MY PARENTS were rock-solid members of the so-called Silent Generation, born into the Great Depression and coming of age during World War II. They married in 1957, determined to maintain a facade of proper behavior, grooming, and appearance. Mom had learned to touch-type with the goal of being a secretary but really wanted to be a mother and a homemaker. My father had taken the appropriate steps of a proper citizen—active in church, president of his college fraternity and the Newman Club, an officer in Big Brothers of America. He joined the Toastmasters Club to improve his public speaking and became a member of the Kiwanis Club for business connections.
Throughout the 1960s, Dad wrote at night and on weekends, producing eighteen short stories and nine novels. He worked in the unfinished basement, facing a tiny black-and-white television set that received one channel. The walls leaked with every rain. Tangled tree roots caused the septic tank to periodically reverse its flow into the basement. On Saturday and Sunday he sat at the dining room table with an old manual typewriter. He worked with astonishing speed, slamming the carriage return several times per minute. The machine vibrated the table, which made his ashtray and water glass travel randomly about the surface. At least once a day, he knocked the carriage into his glass and sent water flying across fresh manuscript pages. Dad would curse mightily, aiming his rage at anyone nearby. By age eight, I began devoting my weekends to the outdoors. I needed solitude as much as my father did.
Dad began using lowercase letters for his formal name in every instance. His books were by “andrew j. offutt,” and his letters were signed “andy.” The insurance company he formed was “andrew j. offutt associates.” He told me the reason—he wanted to stand out from the crowd. “They’ll remember me that way,” he said. And he was right. By 1968 Dad operated insurance agencies in three towns, winning awards for his salesmanship and supervisory ability. He later told me that the movers and shakers in Kentucky politics, the big boys in Frankfort, were looking him over. He drove a four-door Mercedes-Benz, the only one in the county, and assembled an impeccable wardrobe of tailored suits and conservative ties. As he put it: “When you leave a place, you want people to remember that you were very well dressed, but not what you were wearing.”
At age thirty-five he’d achieved his goals—social status, big house, nice car, his own business. He also felt snared by his values. He didn’t like children. He made it clear to the family that he’d fathered kids due to Catholicism and resented the Church for the burden. The only planned birth was my brother. He wished he’d stopped at two. I spoke to my younger sisters privately, reassuring them that Dad loved them, he just didn’t like religion.
Though highly successful as a businessman, Dad was frustrated and miserable. He slept poorly and never enough. He skipped breakfast and drank a viscous liquid called Metrecal for lunch. As soon as he came home, he dropped two tablets of Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water, then switched to beer. Since childhood, all he’d ever wanted to do was write. Now he had more ideas and less time, and he hated the life he’d dutifully built. He wanted a way out but wouldn’t leave my mother. Instead, he spread his misery to the family. Because my father’s abuse was verbal, I developed a kind of emotional telepathy. My role was to deflect and defuse with quick-witted comments that would lighten the prevailing mood. No one strained against Dad more than I did, but no one could make him laugh as readily. He needed me in that capacity. I learned to be funny.
In the mid-sixties two significant events influenced the future of our family. My mother recalls Dad sitting in the living room reading a pornographic novel he’d bought through the mail. Dad hurled it across the room and said, “I can write better than this!” She suggested he do so. By 1969 he’d published five and had contracts for two more.
By then the full emergence of my permanent teeth had made a mess of my mouth, forming three rows of front teeth. The canines occupied first position. My incisors were directly behind them, followed by the lateral incisors. My smile led with fangs, then two rows of bigger teeth, producing the appearance of a miniature shark.
According to my mother, the condition of my mouth didn’t matter to Dad, because his family were country people who let their teeth go. Since his early twenties, he’d worn a full set of dentures, upper and lower. For the first time in twelve years of marriage, Mom took a stand, insisting that she go to work and finance my orthodontic needs. With all the kids in school, she had the bulk of her days free. Dad spent most of his time unhappily driving between multiple offices for his insurance agency. He believed he could double his writing output with a full-time typist. If he quit his job to write, and Mom typed his manuscripts for submission, they’d make enough money to fix my teeth.