Keith

Baby Keith. Mom’s idea of putting the baby’s age
right in the photo was a stroke of genius.

My mother often told me the story of the day she and Dad brought Keith home from the hospital. They laid him on the couch, and I, two-and-a-half years old, looked at him and said, “Where’s his mommy?”

At some point thereafter I comprehended the fact that my mommy and daddy were also Keith’s mommy and daddy, and that meant we were brothers.

When we were still quite young, Keith and I had our own TV program. It was broadcast every evening immediately after supper. The two of us would go into the living room, stand in front of a large mirror, and put on a comedy show. Its high-brow humor consisted mostly of two little boys dancing around and acting silly, the larger one repeatedly hitting the smaller one on the head and pushing him off camera because he had made a comment that was, in the estimation of the larger one, stupid—while the smaller one gamely played along, always smiling, willingly accepting his role.

It was, to trot out a cliché, comedy gold, and it’s a great loss to the history of American television that it never became a smash hit simply because it was never broadcast nationally.

Sometime later in childhood, I became the proud owner of the latest technological marvel: a cassette tape recorder! Here was another opportunity for us brothers to display our comic genius, making ridiculous recordings that, alas, are today lost to antiquity.

I’ve forgotten most of what we recorded, but I do recall interviewing Keith one time. I was probably in fifth grade, Keith was in third. In my interview somehow the idea of friends came up. Confident and popular Steve giggled and asked, “Do you have any friends?”

“Yeah, I have lots of ’em!” was his unaffected response. Maybe so, but none of them were worthy of my attention.

You see, Keith, poor, naïve lad that he was, had no social/popularity aspirations. Keith was happy just being Keith. He seemed to take things as they came, whereas I always tried to take things the way I wanted them to go. For example, when Keith played Little League baseball, he would stand in the outfield looking up at the sky with his legs crossed—definitely not a good posture to hold if a ball came his way. In high school, before any band or choir concert, I would be sick with nerves. And one time at a high school Christmas concert, even though Keith had a special role—singing the tenor line in a quartet—I was the one whose stomach was in knots.

Steve to Keith, before the concert: “Are you nervous?”

The expected, and therefore correct, answer would have been, “Yes! Worried sick!” To which I would have replied smugly, “Oh, really? I’m not.”

Instead, Keith shrugged and said, “Not really.”

I wasn’t singing with a quartet, and I was quivering inside like Grandma’s lime-carrot-pineapple gelatin salad. He had a prominent role, and he said, “Not really”! Of course he was nervous! Why couldn’t he just tell the truth? The answer was obvious: he was lying in an attempt to maintain some bizarre sort of superiority over me!

Thrown, I turned away, shooting back, “Well, just don’t stand there with your legs crossed!”

Walking away, I heard Keith say, “Uh … OK. Thanks!”

An Indian and a Running Back

Yes, Keith was happy just being Keith—except for when he wasn’t Keith.  And when he wasn’t Keith, he was either Apache leader Cochise or Cleveland Browns running back Leroy Kelly.

I don’t recall for sure, but I assume Keith-as-Cochise often ran around shirtless, since, as we white people of the 1960s knew from television, that was how all Indian men ran around all the time. In addition, Cochise had “Indian hair,” a piece of black construction paper cut into strips that was masking-taped around the back of his head. When Mom removed the tape at the end of playtime, many of Keith’s dark hairs were pulled painfully out by the tape’s unyielding grip. It didn’t matter, though—any momentary pain was worth the lasting joy of being Cochise for even an hour.

Sometimes Keith and I would play Indians together. Indians, as you history buffs know, lived under card tables covered in blankets in sunny playrooms. When we drew the blankets completely around to close the door, it was deliciously dark and secretive in there. And stuffy. When lunchtime came, Mom would show up with deer meat (aka “Spam”) for us to eat, just like Indians did. We loved it!

To be Leroy Kelly (at first, Keith thought his name was “Leroy Belly”), Keith would don a football jersey, and Mom would stuff the shoulders with towels to make shoulder pads. Keith called them his “hips,” but no one ever knew why.

The Fight

All boy—notice the shiner!

Speaking of football, allow me to fast-forward a few years. Keith and I are in the front yard starting a friendly two-man game of football; I was twelve, he was ten. I suspect I was there because Mom made me do it: I despise playing nearly all sports because early in life it became obvious to me that the rules of every sport were written to make me look as stupid as possible. So I didn’t take football nearly as seriously as did Keith.

Keith was the quarterback, I was the center. I leaned over, both hands on the ball, legs spread wide, ready to hike the ball to him.

“Hup, hup, HIKE!” he called. (Just as all Indians live under blanket-covered card tables and don’t wear shirts, so quarterbacks always yell, “Hup, hup, HIKE!”)

I snapped the ball to Keith, but I couldn’t resist doing the funniest, funniest thing! (It was so funny, wait till you hear!) I snapped the ball fast and hard, intentionally hitting my little brother right in the face. Then, literally adding insult to injury, I pranced across the yard laughing maniacally. (Cue Daffy Duck: “Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”)

It’s too bad our TV audience from the living-room mirror days wasn’t there to see it. They would have bent in half, screaming with hilarity.

Keith, on the other hand, was not screaming with hilarity. In fact, the sound he made was an animalistic throat-growl. And when I paused mid-prance to look back at him, he was headed straight for me, arms outstretched, face dark red, making scary guttural noises.

See, this was always the problem with Keith. He simply could not see the humor in little everyday occurrences.

The problem, though, went far beyond the stinging physical pain. I had desecrated the hallowed game of football, and such sacrilege must be avenged. In that moment, Keith was a Crusader, and I was a Moor.

Suddenly, I decided it was politic to stop prancing and start running, and thus began the worst fight Keith and I ever had. I’m still ashamed of it today.

Many details are hazy, but I remember that we ended up in the back yard, Keith fisticuffing while I tried to hold him off. Finally, I got him on the ground, crumpled in a ball, face-down.

Me, gasping for air: “Now. If I let you up, will you stop fighting?”

Keith, begrudgingly, gasping for air, grass clippings adhering to his lips and nose: “Yes.”

“You mean it? You promise?”

With clenched teeth: “Yes.”

“OK then.”

I released my hold, and Keith shot up vertically, his fists flailing wildly in my direction.

I had been duped! He lied! He lied to me! And I had been ready to call a cease-fire!

Now we were both mad, and the fight continued.

It ended—I am ashamed to tell you this—it ended when I was able to shove him against a barbed-wire fence with one of the barbs cruelly penetrating the skin on the back of his neck. I rubbed him up and down on it, making a deep scratch.

The next thing I recall is Mom in the yard with us, holding Keith by the shoulders and looking at the bloody back of his neck.

“Steve! What did you do!”

Breathing hard, angry, justified: “Shoved him into the fence.”

I can’t forget the way she looked at me. Her face showed disbelief and horror, as if I were a frightening stranger. She couldn’t conceive that I would do something so cruel.

Well. I took comfort in the fact that he started the whole thing. If we hadn’t been playing stupid football…!

Keith, Dad, Steve Biking, 1965

A Trip to the Store. And Back.

That event occurred during our family’s two years in Georgia, and it puts me in mind of another Georgia experience Keith and I shared.

About a half mile or so from our house, if you turned left out of our driveway onto Barkley Road, you would come to a little grocery store. Keith and I, entering fifth grade and seventh grade, respectively, obtained permission to ride our bikes down to the store to buy two bottles of pop.

Yes, “pop.” That is officially the correct name for carbonated nonalcoholic beverages because that’s what we said in Ohio. Keith and I had already learned, though, that all “pop” was “Coke-Coler” in Georgia. E.g., “Y’all wont some strawberry Coke-Coler?” “Y’all wont some root beer Coke-Coler?” “Y’all wont some Pepsi Coke-Coler?”

It was a great adventure, pedaling along the side of the road, making room for cars, talking and goofing around. Our comradeship was on solid ground that sunny summer day.

We got to the store and purchased the Coke-Colers. (His was real Coke-Coler. Mine was Dr Pepper Coke-Coler.) We put each in a brown paper bag, and we hung them over our handlebars, gripping them while we headed back home. This was a big treat—we almost never had pop at home.

On the way back home, two tough-looking teens on a moped zipped past us once, then twice. The third time they stopped, and Keith and I stopped too. Despite a palpable aura of menace, I hoped that this might be a friendly interaction.

They asked our names. We asked theirs. They were Peanut and Bubba. (Half the boys I knew in Georgia were called “Bubba.” The other half were called “Buster.”) Peanut was the smaller of the two, slight of build, pimply, with a face topped by an unruly mop of reddish hair. And Bubba? I guess the best way to describe him would be to say that in physique and intellect he reminded me of Baloo from Disney’s The Jungle Book.

“Where y’all from?” Peanut asked, knowing we were new to the community.

Oh boy. Here we go, I thought. “Ohio.”

“Ohio?” Bubba asked, scratching the portion of his belly that hung out of the bottom of his T shirt. “Ain’t that up North?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s really in the Midwest. Not—not the North. Not really.”

“Y’all are still Yankees, though,” Peanut concluded.

“Huh!” Bubba scoffed.

“Well, I reckon we better go,” said Peanut. He turned the moped around (Bubba was sharing the seat behind him), and off they sped.

Well! I thought as Keith and I started our journey again. That could have been worse!

Keith and Dad. Notice how early
Keith physically matured.

We hadn’t made much more progress toward home when the moped, buzzing like an angry bumble bee, came flying down the road again, zipping past us too close for comfort. Peanut then applied the brakes, did a U-turn, and stopped near us. Again, Keith and I stopped for them.

Bubba: “What’s in the sacks?”

“Just some pop.”

“‘Pop’!” he said. “What’s ‘pop’?”

Bubba tore the bottom off my condensation-soaked bag as I held it and said, “Oh, it’s Coke-Coler. Why’d you say ‘pop’?”

Peanut, still astride the moped: “Yankees call Coke-Coler ‘pop.’” He said “pop” with his eyebrows lifted, faintly mimicking a British accent. “‘Pop. Let’s have some pop.’ That’s how y’all talk.”

Were they going to steal my pop? Were they going to beat me to a pulp? Home seemed very far away….

Speaking of far away, I just then noticed that Keith was far away too—pedaling as fast as he could and leaving me behind.

“Keith!” I yelled in terror. He stopped, maybe thirty yards away. Getting beaten to a pulp alongside my little brother was, in my mind, much to be preferred over getting beaten to a pulp alone.

Apparently the two thugs were growing tired of the game and didn’t consider me a worthy opponent. (They were right.) They made a couple more comments and then rode off.

Keith and I made it the rest of the way home without incident, but when I first caught up with him, I said, “Why did you leave me!?”

“I was going home for help!”

“You were?” An image of Mom, full of righteous indignation, roaring up in the station wagon with Keith riding shotgun, his head hanging out the window—tongue lolling like that of a beagle—while pointing in my direction, brought me sudden comfort. “Well—thanks.”

Getting Poked

One time—this, again, was when we were much younger—Keith and I and some neighbor boys had put together a nice, big pile of leaves in the backyard. Those were wonderful days, happy, secure, no problems, no threats.

Of course, there were threats, and there were problems. We just didn’t know about them yet.

For example, an innocent-looking pile of leaves might conceal a threat.

The Ohio autumn afternoon was sunny, and the effort involved in creating the pile had warmed all of us boys up, so we had removed our jackets and were wearing shirts and jeans.

A neighbor boy, I don’t remember who, took his turn jumping into the leaves. But instead of jumping, he dived forward into them—and completely vanished under their cover. This struck us all as extremely funny—he had just disappeared! He rose up, triumphant, red-faced, also laughing. We were all still laughing.

It was Keith’s turn next. “Keith!” I said, “Do what he did! Dive in! That was hilarious!”

Little Brother, with a grin on his face, followed the other boy’s example, diving head-first into the pile, arms stretched forward. But before any of us could laugh, he jumped skyward, screaming. Before his feet hit the ground, he was running toward the back door. He met Mom in the kitchen with me close behind. He was holding his right arm straight up with his left hand over the armpit.

“What happened!?” from Mom.

“I don’t know! He jumped in the pile, and—”

“A stick!” Keith yelled. “It was a stick!”

Mom pulled his shirt up to see.

When he had dived into the pile, a branch, hidden in the leaves, had been positioned so that its sharp end had poked a hole under his arm, where his skin had been stretched tight.

“Oh!” said Mom.

“Can I see?”

Mom looked at me a little dubiously but then showed me while Keith continued to wail.

I remember the hole. “Oh!” I said. “It’s like—you can see the meat!”

Mom gave me a severe look. Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

End of story: Mom packed him off to the ER, where the doctor got him stitched together again.

Does he still have a scar there? I do not know, and I am not going to look to find out.

On Keith’s first birthday, I graciously blew out his candle for him since he didn’t know how to.

Belittling

Did you know Thomas Jefferson invented the word “belittle”? Well, he did. Belittling Keith was always easy and therefore fun. Being older, I could nearly always find something wrong with anything he said. It became such a habit that when Mom would say, “Stop belittling him!” I wasn’t sure how to do it.

It still makes my heart sad to remember being at a gathering with neighbors and having Keith, probably about ten, say quietly to me, “Stop belittling me!” My loud reply: “Belittling you? I’m not belittling you!” It was an ironic statement, full of cruelty.

The Cub Cadet

While we were growing up, Grandpa Swartz had a Cub Cadet mower. It was designed like a small tractor, and we boys loved having the freedom to drive it up and down our grandparents’ lengthy, winding driveway whenever we got the chance.

Grandpa had turned the Cadet into a multitasking machine by adding a wooden bracket, shaped like the letter L lying on its back, to the Cadet for hauling logs. And we hauled a lot of logs on that thing, especially in preparation for winter, when they would warm much of Grandpa’s house.

But when the bracket wasn’t being used to haul logs, we could sit on it while someone else drove. I recall driving the tractor one day—was I about eleven?—with Keith sitting on the bracket. I started swerving wildly from side to side—laughing the whole time. Well, the force of momentum was strong on the projection where Keith was sitting. “Stop!” he yelled. “Stop it! I’m going to fall off!” I just kept laughing and swerving—knowing he wouldn’t fall off.

But he did.

I stopped the mower and looked back at him. He was sitting where he had landed, in the driveway’s rough gravel, and the tears had started. He looked up at me. “I told you to stop!” he said, crying. “I told you I was going to fall off!”

And it suddenly hit me, looking down at him there: He’s really still just a little boy. He’s just a little boy, and that was a rotten, rotten thing to do to a little boy.

Did I apologize that day? I don’t know. But, Keith, I’m sorry—I apologize now.

Gut-Wrenching Laughter

Keith learned early on that if I was
coming toward him to express
“brotherly love,” it was time to back away.

I’ll finish up with the two unforgettable times when Keith made me laugh—really laugh!

·       Setting: Early 1970s. The Skaggs family is driving to see grandparents in West Virginia, having recently stopped at Burger Chef for Funburgers. Keith and I are riding in the back of the pickup under an aluminum truck cap. (Yep, that was where we rode for the entire seven-hour trip. We loved it!) Eric, maybe four years old, is squeezed in the front seat between Mom and Dad. Suddenly, the truck slows dramatically and pulls off the side of the road.
“What happened? Keith, go see!” Keith eagerly clambers over the tail gate, runs to the cab, peers in. Returns the same way he exited. “What happened?”
“Eric threw up,” he replies. “Funburger everywhere!”
It was absolutely the funniest thing Keith had ever said to me; I laughed loud and long that day, and I still laugh when I think of it today.
If you ever ask someone, “How was your day today?” and the person replies, “Funburger everywhere!” it has been a really bad day.

           Setting: Late 1990s. Keith and I are traveling together; Keith is driving. We are carrying on with silliness as two adult brothers alone in a car are wont to do. We pass a bar named “Pat and Mike’s.”
I am inspired and say, with an Irish accent, “Come on down to Pat and Moik’s, a friendly plee-ass where you can bend an elbow and lift a glahss in honor of …”
Keith, with impeccable timing, rolling the “r” long and hard: “The Blesséd Virrrrrrrrrgin!”
I laughed until my gut hurt and tears ran out my eyes. Actually, I never stopped laughing—I’m still laughing about it today!

      I Guess That’s All for Now

      Of course, no one can completely capture another person’s true being in a short essay. But I’ve tried.

      Keith has always been completely without artifice. Sometimes he’s told me things I didn’t want to hear, but they were always right. I’ve seen him go through tremendous trials while staying true to the Lord—he said to me recently, with a broken heart, “I don’t care what happens, I am not turning my back on the Lord!”

      Keith has character. Keith forgives—for which I am grateful. Keith is a great brother and a great man. And I promise never to belittle him again.

Copyright 2025 by Steven N. Skaggs

On a Western hike!

Keith and grandchildren Paisley, Amara, and Bo.

Keith is proud to be passing along his own traditions to his grandchildren.