My brother, Richard McCauley Wadds, born February 3, 1947, was known as Rick Alexander when he died in April of 2009. As a young rock and roll musician, he was known as Hector Hurricane. Why, I can’t exactly say.
Late sixties, maybe early seventies, when local hippie types frequented our town’s first downtown shopping mall, there he was with his long, long hair and his wiry, frenetic body, a cluster of friends surrounding him.
“Hey,” said one clever-type as I approached. “Is this your sister, Gail Storm?”
I laughed, but Ricky did his serpentine body-wave and said, “No, she’s Freda Fart.”
I stopped laughing.
As a young teenager, after breaking into homes and not stealing anything, or maybe playing their records, and instructing neighbourhood children on various sexual possibilities, he was tested. Being seven years younger, I had no clue what sort of metric had been employed, but learned that he had somehow outsmarted the tester. Always one step ahead. Able to appear perfectly normal when so called upon. My parents were told their son possessed a genius IQ, which seemed to cause a mix of pride, wonder, and a little fear in my mother.
At seven-years-old he was well on his way to hurricane status, riding flattened cardboard down the stairs to crash into the credenza, smoking stolen cigars, and looking up little girls’ skirts. But in the black and white photograph of my three siblings gazing lovingly at the newborn in her bassinette, one would never guess. Eldest of the three, Richard McCauley in tie and suit jacket, hair knife-parted and slicked dark and shimmering, after a long reverent silence, breathed words our mother loved to repeat, “She’s beautiful.”
Frankly, I have a hard time believing that, given said infant, encased in layers of fat, gazed up with stunned little eyes.
~ The first and last time we met ~
Ricky is gone now, having lifted away from the wires and tubes shackling him to a body he didn’t want anymore.
Hector Hurricane: stormy, wry, sharp-tongued, periodically generous and kind.
One spring, he and his second wife came to visit me in my small cabin in the Kootenays. Seeing that I didn’t have an outhouse, (I know, but there was lots of land, and I had a shovel) they set about building me one. They slept in the loft of that cabin while I tried to sleep on a mattress below them. They were very busy up there which surprised me given how hard they’d worked sawing and hammering all day.
He named their car Flaundemere.
Once, when he’d created my first website and encouraged me to take over, I balked. It seemed far too daunting a task. He said, “You can do this, Susy. You’re one of the smartest people I know.” Made me cry. But I did it.
Many years before that, somewhere in the seventies, I wrote a scene for a story where a character who had just woken up came down the stairs. When my brother read it, he looked up with an admiring smile. “Perfect. The way you’ve described his hair lets me know how irritated he is.”
“Really?” I said, gazing at the page.
Perhaps his brief and singular snatches of praise gave me the wind I needed to fill my sails. To do what I do.
Maybe I am Gail Storm after all. (And not so much Freda Fart.)
AFTERWORD: There is so much more to this man. For instance, he’s in the Non-Pedal Steel Hall of Fame. And in his Legacy post, you can read much more: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/rick-alexander-obituary?id=24146163
For me, he was Ricky, my renegade big brother, married a batch of times, loving, leaving, being left, and finally, loving Cathe for twenty sunny years on the Florida coast.
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If you have managed to come this far, I thank you from the bottom of my cracked little heart.
Nice Deepam. Good luck with the indie award!
Loved this, Deepam! You make writing about family seem effortless (and it’s not of course) and it’s beautiful. Also loved the pictures. His hair! ❤️