Michael D. Davis.

They say John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, but I don’t think so. I think it was my father, the old one, who is actually to blame. I think after 70 years of pinching pennies, the old one’s vice-like grip on the president’s face has retroactively smothered Lincoln.

So, It was my Ma’s birthday last month, and around her birthday, one of Ma’s friends dropped off a gift for her at the house. The gift was one of those whirly-gig things that go in the yard, that the wind spins, you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, Ma’s friend sets up the whirly-gig outside at some point and its attached to this nice green post. When Ma saw it, she loved it.

When Ma inspected the whirly-gig, she said, “It was nice of them to attach it to a new post.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said, “I’m pretty sure that green post came with the whirly-gig when they bought it.”

She insisted it didn’t and that I look closer as the whirly-gig had been attached to this new post. I inspected it and she was right. I then said, “That’s a nice post, I wonder where they got a post like that.” I received an odd look, then realization crept over Ma’s face right before the laughter started.

Okay, I have seen a metal fence post before. I’ve seen dozens of them. I’ve even driven a few metal fence posts into the ground. However, throughout my entire life, until last month, I had never seen one that wasn’t rusted and bent. I don’t know where my father got his metal fence posts, but every single one of them can only be described as “straight-ish.” some of them that I’ve seen had a full on right curve at the bottom. It just never occurred to me that they didn’t make metal fence posts wonky, curved, and covered in flaking rust.

That is nothing compared to some things, though. The other day I come home and the light in the bathroom is out. So, I unscrew the bulb and go to where the extra light bulbs are. The old one had four different boxes of lightbulbs of varying shape and wattage. The first box had a single dead bulb in it. The second box had two bulbs inside, both different wattages. In the end, I found a working bulb at the bottom of the last box.

The last bulb box, like some of the others, was distinct due to its Goodwill price tag. My father thrifts for light bulbs. We aren’t a fancy house that goes to someplace like Walmart or the Dollar Store for such things. No, if my father sees a box of bulbs at a garage sale, he’ll pick them up.

Now, for the few that may not find the light bulb thrifing ridiculous, let me point a few things out here.

No, two lightbulbs in our lightbulb cache seem to have the same wattage.

In the lightbulb boxes, there are several dead, useless, blackened, rattling lightbulbs for some reason.

When I did find the right bulb the other day, and I got the light on in the bathroom, the bulb flickered. The bulb has intermittently flickered ever since. Have you ever gone to the bathroom in a room with a flickering light? It’s unsettling.

So, as I brush my teeth under the flickering light of a fifty-cent garage sale light bulb, I wonder in amazement at the thought of a shining new metal fence post. And I think about how my father grips his pennies tight, and slowly kills Lincoln one partially used lightbulb at a time.