The Tank Man's Son: A Memoir - Softcover

Bouman, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1414390270 ISBN 13: 9781414390277

Verlag: TYNDALE HOUSE PUBL, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

In the tradition of The Glass Castle and Angela’s Ashes comes the most unforgettable memoir you’ll read this year!
“What did it mean to be the Tank Man’s son? To grow up overwhelmed by my father’s presence and personality? It was as if I didn’t exist, as if I was just something else for my father to crush.”

So begins the haunting memoir of Mark Bouman as he recounts the events of his childhood at the hands of his larger-than-life, Neo-Nazi father in brilliant, startling detail. From adventure-filled days complete with real-life war games, artillery fire, and tank races to terror-filled nights marked by vicious tirades, brutal beatings, and psychological torture, Mark paints a chilling portrait of family life that is at once whimsical and horrific—all building to a shocking climax that challenges even the broadest boundaries of love and forgiveness.

An epic tale of redemption and reconciliation, The Tank Man’s Son is a literary tour de force that is sure to become an instant classic.

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In the tradition of The Glass Castle and Angela’s Ashes comes the most unforgetta-ble memoir you’ll read this year.
“What did it mean to be the Tank Man’s son? It was as if Mark Bouman didn’t exist—as if I were simply another object for my father to crush.”

So begins the haunting memoir of Mark Bouman as he recounts the extraordinary events of his childhood at the hands of his larger-than-life, neo-Nazi father in startling, brilliant de-tail.

From adventure-filled days of real-life war games, complete with artillery fire, explosions, and tank races, to terror-filled nights marked by vicious tirades, brutal beatings, and psychological torture, Mark paints a chilling portrait of family life that is at once whimsical and horrific—all building to a shocking climax that will challenge even the broadest boundaries of love and forgiveness.

An epic tale of re-demption and reconciliation, The Tank Man’s Son is a literary tour de force that is sure to be-come an instant classic.

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The Tank Man's Son

A Memoir

By Mark Bouman, D. R. Jacobsen, Jonathan Schindler

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2015 Mark Bouman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4143-9027-7

Contents

Publisher's Note, ix, 
Author's Note, xi, 
Prologue, 1, 
PART 1: A Home, 3, 
PART 2: A Tank, 85, 
PART 3: A Ship, 165, 
PART 4: A Friend, 201, 
PART 5: An Escape, 269, 
PART 6: A Mission, 313, 
Epilogue, 337, 
Acknowledgments, 347, 

CHAPTER 1

The oak tree stood a dozen feet taller than the top of my father's tank. From where I was watching, I could feel the vibration rumbling up through the ground. Our eleven acres were peppered with trees, big and small, but ever since Dad had fired up his army tank for the first time, the number was steadily decreasing. Dad motored toward the oak at a walking pace. I could see the outline of his head sticking up through the driver's hatch. He was making subtle course corrections to keep his right-hand tread lined up with the tree. The tank halted several feet from the trunk, and the noise of the engine lowered for a moment.

Then a roar as the tank lurched forward. The tread hit the tree trunk dead center, and the tank climbed slowly upward. Foot by foot, with the engine snarling in time, the machine rose into the air. The tree strained against the increasing weight. It leaned backward, bending and shaking, and even above the noise of the tank I could hear groans and staccato pops from inside the oak. The tank pointed toward the clouds as if launching from a ramp, and then, with a sudden crack, the oak died, its trunk shattering even as its roots were torn from the earth. The tank slammed down and rolled forward, pulverizing the branches into splinters and grinding the now-useless roots into the ground.

I imagined taking my father's place at the controls, lifting the tank up and over a mighty tree and forcing it to the ground just like he did. It would feel exhilarating. It would terrify me. But I would win. I would be the one in charge, the one with the power. Nothing could stand up to that kind of power.

The tank turned toward me, continuing to roll. Ten feet before it reached me, its treads jerked to a halt. My father looked down at me from the hatch. I watched his lips move, scarcely able to hear him over the engine's growl. It took me a moment to realize what he'd shouted to me.

"Hey! Mark! Want to drive?"

* * *

Long before he became the Tank Man, Dad had been a kid, just like me. He had two parents and a little home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a finished basement and lace curtains and a set of Sunday china. He learned to ride a bike and write book reports and sweep the sidewalk. He grew taller and stronger and learned to swear and throw a punch. He taught himself to drive when he was still in middle school, pushing his dad's '39 Ford van out of the driveway and then starting it once he was a block down the road.

By the time he was thirteen, he was shuttling his mom to town so she could pick up groceries or supplies for the beauty parlor she ran in a small shop attached to the house. By the time he was fourteen and his parents sat him down to tell him that a divorce didn't mean they loved him any less, he had already turned his gaze out to the world—past Grand Rapids, past Michigan, out toward the horizon where there might be something better, just waiting for him to discover it and make it his own.

When he was fifteen, he joined his father on a trip to "see the world"—or at least the world between Michigan and the Grand Canyon. It took them three days, sharing the driving along the way. On the second day, when his father was snoring in the passenger seat, Dad slammed into the back of another car. By the time the highway patrol officer left with his report, Grandpa Bouman had everyone convinced that he'd been the one driving while Dad rode shotgun. Whether they hiked down into the canyon or took pictures or just sat quietly at the edge, Dad never chose to relate. The only parts of the story he cared to tell were the long drive and the sudden crash.

By the time he was sixteen, Dad talked his mother into signing a waiver that let him join the United States Navy. He said good-bye to her, didn't bother saying good-bye to his dad or his dad's new wife, Ginn, and hitched a ride to the Greyhound station. With his duffel bag slung over the chip on his shoulder, he stepped off the bus at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center outside Chicago, determined to make a name for himself. Next came Jacksonville, Florida, where he spent eighteen months discovering his knack for repairing engines on carrier planes like the T-34 and the F3D. That was the year the pilot of a twin-engine Beechcraft, a lieutenant, stuck his head in the maintenance hangar and asked for a volunteer to join him on a short flight to an air base up the coast. On the return trip to Jacksonville, the pilot asked if Dad knew how to fly.

"Yep, you bet!" came the instant answer. Dad flew most of the way back before the pilot realized Dad was improvising. That was how Dad lived: ready to try anything, supremely confident—often with no reason to be so—and always able to let consequences slide off his shoulders like water off a duck.

While waiting to turn eighteen, Dad struck up a friendship with Stew. Stew was Dad's kind of guy: independent, bold, and unafraid to tell everyone, including his superiors, what he really thought. They talked about guns and fast motorcycles and made lists of the know-nothing officers they'd like to teach lessons to. They spent their base leave in Jacksonville together, cutting up and causing trouble in the bars and pool halls. And it was sometime during their time together that Stew clued Dad in to the real cause of all the world's troubles.

The three of us Bouman kids—me, my older brother, Jerry, and my younger sister, Sheri—grew up knowing who Stew was. Dad would flip right to the picture of him in the photo album and tap his finger, and we would pretend to study the snapshot we'd already seen dozens of times. Stew sat ramrod straight in a wooden chair, wearing a crisply pressed Nazi uniform with swastika bands on each sleeve. His daughter stood behind him, one hand on her father's shoulder. She wore a Hitler Youth uniform, and behind the two of them was draped a Nazi flag.

"You kids know not to ask questions," Dad would say and then close the album.

Shortly after meeting Stew, Dad persuaded a squad of cadets to goose-step around the base, a stunt that earned him a trip to the psych ward for evaluation. In the early 1950s, so close to the end of the Second World War, the naval brass figured no one would be crazy enough to ape the Nazis unless he was actually crazy. My mother later told me that Dad was given a Section 8—that was how they discharged people judged unfit for military service, like homosexuals and the mentally ill. Dad's version of the story was different: his naval career ended when he punched some know-nothing officer who had it coming. Still, an honorable discharge arrived in Grandma Jean's mailbox, owing to the intervention of a family friend who happened to be a congressman from the great state of Michigan.

Maybe Dad would have left the Navy on his own, even if he'd never met Stew. It wouldn't have taken Nazi ideology to persuade my father to punch an officer—he would have done that on a dare. Either way, by age eighteen, Dad found himself out of the Navy, officially a man, and with no idea what to do next. If...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TYNDALE HOUSE PUBL
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1414390270
• ISBN 13: 9781414390277
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar