My Father

Father’s Day 1987

He always wanted us to call him Dad, but somehow we never did. When we were young it was Pa, (don’t ask me why. I’m really not sure). Then the year that I was sixteen Yogi Bear hit the big time and we used to watch it together. Before long we were all saying, “Hey, Boo-Boo” to each other and it stuck to him like glue. He has been Boo-Boo ever since. It’s all the grandchildren have ever called him since they could get their little mouths around the sound, and it has become a term of endearment and love. He has never been ordinary and he has never been plain. No reason why his name should be, either.

While most fathers of our acquaintance ruled by the book, ours went with gut instinct and ruled from the heart. He never dished out bull because he thought it was what he should be saying as a father, and because of this we trusted him. He was strong enough to be gentle, and self-assured enough to be non-judgemental. And he liked us. Parents are pretty much expected to love the offspring they produce…I think it’s in the rule book somewhere…but liking them is a bonus, and when you know that they really like you no matter what dumb stunt you  have pulled and not matter what kind of disgrace you have managed to cover yourself in, it makes all the difference.

I think, though, that if my sisters and I had to choose what his greatest gift to us has been, the  unanimous choice would be the gift of laughter. We learned from his example that when you look at life the right way, it is full of little moments that can dazzle, amaze, and amuse, and he could find the humor in almost anything.

My father has always been a teller of stories and we have never grown tired of hearing them. “Tell us about when you worked in the bakery,” and we would hear about the boss that no one like, the practical jokes he and his friends had played on each other, and how he broke his nose when the bread rack he had hooked a ride on came to an abrupt stop.

My father has a real beak and my mother always said it was because it he had broken it when he worked in the bakery. Then I found a picture of his grandmother. She must have worked in the bakery, too, because it looked just like his. When we were young we had a ‘49 Pontiac with a Chief Pontiac hood ornament up front. We thought it was pretty nifty that my father’s car had his profile on it.

He would tell us about when he and my mother dated and how his friends would try to follow them (they were all bachelors and as full of fun as he was), and he would drive down alleys and across fields trying to lose them. We would ask how he and my mother had met and he would tell us they had meet under a barroom table. My mother is just a tad prim and her howls of protest never failed to amuse us. We still love that story better than the real one.

Like most males of his generation he has had a lifelong love affair with the car and he has owned some real beauts! I can still remember when he came roaring home in a real old “crackerbox.” One of the big tall square cars like they drove on the “Untouchables.” This one had been gutted. No seats, no doors, no roof. My father was perched on an upended 5-gallon can, a mechanic’s hat jammed backwards on his head, clutching the steering wheel with both hands to stay upright as he came up the steep driveway, a look of sheer delight on his face.

Just as clearly, I can recall his first really late model car, a ‘51 Chevy, cream and rust colored. He was so proud of it he couldn’t wait to show it off to his family in Upstate New York. It was late December and we were going out for Aunt Blanche’s silver wedding anniversary party.

It’s a long, boring trip when you’re a kid and on this occasion, to help pass the time, we were putting Kleenex over our hands, sticking them out the little vent windows in the back, and letting the rain and sleet melt it off. Then we’d reach into the box for more Kleenex and do it all again. We had one very unhappy parent on our hands when we reached our destination and he got out of the car. Every tissue that had dripped from our hands was now frozen onto the car. The whole back end was covered. We learned some new words that day, and we were grateful that my father didn’t believe in physical violence.

I asked my sisters for some of their favorite memories. Here they are:

Designer pancakes on Sunday morning, You want to see your name in batter? Here it is. A car? A house with smoke coming out of the chimney? Here you go, kid. My father could do them all and they tasted so much better than the plain round ones.

My father, hands behind his head and steering the car with his knees because he knew it amused us. It made my mother crazy, but we loved it.

Playing hide and seek. My father would put us up on the closet shelf, in the laundry cupboard, in the cabinet under the sink. He knew all the best places!

The year that he bribed us with chocolate covered cherries to tell him what my mother had bought him for Christmas (“It’s a gold cigarette lighter!”) We still get a box of them every Christmas in memory of the event.

Learning how to bait-cast with the new fishing outfits he bought us. We love getting up before dawn to go fishing with him and secretly hoped he didn’t mind too much that he only had daughters.

My mother shaking her head and saying, “That man will never grow up!” and his four daughters hoping she was right.

So far, so good. He will be 70 this summer and he hasn’t changed yet.

Father’s Day 2018

My father died on January 1, 1993 and even now it is hard to believe that he is gone because he was always such a presence in our lives.  Or as my sister Joan put it, “He was there.  Even when he worked two jobs, he was there.”  He took an active interest in whatever we were doing.  He was an amazing oral historian and his stories continue to be passed on.

He was funny and we still find ourselves using the punch lines from jokes he told.  It was his finely tuned sense of the ridiculous that most amused us, made us laugh, and shaped our own way of seeing things, best illustrated by something that occurred at what should have been the least humorous time of our lives.  Here’s the story.

My father’s health had deteriorated over the last ten years of his life and on Christmas night we almost lost him, but my mother, who like to bribe God, promised to send a check to St. Jude’s Hospital if my father lived, which he barely did.  However, just one week later he died very peacefully at  home, surrounded by most of his family.  As we all sat and stood around the bedroom waiting for the undertaker to come, my sister Joan looked at my mother and very quietly asked, “by the way, did you want to stop payment on that check to St. Jude?”  Even my mother had to laugh, and we knew that somewhere not very far away my father was laughing too.