Farming, fighting, forged into steel: We shall not see their like again

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27-03-2025

I know it's a mistake posting photos of Dad, because everyone's gonna look at him, then at me, and wonder "What happened? How'd the gene pool get so diluted?"
But I'm proud to be even a sliver of this great man, so I'll share this glamour shot anyway.
By the fact he's sporting stripes, he must have been 21 or 22. Dad grew up in Kennedy, Lamar County, an hour from Tuscaloosa as the drunken crow flies. As with so many spots, it's basically there to stop cartographers going mad over acres of blank space.
It's so small, the cow is hunchbacked. It's so small, the sign has "Now entering Kennedy, Pop. Never More Than 500" on both sides. It's so small, they saw Mayberry as raucous.
Seriously, it's so small, Kennedy has just one church.
What I'm saying is you can't get there from here, though you can leave there for here ― Tuscaloosa, and the University of Alabama ― a popular pastime. Dad and his twin, Lloyd, were both sharp as tacks ― about 30% to 40% of any down-home phrasing I use came from Troy ― and could have thrived anywhere.
Instead of starting a sprawling two-county fight, as they, by legend, did in teen years, or playing football with matching faces and mirrored numbers ― 86 and 68 ― or coming home between 11 and 12 ― not wishing to lie to the Rev. John Greenwood Cobb or his second wife, their mom, Mrs. Evie, the boys named shrubs flanking the porch 11 and 12 ― they'd sometimes scrape up the scratch to roll into the big city.
Yep: Millport, or Reform (pronounced, as fellow Alabamians know, REE-form), each more than doubling Kennedy's population.
Tuscaloosa was practically Vegas, how Dad hinted about the crimson provocations and wily lures of the Druid City, population then about 48,000. If the Reverend had known our seemingly sacrilegious nickname, the boys probably would have been barred, so to speak, even though Tuscaloosa ran dry from Prohibition until the 1950s. Dad and pals knew how to drive down to Nick's before it was in its current Sticks, when it was still across the line in a wet county.
And they could drive, despite slim monetary pickin's, sixth and seventh of a passel of farm kids, because they ran a business fixing up old cars.
Look there. And you thought your relatives looked cool in archaic photos. Boom goes the Cobb dynamite.
Dad was top of his class, and would have been even in an actual metropolis. My brothers and I were fortunate to get his brains, his mostly even temperament, his ability to laugh at himself, his sense of decency. My two-years-older brother Scotty and I frequently topped all the standardized test scores. We began with massive potential, and again, please don't compare us, but also again, thanks Dad.
What we didn't have was his background, which created discipline, drive.
We will not see their like again. That's not to say there can't be good folks, or that current service people are not noble, heroic and worthy. And it's not saying there aren't myriad ways to serve.
We ― meaning me ― just don't have what they had: Hard times, forging them into steel.
Oh, wait. I just remembered D.C., where an unelected, likely illegal immigrant with a nasty habit of saluting froths forward a gaggle of microcephalic basement-boys hacking at, among other good things, services benefitting veterans. Different kinds of hard, like a callus. Like scars.
Dad went to war as a buck private, got promoted to PFC, corporal, then field-promoted to sergeant. Came home on a golden wound, and after long rehab, graduated from UA summa cum laude.
When I'd ask ― as a callow kid, visiting Mrs. Evie's, where Dad stored his foot locker, the scratchy wool uniform weighted with badges and ribbons, the copy of Silver Screen magazine in which he's "fed the happy way" by film star Adrian Booth/Lorna Gray ― about being G.I. Joe, he'd fall unusually somber, remembering leading fellow young men who also wanted to build a future.
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When I was 20 and 21, the only thing I could lead was a ruckus; the only folks who looked to me were soon-to-be-exes wondering when I might settle down; the only thing I carried was poor-decision regret.
A lot of the young folks weren't as lucky as Troy, who left behind blood and a small chunk of his upper right calf, on a cold blasted hill halfway around the world. Many never left.
Back then, folks understood sacrifice. Today we have mad dogs, a ravening pack champing to throw folks out of work, slash jobs and agencies, while in reality, dodging regulations for their failing companies, and avoiding jail.
Efficiency: When you throw the baby out WITH the dirty water, less mess!
Yay?
I hear Dad, still. I hear him in my own voice, though his was softer, more Bill Clinton in appeasement mode. People ask me why, having grown up in Alabama, I don't have an accent. Or "accck-seee-ent." Mostly because Dad didn't. He sharpened or sanded, or both, consonants and vowels, better to get along, better to present, as a modern businessman must, as big city.
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I hear him in my godchild E.A., in shared explosive laughs ― which sound basically like the same person, only in baritone and alto ― during Alice in Wonderland hijinks, last weekend at Haven.
I hear him railing against the voodoo economics of a man he'd voted for, first time around. I hear him wishing Shirley Chisholm would become president, because hers was the best speech he'd heard at any convention. I hear him saying he didn't trust that Bill, the one that was his sorta-soundalike, but had to admit the guy was actually doing the job.
I hear him hard-pressed to find anything amusing, anything sane about the current D.C. crop.
I hear his leadership, to all those hoping for a golden future: Stop whining. Get up. Go to work. Do something.
Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Potential isn't enough: Stop whining, get to work | MARK HUGHES COBB