s left hand was given a name. It was referred to as “Old Crip.” I have never been told why, but I suppose it was either because it was crippled or because he used it to “cripple” his opponents.
There are many stories I have heard about his prowess and skill as a bare knuckles fighter. The most memorable one occurred around 1957 shortly after I was born. We had just moved to Turlock, CA from Redding, CA where I was born. Upon arriving in Turlock, my Dad began to ask around about who was considered to be the toughest man in Stanislaus County. The answer was always, “Manuel Victor.” My dad wanted to know this information because it was his goal to be known as the toughest man in the county which could only be accomplished by besting Victor in a bar fight. Don’t ask me why, but that’s what he aspired to.
One Saturday night, Dad went down to the 99 Club where he knew Manual Victor hung out. Victor was the president and leader of a local outlaw motorcycle club called the Barhoppers. He walked into the barroom which had a lot of Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles parked out front. The story goes that Dad sat down at the bar and the bartender asked him, “Can I help you?” Dad responded by saying, “Yeah, my name is Gene Faddis and I’m here to kick Manual Victor’s [backside].” Victor just happened to be sitting next to my father, heard the comment and immediately took him up on the offer. They went over to the dance floor and were quickly in the center of a large group of the Barhoppers who formed a boxing ring of sorts. The end result was that my dad beat and bloodied Victor by knocking him out, and, in turn, his “right hand man” who was, as tradition dictated, the president’s bodyguard.
From that day forward, my father proudly wore the unofficial crown of the “Toughest Man in Stanislaus County.” He took on all comers, and there were many; never losing a fight to any of them. Manual Victor took the defeat pretty well. He tried to get my father to join the club and be his new right hand man, offering to build my dad his own Harley. Dad was not interested in being a “biker” and never joined.
When I was born on April 2, 1957, my father went to a bar in Redding he knew well – Stan’s Place, his favorite beer joint. All of his buddies congratulated him and bought him drinks. Someone asked him the name of his new son. Dad explained that he and my mother had not picked one out yet. The owner of the bar laid a $100.00 bill on the bar and said he would give it to my dad if he named his son after him. Thus, I was christened Stanley Eugene Faddis.
My dad was tough and he was determined that all three of his sons would be tough, too. It was important to him that we lived up to the reputation of our last name. Around the towns of Ceres, Turlock and up north in Susanville, where he and his brothers had grown up, the name Faddis was synonymous with being able to not only handle oneself in a fight but to be able to whip everyone we fought. He told my two brothers, Jeffrey, Kevin and me that if he ever heard of us backing down from a fight, he would whip us. He also discouraged our losing a fight no matter how big the opponent.
My dad’s job in construction required him to work from 7 in the morning to around 3:30 p.m. One evening after work he was socializing at a bar in Ceres called Doug’s Den. He got into a fight with a guy whose three buddies jumped in when they saw Dad beating up their friend. They gave him a bad beating using pool table cues. Dad drove home and called two of his brothers, Jim and Dick, in Susanville which is a five hour drive. They jumped in a car and made the drive to Ceres in a little over three hours. They went back to Doug’s Den and beat the living daylights out of the four men. This was their mentality – family sticks by family, and you don’t mess with us, especially in an unfair fight.
Another thing that Dad was popular for was that he would break bottles over his own head to get a laugh and a reaction out of people. I saw him break many bottles this way including beer and soft drink bottles. He could even shatter those thick, spiral Pepsi bottles in this manner. Many times he got cut on his scalp and his head looked like a road map from all the scars. It was estimated he had broken hundreds of bottles on his skull, maybe as many as a thousand. I do not know why or how he started doing this, but the crowd he ran with loved it and my dad loved the attention it got. Gene was the life of every party he was at.
In November of 1968 Dad was at the Long Beach VA hospital following a third operation to repair the damage and to help relieve the pain he almost constantly suffered from the injury. It did not work. In order to relieve the pain, the doctors had prescribed morphine to help Dad cope. On the evening of November 20, he called us from his hospital bed and talked to each one of his four children and then Mom. He said he loved us and to be good- the usual things a father might say to his kids. We had planned to go see him at Christmas time during our break from school, so we also talked about that. We learned the next day that after ending the phone call, Dad went to sleep. Approximately a half hour later, he took a deep breath and died from a massive coronary. He was forty-two years old. I was eleven then.
After I got older I began to wonder how a man who had been so physically fit could die of a heart attack at such an early age. I now wonder if Dad took his own life by saving up a handful of morphine and, after telling each one of his children he loved them and to “be good”, swallowed it and went to sleep forever. As I stated earlier, having to be cared for in the manner that was required must have been very humiliating for him. Facing the facts that the surgeons could not fix him, the constant pain he suffered and coming home to be taken care of by his wife and kids could have been too much for him to bear. I just don’t know.
After this, Mom was faced with caring for her four children, ages 11, 10, 8 and 6. Her income was from Dad’s Social Security and Veteran’s pensions – approximately $400.00 a month. We lived in a Housing Authority (HA) residence, a four bedroom, 1 ½ bath for which our rent was about $65.00 a month. We lived in a cul-de-sac of other HA homes. There were a total of six houses and one duplex, so, eight single family homes in all. We had approximately 30 kids on our street and we all got along famously.
Mom did not have it easy. She was thirty-three when my father died and she raised her kids the best she knew how. But I know it was difficult. Foremost, she had three sons who had been taught to be tough, even to the point of meanness. She possessed a high school education and a cosmetology degree, neither of which helped much as she had relied on my dad to handle the discipline. When necessary, she wielded a 2-inch wide belt to lay across our backsides, which was often. There was never any doubt that she loved us as much as any mother could possibly love her children. To me, she was the greatest mom in the world. To be continued....? We shall see. Thanks for reading.
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