Meet Jonathan “Merry” Meriwether, and some new youth and young adult fiction

Most everybody calls me Jon. That would be my friends and often my Dad. Some call me Merry. More of that in a moment. For my mother, not mom, always mother, it was Jonathan. When she was really pissed, sorry for my French, like most “moms” it was always my full name, Jonathan Adam Anderson Meriwether. Yeah. Three names. First, middle, and second middle, or whatever they call it.

No big deal. Some kids hated their full names. Not me. I thought it sounded pretty cool. But it requires some explanation.

The first was for my Father’s best friend in the war who, as he says it, “Staff Sergeant Jonathan Buckwalter saved my ass more than a few times from those stinkin’ Krauts. Hate those Nazis. I’d kill more of them, if I could.”

The middle because all the men in the Meriwether family had it, but nobody seems to remember why. Maybe Adam from the Bible, the first man, Genesis, you know. Some thought is from John Adams, one of the founding fathers. I don’t think anybody really cared.

The second middle came from my mother’s father, Grandpa Andy. But as of three years ago, Lucky Andy by family folk. He was riding his dated Schwinn bike, with skinny wheels and ram handle bars, out on Farmer’s Lane, three miles out of town, when a light Cessna two prop dropped out of the sky and nearly hit him. It smashed into a soy bean field, killing all on board, but not Grandpa. Four people died, including an eight year old child, severed at the neck, but not Grandpa. To this day he wonders about his fate. What did God do? Why did a child die? Why not him? He doesn’t say much now or about the time. He only speaks when spoken to, and never when somebody, especially family, addressed him as Lucky Andy. Most everyday you can find him at home, in his Strato-Lounger, reading his Bible, Paul’s letter to the Romans in the RSV, with a cup of strong black coffee in hand.

As for Merry, it was my grandmother who called me that first. Grandma on my mother’s side. I remember the day. I was eight, celebrating my birthday. She was sitting in the corner of the front porch eating a piece of my birthday cake, red velvet with butter cream frosting, my favorite, and sipping a shot of bourbon. She called me over and said, “Meriwether’s are special, Jonathon. Always have been. In the old country, since coming from Scotland, they’ve always known things.” I remember looking and listening with eagerness (mostly because she give great gifts, meaning money), but not understanding. “You have that in you, Merry. Intuition.”

“What?” I asked.

“That wonderful thing inside, given by the Almighty, that sees things, what others don’t see. It’s a gift, Merry.”

“Why do yo call me Merry, Grandma?”

“Because Merry was the name of your great Grandmother, my Mother, and her mother before her. She had the gift of knowledge and foresight as well.”

I said, “I don’t understand, Grandma.”

“You will, child. Merry. Jonathan Adam Anderson Meriwether. You will. The spirit of discernment will come to you, and you’ll know it.” She sipped at her bourbon and winked. “You will, I promise.”

Really. I was kinda creeped out. But I loved Grandma Sarah, and not because of the cash gifts at Christmas, Easter, my birthday, and other times. Well, yeah, as I said before, I liked those. It kept my comic book collection up to date. We just got along. I could talk to her. About anything. At family gatherings, the Meriwether and Lawson families, that would be my Mother’s side, could get large, loud, let’s call it “enthusiastic”. Grandma Merriwether was always the calm in the storm. I liked that.

But to the present.

Grandma Sarah is gone. I crossed myself. God bless her.

I’m an only child, with all the stigma that goes with it. But I don’t give a shit. Sorry for my French again. I get some of that from my Father, Arthur Adam Meriwether. He’s plain spoken, and being so means more than a few vulgarities at times “Son,” he told me at eleven, “Shit is the first and best middle-class cuss word. If you’re flipping pancakes and they fall to the floor, or you’re trying to make eggs over easy and the yolks split, shit is the permissible expletive. Don’t fret about it.” Then he added, with a pause and a look to the living room where mother was reading Steinbeck, “But wait till when you’re older, and not in front of mother.”

Dad was a wordsmith, even though his job did not require it. He was an auto mechanic, and a darn good one, he would add. He said, “Give me a Ford, give me Packard. Give me a damn Studebaker. I can fix anything.” And he could.

He loved words because he loved reading. It got him through two wars. In between his day job he would read. Sometimes when things were slow at work, he would read then. Read anything. His library card was worn bare. He was on his third in nine years. But he didn’t read everything all the way through. If the book didn’t hook him, it was on to the next. Sometimes he just lingered over the Encyclopedia Britannica that mother forced him to buy for me and Clarice. Then father became a master of large knowledge digested into an entry of four pages or less. He didn’t care. That just made him a master of applying knowledge to life, at least that’s what he called it.

When he was teaching me how to ride a bike and I kept falling down, he said, “Failure is only an opportunity for success. Vince Lombardi said that. I’m pretty sure.” I said, “Who’s Vinch Bombardi?” Dad said, “Vince Lombardi. Designed cars for Chevy back in the Sixties. Or he played football. Not sure.” Dad wasn’t. He was normally focused but reading Britannica made things muddled. Too much information accumulated at a rapid pace. But that would never stop him.

“Just carry on,” he said, adding that Winston Churchill said that. He was probably right. At ten years old,  you don’t bother checking the facts.

I liked my dad. There were other kids that I knew who didn’t like their parents. They thought liking meant loving them. I thought loving them, faults and all, meant liking them also. Maybe I was the naive one, thinking my parents were my friends. but they were. Well, of course, they were weird. They’re parents.