A Conversation with Tim Bascom

As we celebrate Father's Day, a look at the relationship between fathers and sons. I'm Kay McIntyre and today on KPR presents a conversation with Tim Baskam of Topeka. He's the author of Climbing Lessons, Stories of Fathers, Sons, and the Bonds between. Welcome Tim. Yeah, I'll thank you, great to be with you. Before we get started, a quick note, I'm hosting this week's KPR presents from home. And we've got some construction going on next door. So if you think you're hearing the wine of a drill or a louder humming sound, you are such are the joys of working from a home studio. Tim, why did you want to write a book about the relationship between fathers and sons? Well, first starters, I come from a very male family. I've got three uncles and my father, they had no sisters. Then my dad had three sons and in the end, I ended up with two sons, no daughters through

the whole line. So for one thing, I'm an expert in the sets of having just been around a lot of guys. And I wanted to understand the journey that we go through as men, starting with being toddlers and moving on up through adolescence and eventually becoming fathers ourselves because things change as you go in the relationship. And I had a remarkably loving father. He was somebody I would want to share with the rest of the world. He went out in front of us and showed us the way in a way that I really respect. So those are the main reasons. Tim, talk to me about the significance of the title. Climbing lessons. Yeah. I picked that in part because of one story, which I'd love to read an excerpt of. It's about my father trying to show us how to climb a tree.

And the book actually has, I think, five climbing lessons that serve as a backbone. And it was fun to find those in the writing of the book, which is 40 little stories all together. And the first of them is dad showing us how to climb a sycamore. When I'm about eight years old, there are disastrous results. And that's critical because a father, when he shows the way, is going to fail inevitably. And that's the lesson. He has to get back up. He has to climb again. He has to show the way again. And then later, there are other stories with me just hiking on a hill near Manhattan, Kansas, where dad used to go up to what was called the top of the world as a teenager. So it's a revisit. It's a redo. And he's meditating on his own childhood, his relationship to his father, who took him

up there once on a bitterly cold day. And eventually, they decided to try to build a fire, and it didn't go well. Dad had just become an eagle scout, and yet he failed to get the fire started. And his father was a severe man. So it's interesting to look at the generations and think about how dad wanted the blessing of his father. And that often is in being challenged. Fathers do that for sons. They do challenge. It's not always easy, but it's necessary. And I felt like I probably was treated with more of a respect, care, love, blessing that maybe dad would have wished for. Then by the end, there's climbing lessons where my sons are showing me how to climb. We try to climb a mountain and call a rattle, and I am failing at motivating these guys, one of whom's fallen a scraped his knee.

And it's interesting how the older son, Conrad, actually finds an imaginative way to get us up that mountain, playing with Pokemon characters in his head. So that's where the title comes from. Oftentimes with books that I've written, I look for a through thread that runs all the way through that becomes kind of a motif or an important central part of the book. And I finally realize that's what I'm up to here is thinking through how we learn from each other. Both directions. I'm visiting with Tim Baskin, he's the author of Climbing Lessons, stories of father, sons, and the bond between. Tim, could I have you read that excerpt from the first climbing lesson story? Sure. I have to give you a little bit of background where near Troy Kansas, in the woods near to the bluffs of the Missouri River at a special place that we used to go to, dad was a town doctor in Troy.

And one day we follow a little creek and we get up near where it completely disappears just it's down to just a tiny trickle and there's a giant sycamore that's leaning out over it. I mean, leaning out so much that it looks like a perfect ramp to just walk right up if you can really get going. All three of us boys try and we have a little trouble getting up that huge trunk. And dad says, let me show you how it's done. So he gets back and runs at it and gallops right up and he's a very big man kind of top heavy and he hears keys jangling and when he gets up there he grabs a branch that's sticking straight up and stands up there looking a little bit like a bronze statue and we're impressed. He can't help but he wants to show off a bit more so he lunges around that branch and only then does he realize it's dead and it snaps off and he starts to fall and he gets his arms around this huge trunk but he can't hold it slides under it and I'll read from there.

For a second dad's big sturdy legs scrambled for a hold and it looked as though he might stop the fall and write himself then he continued to slip around the huge slanted trunk like a rider slipping under a bowl all nobility disappeared he was a cartoon caricature suspended by arms and legs and because the trunk was simply too wide to grasp he could not hold on for long he dropped flat out back first from 12 feet up which meant he was unable to see what lay below and unable to protect anything vital he fell so quickly and heavily that we were stunned by the sound as much as the sight with a deep hump the heft of his body hit the trickle of creek water and lifted a muddy geyser the thump was so hard the ground trembled paralyzed we stared at our now inert father who was not moving a limb his head nestled in a cup of mud when we ran toward him in panic I was wondering

would he still be alive and if he was would he be a crippled the rest of his life like the star football player in town who had accidentally stepped off a roof he lifted a hand to keep us away which seemed like a good sign but he didn't say a word which was bad are you okay we whispered and he didn't answer maybe having broken the apparatus that made speech possible carefully ponderously he twisted himself onto his side and lay a while apparently trying to remember how to breathe he attempted another movement this time placing his hands in the mud and hoisting himself into a bowing half kneeling position are you okay we asked again and still he didn't answer at last he stumbled to his feet leaning over shaking his head but not as if answering our question when he looked up at the tree he seemed amazed like a man stepping out of a grave then he lowered his head

shoulders trembling he looked as if he might be crying which caused us to stare at each other in horror but no dad was laughing laughing a breath he laughed that went on and on half relieved half afraid we laughed along looking at each other to make sure it was okay when he turned towards us at last he was grinning so boys that's how it's done I love that story well he he he had a sense of humor and he wasn't afraid to be a fool which is partly why people loved him including us and it's true that's how it's done you you try to show the way and eventually there's going to be a fall so what lessons do you think your dad taught you in in those very in those exploits wow that's a big question he taught so much the the thing about not taking yourself too seriously is important in keeping a sense of humor because life isn't easy and to

move through it one has to be able to hold it lightly at times and another thing dad demonstrated I think was living large with imagination and he loved nature and being connected to nature is I just think critical particularly in this age where we just keep getting more and more removed by devices and technology so taking us out like we did as kids into the woods which wasn't always comfortable there were ticks and he nettles and that kind of thing but his delight in the created world was passed on to us in a way that I am very thankful for for him faith was critical and though there are some ways in which I had to find my own route over time I'm very

thankful for his sense of the world as a wonder given to him by God and that's something that I think we all can benefit from because we're we're just passing through and it's good to know one's own position in that world those are deep things that I'm thankful for yeah I've seen with Tim Baskam he's the author of climbing lessons stories of father sons and the bond between Tim you've written several books as you mentioned including chameleon days and running to the fire what kind of common threads are there between those books your previous writing and climbing lessons or or was this a bit of a departure for you I would say the latter that it is a bit of a departure the earlier books were looking at this radical experience of being

removed from the American culture and from the Midwest and Kansas and living in Ethiopia primarily we were also in Kenya and Sudan and that was about half of my childhood the other half was here in Kansas and I had a lot to sort through in those books one commonality though is that our family even though it was fractured by the boarding school experience I had to go off to school when I was in second grade even though that happened my parents were always loving parents whom I returned to and wanted to be with even more and this book I think is an attempt to go ahead and look at the beauties of that and some of the complexities of being a family once we were able to do it more here in the United States but it is a bit of a departure and actually I kind of enjoyed stepping

away from the African material the boarding school experience and in the other book running to the fire actually the return to Ethiopia in mid high school during a Marxist revolution which was a very radical experience of danger in essence a year of kind of living dangerously but I enjoyed setting it aside and saying who is this who are we as this midwestern clan and that that means my uncles my grandfather his father and just sinking into being here in Kansas and Iowa primarily where we later lived as my children were growing up well welcome back to Kansas yeah thank you Tim do you have another excerpt you'd like to read for us this is the third of about five climbing lessons and we are camping in Colorado and we start up this mountain and my youngest son is only

about five years old so I'm kind of asking him to do a lot here but I'm not being as sensitive as I could be and when he falls and scrapes his knee I have to carry him on my back and I've got a bum knee myself from playing soccer that's been damaged a bit and eventually I'm almost ready to give up on it or say you guys go home I'm gonna go out of but my older son Conrad who's about eight or nine at that point says hey what if we pretend we're Pokemon and I almost blurred out my first thought at that moment what in the hell why can't anything be real anymore I'm about to fall into a ramp because I'm in such a bad mood and as I turn towards him I hear our younger son reply okay but I get to be a gengar which is just one of the characters in the Pokemon Conrad scrutinizes his little brother for a second then says I guess I'll be a zap dose then and we can

defend the mountain against fire characters you ready so Luke rises to his feet and begins to walk telling his brother what strengths he has and how he wants to use them then the two of them begin to jog in response to imagine threats swinging their arms as if repelling blows and sending out enchanted blasts of energy they rise up the mountain in tandem with the older boy choreographing each scene and calling through the trees watch out they're behind you stay in the shade levitate now you can shadow tag then I'll hit them with a lightning bolt do it do it do it okay let's get out of here I marvel I cannot believe the ingenuity of Conrad nor the sheer kindness the way he is skillfully stepped in to help when my wife reaches from my hand I frown for a second she is smiling as if savoring an inside joke and I want to pull away but instead I let go of my natural inclination to resist I let myself enjoy this moment of unexpected relief walking hand in hand murmuring

amused commentary about the galloping boys and the imagined adventure that is taking them up the steep rocky slope closer to my hoped for a goal a lake at timber line when it lasts the two boys lag asking for lunch I tell them just a little further I ask what character I can play maybe an onyx then I begin to employ my own special strength super fast tunneling to clear away up the mountain pouncing out of secret underground corridors and sending foes flying with slashes of my iron tail I thunder up the forested trail throwing rock slides to each side my head blade slicing a ravine come on I yell they can't hit you inside the trench and when an unexpected charizard ambushes me from the air flattening me with a heat wave my two sons come to my rescue zapping the charizard right out of the sky and leaving it trapped by a poltergeist off we go again ascending further

up the mountain with our unique powers and Kathleen comes close behind jogging and con having transformed into a leather winged air adaptor that can dive bomb enemies stunning them with supersonic blasts we are also invested in this make-believe scenario that we are equally surprised when suddenly the trees fall away and we find ourselves standing in an immense bowl above timber line with ragged teeth like peaks above and huge fields of fallen stone swathes of snow streak the valley walls secreting stream streamlets of icy water and there right in front of us is a whole lake sparkling in the breeze blacken its depths and emerald along the shore guys I say there is something we've got to do even before we eat we've got to do this and I step toward the lake peeling off my jacket and shirt no way else conrad will freeze

yeah and that's the fun of it I've been visiting with Tim bascom of tapika his latest book is climbing lessons stories of father's sons and the bond between Tim happy father's day yeah thank you and happy father's date all those out there as well I'm Kay McIntyre kpr presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio at the University of Kansas