The Helgi Files 2 'The Bullwhip'

When my dad was 12 years old, a family friend hand braided a 16 foot blacksnake bull whip for him.  He treasured it for his whole life and was an absolute dead on shot with it.  At times when he most likely shouldn’t have been using it at all, such as when he and rest of the pack were so blasted they couldn’t even walk straight, someone would holler out, “knock this cigarette out of my mouth”.  Picture a drunkenly swaying volunteer standing, with pursed up lips, poking the cigarette out as a target.  Cringe though you should, that really did happen, more than once and he was, thank God, successful.

Anyway, the point of this story is that we grew up with this stuff and it was perfectly normal for us to see and hear,(it sounded like a rifle shot) my dad cracking this whip in the air, at times and places which might have seemed unusual for most people.

We lived in South Vancouver when I was about 10.  It was a neighbourhood of small family houses, with tons of kids and dogs and cats running everywhere.  In those days, dogs were rarely restrained or leashed and would, unfortunately pack up and there would be fights.  One of us kids would come running into the house screaming “Dog fight, dad, Dog fight!”  He would jump up, grab his whip and race outside to stand in the yard, swinging and cracking the whip in the air, “Yah! Yah! Yah”!  It sounded like shots being fired and the dogs would scatter in all directions and all would be well and safe again. It never even occurred to me until about a year ago, as I recounted this to a friend of mine, how, genuinely hillbilly-ish this might have appeared to anyone else. Particularly in Vancouver. Obviously he never 'hit' the dogs, just made a lot of noise.

Another time….

I was 16 years old and sitting on the couch next to my boyfriend at the time.  Dad came walking through the house and turned towards the bedroom which was adjacent to the corner of the couch.  He nodded his head to the boy beside me, said a tight lipped “hi” and kept walking into the bedroom.  Next thing we knew there was what sounded like a literal explosion right next to us, a reverberating CRACK.  He had cracked that whip right in the house and the echo in that closed space was almost indescribable. Imagine a shotgun going off 2 feet away from you.   Amidst much screaming, accusations of craziness, appalling behaviour, and the boy pretty much peeling himself off the ceiling, my dad was rolling up his whip slowly, casually asking the boy “Did I ever show you my bull whip?”

Sure do miss that man.