When I was the commander of the 508th Maintenance Detachment at Fort Lewis, Washington, my parents and my brother Craig and his wife came out to visit me during the last week of August 1986. It turned out that my parents never had any intention of visiting me. They had taken one look at me and they had passed judgment. On a recent deployment to Central America, my body had tanned really dark brown. Apparently I was too dark to be related to them. I thought that they had come out to spend time with my family because my son Wright Junior had been born. But I think that I have beaten that topic rather severely to death previously, so I’ll leave the dead horse alone. My parents were apparently having a helluva good time smoking and joking and drinking and gambling with my aunt Pearl and uncle Leo. Of course, they were also reminiscing about all the good old times that they hadn’t been having. And they were telling lies just as fast as they could get a word in edgewise. But somewhere during the middle of the first or second week of September, my parents must have gotten tired of the bullshit again. Either that or my aunt Pearl got tired of wine-ing and dining them. Mostly wine-ing them. I don’t think anybody ate too much or too often when they started in on their drinking binges. But somewhere during the early part of September, I got another phone call from my parents asking me if I would take them up to Mount Rainier. I figured we could make another day trip out, so I had my wife prepare another picnic lunch like she had when we went to the beach. I told my parents to bring some warm jackets because it was likely to be cold when we got up to the visitor center at Mount Rainier. They thought I was jerking their chain because it was almost 80 degrees in Tacoma. But I reminded them that it could be snowing up at the visitor center at Mount Rainier. I told them if all else failed, that they should go outside and look up toward the mountain. They would notice that the mountain was socked in by clouds. That was always a portend of foul weather at the mountain peak. Of course, a greenhorn from North Dakota who had visited here maybe once or twice in his life was an expert on the climate up at Mount Rainier. So, he would obviously know more about the local climate up there at the mountain. Than somebody, like say me, whom lived here. I always loved closet experts that just knew everything about everything you were talking about automatically. My old man was a closet expert. I remember one time when I was in high school, he and I got into an argument about diesel engines. He tried to tell me that diesel engines had spark plugs. I had to go get the encyclopedia off the shelf to prove to the idiot that he didn’t have a clue what in the hell he was talking about. On the day of our trip, my family and I along with my brother Craig and his wife piled into my van and we all headed over to my aunt Pearl’s house to pick up my parents. Then, we set out for Mount Rainier. After we passed through the small town of Ashford, Washington, we started to encounter snow along the sides of the road. That was a “I told you so” moment. The main entrance to Mount Rainier National Park was a little over four miles up the highway from that town. When we got to the main gate, the park ranger told us that the park was open all the way up to the visitor center, but that there was snow on the ground in significant accumulations up at the visitor center. When the park ranger told us about the snow accumulation, my old man’s face turned white as a sheet. That right there was a Kodak moment. The only problem was that I didn’t have my camera ready to take pictures right at that instant. Dammit! A perfect opportunity blown. I could have gloated, but his face said it all. There was no need to gloat. And the beauty of it was that everybody in the car saw the Kodak moment. Oh yeah. The old man wasn’t going to live that one down. Then, the Ranger told us to enjoy our stay. We proceeded on to the Paradise ranger station and the Jackson Visitor Center. When we arrived at the visitor center, the temperature was quite chilly as I had expected. My family and my brother Craig and his wife were prepared for the chilly weather. We had brought warm jackets. I noticed that my mom had also brought a warm jacket. But my stubborn old man just had to do things his own goddamn way. Of course, he had to be right, and I had to be wrong. So, he naturally wore a light windbreaker. I noticed that it didn’t take very long before he was freezing his ass. There always has to be one jackass in every crowd. I mean I get it. I know that the sonofabitch absolutely hated my guts. But dammit, man. He would do stupid shit just to spite me. What in the hell was up with that? Well, the rest of us had a pretty good time playing in the snow. My wife stayed behind in the car with my newborn son because she didn’t want him to get sick. After about 10 minutes of picture taking, my mom went into the car to join her. The old man, who was obviously freezing his ass, disappeared into the visitor center. When we were ready to eat our picnic lunch, we had to go hunt for him. After we ate the picnic lunch, we played in the snow for a little while longer. And then, we got ready to go. We had seen enough of Mount Rainier. My old man’s lack of preparation and planning for the trip proved to be the only exercise in futility that we experienced on our trip.
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