I’ve Seen Things Go This Bad For Six Months In a Row: (Then Turn Right Around and Get Worse)

The Fabulous Dell Brothers
AuthorHouse (2011)
ISBN 9781463419929
Reviewed by Joseph Yurt for Reader Views (9/11)


On the back cover of their somewhat offbeat, definitely off-color tribute to their father, sons Junior and Kempie Dell describe their book with a simple, tweet-length description: “Two sons of a flawed Baltimore WWII veteran have written a humorous, R-rated, biography of their dad and his antics.” But this bittersweet account of Dad, the colorful Sam Tom “Tucky” Dell, is also a loving record of the sons’ memories of their own lives, and their recalled stories of times, good and bad, of their whole family. But make no mistake; Dad is the dominant figure in the book, just as he was in the lives of his wife and family.

At the outset of the book, the boys make it clear that “They don’t make many men like Dad anymore. He was a combination of John Wayne, Jackie Gleason, and Archie Bunker.”  For the most part, he was also the complete opposite of his wife. Stella. He was an alcoholic and provided an irregular source of income at best, partly due to his inclination to keep his stable of bartenders well compensated, thus, leaving scant resources for household necessities. Stella was a good-hearted woman who was the glue that held the household together; despite the boys’ tongue-in-cheek recollection of a “match made in hell,” their parents toughed it out for twenty years before throwing in the towel.

While Junior and Kempie’s account of their father’s life is told chronologically and in distinct “phases,” it often feels more like a rambling, never-ending tale. To be sure, there are a lot of wacky stories and funny anecdotes along the way. One of my favorites was about Dad and the boys’ attempt to teach a lesson to the obnoxious, demanding former owner of one of Dad’s failed small business attempts, the Crab Balls, a carry-out seafood eatery. The former owner, Porky, felt the Dells owed it to him to provide free steamed crabs to sell to his strip joint patrons. “We’ll take care of you. Come back in two hours.” With that, they searched their garbage cans and refrigerators for “all the stinking, rotten, mouth-hanging-open, dead crabs” they could find. In two hours, Porky picked up his “hot and steaming” crabs. Three hours later he returned. “Hey, Tuck, you got any more crabs? They were the best me and my friends ever ate!”

“I’ve Seen Things Go This Bad For Six Months in a Row” captures both the strength to accept things as they are, and the handicaps of a dysfunctional family. It seems to me that the authors have effectively used the humor that they found in their lives to cover up at least some of their real feelings about their lives. Personally, the book compelled me to reflect on wasted individual potential and misspent lives. On the other hand, maybe “I’ve Seen Things Go This Bad For Six Months in a Row” is simply a funny, heartfelt tribute from two sons to their dad and their family, period. Either way it’s a hard book to rate. There was much to which I could relate. But, this is not so much a book I’d recommend, unless I knew someone well, as it is a book I would tell people about. Then I’d explain that they would have to decide what this book by The Fabulous Dell Brothers really is. 

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