This is my series about Clyde E. "Squeaky" Anthony.

Clyde was a gangster. A biker. An outlaw. 

He was definitely an outlaw. He taught me to be a man, and I am eternally grateful for that. He taught me no fear. Or rather, he taught me to only fear himself, and so I did.

He was also a father. He loved his kids deeply. I know this because I knew him. Possibly, I knew him better than anyone ever knew him.

He didn't drink much alcohol. On a hot day he would keep a case or two of beer in the garage and one or two cold one in the fridge. When it was hot, after we finished for the day, I remember he would go in (not often) and get a beer and drink the hell out of that cold beer.

I think I never saw him drink more than 1, I assume he had a 2nd a few times but mostly he would just have 1 or maybe 2.

Clyde would work all day on his cars. He was also a stay-at-home Dad and Husband.

He was the first of his kind, perhaps. He watched the kids while his wife was at work. He would prepare dinner and it was always great. Home cooked food. He could make the best spaghetti sauce in the whole world. I'm not kidding. He could make fudge and showed me how but to this day I can't do it like he did.

He was sort of "mad" all the time. He would "teach" us things, but it was often taught as if you were doing something wrong. Not really with an instructive loving tone. I infer he was probably taught the same by his parents. His father was quite a man. Very tall (Clyde was short), and both Clyde and his father, Clyde, worked VERY hard. Clyde senior would cut trees, bring them up to the house, cut it up for lumber or firewood and would do that until he died in his 90s.

Clyde Sr. owned thousands of acres of land. He never stopped managing those forests until he died.

Clyde my dad was short, but he could play basketball like you wouldn't believe. He grew up playing B-ball in Louisiana and he had an incredible jump shot. He was only about my height, I'm 5 foot 6 inches, but when he jumped I think his calves were at my eyes. He made a LOT of shots on our homemade basketball court. The goal and backboard were on a giant oak tree and we played in the driveway in front of the garage.

Clyde was into cars. Race cars, go carts, homemade chariots he could attach to the dog. When his daughter was born, he doted over her. We made a special chariot for her she could specially ride in. We had a huge dog who served as the horse. 

Anna would laugh and squeal with her daddy.

Another thing Clyde gave me was music.

Blue Oyster Cult, Eric Clapton, The Highwayman

He loved music. He would show me music, show the stuff he thought was good. We kept a record player and all his records on some homemade shelves in our house. It was just cinder blocks and boards, but he torched the boards and painted the cinder blocks and it looked really good. He was that kind of guy. He did stuff well. Just did it well.

He was smart, talented, industrious. He had a sense of humor and would try and clown and laugh. That was a bit harder for him. Being grown, I think he just carried a lot of guilt and really I think he was made to feel bad a lot by people around him.

Personally, I really disliked the guy. I wasn't his fan and later in life when he and my mother divorced, I wanted to have nothing to do with him. I won't elaborate but He was not my father and I had some significant animosity toward him at that time.

Part of that, maybe a lot, was because my Mother lied to us, committed insurance fraud, destroyed my most cherished personal property, and then told us that he did it.

I had a huge stamp collection from my Grandfather. He was a Post Master and would give us stacks of unopened, mint condition stamps. All kinds of collections. My first shotgun, a .410 single shot. A set of hand painted chop sticks I received from my Japanese pen pal.

But that's a story for another day.