The earliest memory I have of my Dad is captured in a photograph. An old black-and-white Polaroid snapshot taken by my Mom one afternoon when Dad came home from work. I remember he was trying to hold me still, trying to keep me standing in front of him. But I wanted ‘away.’ I was trying to be near Mom. I didn’t want this man, somehow a stranger to me, holding onto me. I must’ve been 3 years old. Mom was pregnant with my brother. I remember she had a belly. The year was likely 1966. We’d moved into our new suburban house where we would stay together under one roof until 1981.
I’m not sure why I was uncomfortable with my father keeping me still by pressing his hands on my shoulders; he kept instructing me to stand still for the photo, pointing at Mom with the camara. But I wouldn’t do it. Cranky, I guess. Then snap. The photo clearly indicates a little blonde girl trying to break away from her dad, a man with dark hair, a flat top, and dressed in black shoes, black pants and black work shirt. He was a maintenance engineer for a national department store with its Southwest division office located in downtown Dallas.
I think at such a tender age, I no doubt completely bonded with Mom, having the first three years of my life totally indulged as it was just mommy and me (during my awake hours). This other guy, my dad, I didn’t know very well. He was up early, likely kissed my cheek every morning before leaving for work in the city, then arriving back home when I may have been programmed for bedtime. I don’t know. But Mom was a stickler for routines. Dad also had a hobby of working on cars after work, for many hours every night. He built a big garage shop out back. And all that garage time were more hours we didn’t spend together and therefore never bonded in my early childhood.
My father’s eyes
My Dad died in February. Ever since Mom passed a few years ago, he had been on an emotional, physical and more troubling mental decline. He lived to be 89 which is really very old. Yet I thought he could linger to his 90s. His was a long goodbye, four years of his two kids not knowing what was next, the inevitable seeming so very far off. Finally hospice was ordered, and the day they projected Dad’s departure may be in one month, he died that very night.
His death was a blessing. I was at peace with it, his passing. In his last year or so, he often was heard by my brother, his caregiver, praying to God, Jesus actually, to take him NOW. He was ready for the Big Trip and Homecoming in the sky. His last words were of family he saw clear as light: Mommy! Daddy! Clara! Then he slipped away. Clara was his wife of 61 years.
I knew my Dad, an electrician and jack of all trades, would do something spectacular from the Other Side. And sure enough, one night when my Dad was temporarily in a nursing home, all the lights in my apartment came on. I figured Dad had died. It was 1:30 in the morning. I had work in a few hours. I checked the phone for any message of his death. Saw nothing. Texted my brother. But Dad had not died, not yet.
I turned off the light above my bed and tried to go back to sleep, leaving the other lights on. The ceiling light came on again. I pulled the cord to darken my bedroom. Then it came on again. I just pulled the covers over my head to go back to sleep.
I knew this was my father’s doing. And it was a sparkling event. Never to happen again even at the moment of his own peaceful awesome transition.
Funeral arrangements were made. Family and friends contacted. I wasn’t too keen on the obituary photo but knew my Dad and practically everyone we knew, family and friends, would get a kick out of it. It was a picture I shot of my Dad wearing his red MAGA cap. My parents became fans of Donald Trump from the moment he ran for office. They’d watch his speeches and laugh in agreement. Finally someone in high office was speaking their mind—turns out the mind of half the population. Whatever the cap (and Dad had quite a collection of baseball caps he liked to wear every day), his face in the photo depicted the real character before his light grew dim.
Bonded
One thing I realized early was my Dad was not like other fathers seen on TV or in the neighborhood and our greater family. Yet many men and dads seemed to wish they could carry on like mine. We lived in a small three-bedroom house plopped onto a suburban blue-collar neighborhood. My Dad built a garage seemingly as big as the house and far across the backyard. He had a phone installed (probably installed it himself) and every kind of power tool, welding and fixin’ tools known to the 1960s and ’70s. The place was loud. I mean LOUD. All that grinding and banging on steel and ear-splitting riveting, rrrrrrRRRRRRRRR from power tools and car engines. Neighbors called the city on us quite a bit.
Mom and I were embarrassed … a lot. How we endured the noise, I’ll never know. Yet the men came around, drawn like magnets to Dad’s garage. Looked like they enjoyed flexing their muscles and doing manly work. They went through a motorcycle phase. Dad had an old car he called a jalopy. Once a year he’d rev up the engine, and my brother and me and all the neighborhood kids would sit inside (it had a rumble seat) or hung onto the exterior sides including the spare tire on the back hood. And off we’d go! Laughing all the way, riding around the blocks of our neighborhood. What summer fun! Not a care in the world. No doubt we were dirty and barefoot.
Dad liked going to the races, not the sophisticated drag races but the ones featuring sprint cars, clunky with four huge bars between the roof and the body, precariously going in circles and Crazy 8 formations on a dirt and tar pavement with bits often hitting us spectators. It was dirty and LOUD. Mom and I didn’t like it at all. You couldn’t talk. Dad and his buddies placed bets on top of their beer coolers.
Dad drank in those days, faithful to Coors. I remember learning to pronounce Schlitz, too. And Chevrolet. Dad seemed to like those trucks. We had a Winnebago and two Blazers, one burnt orange, one mellow yellow. Dad went through cars almost on a weekly basis. I never knew what he’d drive home in, usually the window rolled down and waving at me to make sure I saw his ‘new’ car. My favorite was a yellow Mustang circa 1965. He drove a Charger for a while. That was a cool sports car. And he ended up with a red Corvette Stingray circa 1968, helping out a co-worker who couldn’t afford it after his divorce. One time as a little kid, I was playing in one of his cars; he had them parked all around our house which was on a corner lot. I was playing at the steering wheel and moved the gear shift. The car jumped forward and rolled down the street at a sharp incline. I was going nonstop, about to ram into a house. But fortunately Dad and one of his buddies saw what was happening, came a-runnin’ and stopped the car before it went past the stop sign. Not sure if I got a whipping, but I eventually learned that no fun was going to come to me playing in or around Dad’s garage. My brother, however, had a totally different childhood because he grew up in that noisy greasy garage.
One time the city code enforcement officer came by and talked to Mom. Dad was somewhere else: probably at an estate sale whereby he’d buy out the home and pack all the loot in back of his truck, and we’d go through it all looking for anything we might like to keep, or he was trading cars, maybe bringing one back to repair for pay. He particularly liked to do body work. But the code officer pointed out an engine Dad and his buddies hoisted from a car and hung precariously on a tall steel tripod, the engine wrapped in chains and somehow hanging high above the garage driveway. The code officer tried to impress upon our family the absolute danger of this situation. If it weren’t removed soon, we’d be fined—well, Dad would be.
The city code office had a problem with Dad building a car port for Mom. Other neighbors wanted to build one, too, and this had to be approved by the city. Dad was fighting mad; after all, he paid his taxes, and a car port wasn’t hurting anybody. Yet the city felt it unsightly, all these front driveways with carports. Dad got so mad about being questioned and criticized over this that he got the damn carport approved—and tacked the permit to the front of one of the carport posts facing the street, even covering the paper notice with clear rain-resistant plastic. My Dad everyone.
Dad was raised in the country at a time prior to posh city codes. He didn’t see anything wrong with maintaining his shop—seriously the envy of many a man (whose wives would never allow them to build such a monstrosity)—the way he wanted with cars and car parts all around, not bothering nobody.
Well, the sound was too loud and shouldn’t have been allowed in a residential neighborhood. Then there was the drinking that went on especially over the weekends. If you remember the ’70s, you were there.
Born again
Then in 1975, Dad changed. Spiritually. He got religion. He stopped drinking cold turkey. I remember at 12 thinking he’ll go back to the way I knew him, had him all figured out: beer and cars, cars and beer. But he stuck it out. Fifty years. The people who knew him back when were amazed.
My Dad became a better man, a better father, and no doubt a better husband. He lived life more inside our house than out in the garage. All that sudden togetherness was uncomfortable for me at first. I guess I was used to growing up in a one-parent home. But soon I would learn his sense of humor. He could be really funny in his observations of life and people. He also was generous, never stingy. He always gave money to homeless people. He raised a lot of money for the church walk-a-thons. He tithed faithfully and on top of that presented offerings and donations. Cleaned up his life considerably. Even the garage was quiet, the pull-down door closed more than open.
Still, he’d repair cars and appliances, another unsightly characteristic of our backyard, right next to the trampoline. Neighbors from all around would ask if they could jump on our trampoline a spell. Why sure.
My Dad was not the sophisticated ‘dancer’ type (though he could play guitar and of course had a big electric one). He never smoked (except cigars once a year or so). He owned assorted guns but didn’t hunt. He never called family meetings or came across as the master of the house. In stature, he was petite, proud of the Amazon woman he married.
There aren’t a lot of men like my Dad–salt of the earth. They were the classic car generation, the Elvis generation, original rock-a-billies, watchers of TV Westerns. This same generation was dead serious about the Bible and though they could make fun in a Scotch-Irish tradition of religious nonsense and silliness, they believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that humans will be punished in eternal hellfire if they don’t watch their ways.
They don’t trust government yet support our troops in times of war. They are full of contradictions—and perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of my Dad’s era, dubbed the Silent Generation—too young for World War II and the Korean War, too old for Vietnam and hippie ideology.
What is the lesson for me, then? After all, Dad’s generation saw the most impressive societal change ever in this nation, one before my time. He never talked about it, but when Civil Rights became law of the land in 1964, Dad was part of taking down the White Only and Colored Only signs at restrooms and water fountains at that major department store. He and the other building maintenance crews had to ensure all restrooms and fountains were fully operable. Perhaps new facilities were installed, some of the ways to make people forget about the racially segregated past.
I’m thinking any lessons from my Dad would be along the lines of personal freedom. That seemed to be the most important thing to him—the only way to live.