JOHN HANSEN, MY BROTHER

When I was seven-years-old I fell from the crossbar on our swing set. My brother, John, heard me crying and ran down the hill to my rescue. He scooped me up and carried me to the house, laying me on the brown Herculon couch in our living room. He gently positioned my poor broken arm on a pillow and tucked another pillow under my head, reassuring me until our mom got home. That was the first of three broken arms for me, evidence of my inherent gift for agility and coordination.

When I was eight years old John stood in holy waters and baptized me a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was the only one in our family with the authority to do such a thing, and though he would choose to walk a path that did not include organized religion, his gift to me stuck, and has been pivotal in all that is dear to me. 

When our brother George was three or four-years-old he got his hand stuck in a scorching hot Ironrite. The rollers on the machine melted away the flesh on his little hand. Our brother John heard his cries and rushed into the room, released the safety bar on the machine, and called for our mother. George almost lost that hand, but thanks to a dutiful doctor the skin transplants took and he is able to do all sorts of magic with that scarred hand.

When I was nine-years-old I stood paralyzed with fear in the corner of our kitchen in Pleasant Hills PA as my drunken father came at my mother with a knife in his fist. Out of nowhere my older brother John appeared with a baseball bat, planting himself between my father and our mother. He raised the bat and glared at my father. “You will not touch her.” He and my father stared each other down until my father retrieved and left the house. 

Years before, when that same father had thrown our mother down the stairs in a fit of rage, before I was born, John went to live with our Aunt Mary and Uncle Archie on their ranch in Blackfoot, Idaho. Mary and Archie were never able to have children. Mom had suffered a clot to the heart and to the lungs and was not expected to live. Aunt Mary and Uncle Archie loved John, and wanted more than anything to have him for their own. But mom survived, and healed, and though Archie and Mary asked if they could keep him as their own, our mom could not give him up. A painful sort of release happened then, I believe, and their “ownership” of my brother shifted, which no doubt confused the tender heart of that young boy

John didn't get much of a chance to be a kid.

Today my big brother John enters a new decade of his life here on earth. I look at the white haired man and still see the spark of love in the eyes of the teenager who rescued me from the ground under the swing set - who facilitated my religious desires - who saved the hand of our brother - who held the reigns of Uncle Archie's horses with assurance that they would always be his, but then weren’t. And I ponder with awe and love the scene replayed in my head of my own father trying to injure our mother, intercepted by a boy with a baseball bat. Baseball bats should be swung with joy and passion on grassy ball fields. No boy should have to hold a bat in that way. 

John's hands hold gentler things.

Today I think with love and gratitude of my brother, John Hansen, the wounded warrior who rescued, in spite of his own wounds, over and over again.

Legendary icon Rosalie Sorrells loved and cherished John.
And he loved and cherished her.

He even rescued me from playing the G chord incorrectly. “Are you kidding?” I said when he told me I should change the way I was playing that basic guitar chord. “That’s a ridiculous way to play a G. My pinkie finger  isn’t strong enough, and my double jointed fingers click in and out when I try to play it that way.”

“Trust me” he said. “Watch real guitar players, at least the ones who play on stage.” Sure enough, he was right. And though I grumbled about it, I changed the way I play that G chord. And the change freed up two fingers that were able to manipulate strings with counter melodies and sustain chords. A goodly portion of the songs I have written use the free’d up fingers in that new positioning.

 

I’ve found comfort all my life in the sound of the name John. So much so that we named our firstborn son John. If you are a little girl, straddled by two little-girl-sisters, it’s a comforting thing to have a big brother named John, just old enough to seem heroic, even if he himself didn’t feel that way.

John and his old friend, Steve Eaton
play at his birthday party yesterday.
John's best loved guitars have plenty of scars.

John and Steve in bygone days.

My big brother is not without scars. In fact, he is no doubt  as scarred as our bother George’s hand. But in spite of it, he uses himself for good, planting himself, even quivering with fear that no one but him knows is there, between the great unknown and the people he loves. 

John plays with his grandkids.

He’ll be the first to tell you that he is a mess. That’s part of his charm. But we who claim the same mother, and the same distorted history … we embrace that mess. We own that mess together. And together is such a good place to be.

John's girlfriend, Garnette Edwards, threw him
the most remarkable party for his birthday yesterday!
 Hundreds of people attended. What a beautiful bash it was!

John and Garnette. 

Happy birthday, brother-o’-my-heart.

My brother and me.

John Hansen, Belinda Bowler and Rich Brotherton

See that tall guy in the pink shirt on the front page
of the Idaho Statesman paper? The solitary male among a
sea of women marching for women's rights?
Yup, that's him.

John's first band; Hard Luck and Trouble, circa 1971.
That's John in the front middle.

My brothers, John and George Hansen

We are John's biggest fans!
(and also the most obnoxious)

From an ad for the Famous Motel Cowboys Reunion Concert