Happy Father's Day

Let me first shout out a Happy Father’s Day to all of my Everettites. That does not mean that you actually had to have kids to be included in this. For as unconventional as it may seem, I honestly believe that anyone who has ever had an influential father figure in their lives deserves a “Happy Father’s Day” greeting.

We don’t observe Father’s Day to pat ourselves on the back. We observe it to pay homage to that very special someone who provided a little fatherly guidance somewhere along the way while we were clumsily navigating through this mystifying maze we call life. It could have been a grandfather, or an uncle, or a big brother, or even a kindly acquaintance for that matter. So as per my definition, even a girl deserves a “Happy Father’s Day” greeting.

Like so many of you out there, I’ve got no one to send a card to, no one to call, and no one to visit for an afternoon chit chat. My father figure has gone beyond the far horizon.

That does not mean that I won’t spend a special moment with him. I have little choice. Something deep down inside of me is drawing me close to him. We will spend our precious moment together spiritually. After all, of it weren’t for him I’d have never grown up in Everett.

To me this guy was larger than life. He had qualities I never acquired. Slow to anger, quick to forgive, and a more opened mind than most others of his generation. He truly believed in the biblical adage of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I’ve never heard him say an unkind word about anybody in his lifetime.

I am the fruit of his loins. In so many ways, I am unworthy to carry his shoes. In all his simplicity, he never ceased to amaze me. Oh, but how he did embarrass me sometimes when I was a teenager. Like that time he made me go down to the Stop & Shop in Glendale Square with him.

Because of his backwoods upbringing in Southern Indiana, this guy came across as if he had no street smarts whatsoever. He trusted everybody and anybody. He gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, and passed judgment on no one. He’d even stop to chat with a beggar on the street. And he’d never do so in a condescending manner, either.

When this guy went shopping it took him an hour and a half to pick out a jar of relish. I kid you not. He not only read every label, but he’d calculate the cost per once, and then he’d stop every other shopper who passed him by to ask them what they thought.

The worst was the time that he and some old lady got into this in-depth conversation about “Preparation H” right in the middle of the medicine isle. I was worried to death that all of the girls from my homeroom would come parading down the isle to hear my dad talking out loud with some old lady about medicine for his bum. That’s just my luck.

Then there was that time when my dad got into a conversation with this guy who happened to be the father of a girl I couldn’t stand. She wasn’t ugly or anything. There was just something about her that made my skin crawl.

The feeling was mutual, I assure you. I say that because she pointed me out to her friends one day at recess and loudly proclaimed, “I hate his guts.”

God only knows why. The two of us had never so much as spoken a single word to each other. So I guess you could say that I couldn’t stand her because she couldn’t stand me. You tend to steer clear of people who can’t stomach you. At least I do anyway.

After my father tells this guy that I go to the Parlin, this guy asks what grade I’m in. That’s when he tells me who is daughter is. So naturally, I say, “Yes, I know your daughter.” That’s all I said.

So the next thing you know my dad’s suggesting to this guy that they get his daughter and me together. I’m trying to shush my dad in the most indiscreet manner I can think of. Does he catch on? No. He keeps right on telling this guy that he’ll have me call his daughter. And this guy’s tickled pink about the whole thing.

When we finally get back to the car, which seemed like an eternity later, I explain the whole situation to my dad. So he says, “That’s a lot of foolishness. She may have done all that because she really likes you. Girls act that way sometimes as a defense mechanism when they fear they’ll get rejected. At least give her a call. I promised him that you would.”

He asked me several times over the following week if I had called that guy’s daughter. And I could tell he was getting irritated with me every time I said, “no.” So to finally put that ghost to rest I lied and told him that I finally did call her and that she wasn’t interested. To which I could see that he was well pleased.

“At least you tried,” he said. “Don’t take it to heart. There’s somebody for everybody.”

I wish I could honestly say that that was the first time I ever lied to my dad, but actually, it was lie number 3,476 or somewhere thereabouts. You gotta lie sometimes, especially to your parents. If not you could wind up going out on a date with the “Wreck of the Hesperus.”

And then there was the time when it seemed like all of my friends were already beginning to shave. I felt so left behind. There was this one kid who hung around Glendale Park who had already started to grow a mustache. And here I still didn’t have so much as a single whisker popping out anywhere on my face.

Somebody told me that if you start shaving with a razor anyway that the whiskers were sure to follow. That’s all I had to hear. Next thing you know I’ve got my dad’s shaving creme and razor and I’m ready to go for the gold just as my dad comes barging into the bathroom.

“What on earth,” he asks. He burst out laughing when I told him that I wanted to shave with a real razor to make my whiskers grow. So then he suggests that I paint my face with milk so the cat could lick my whiskers off. As if that’s a real boost to my ego – right?

All of his reassurance that I would one day rue the day I had to shave meant nothing to me. Realizing that, he then walked me step-by-step through the proper procedure of shaving with a razor. Needless to say, I got my first razor cut that day. Not to worry, my dad always had a Styptic pencil near by.

He somehow left out the part about how a Styptic pencil was like pouring salt into an opened wound. It was that Styptic pencil that cured my longing to shave. Dear gawd, did that thing hurt. That was ten times worse than the cut. I jumped up and down all over the bathroom holding onto my face for what seemed like an hour-and-a-half after that.

The images are coming at me in rapid succession now. I’m seeing him lying backwards on the sidewalk in front of our house on Arlington Street trying to bolt the back door onto our old 52 Ford Custom. We were supposed to go out on a Sunday drive that day, but it got postponed when he discovered that back door wouldn’t shut tight.

Both the front and rear passenger doors were swung wide open while he worked diligently to fulfill his promise to take us out for a drive. So I innocently hopped into the front seat to play with the steering wheel while he worked, slamming the door shut behind me.

My dad let out a blood-curdling scream. I could see that his thumb was jammed in between the two doors. As quickly as I possibly could, I lifted the latch and swung the door back open. His thumb was badly mangled. There was blood everywhere.

To say that I felt like a complete stooge is an understatement. I ran up to my bed, buried my head into my pillow, and cried my heart out. Next thing you know, he’s rubbing my back and saying, “Don’t take it to heart, little guy. We all make mistakes. I’m not mad at you. It was an accident. It happens. That’s life.”

I don’t remember how many stitches it took to close his thumb back up. It took plenty, I can tell you that. That thumb was bandaged up tight for over a month. And he was the kind of guy who never once let on how much it hurt.

Sunday mornings were always a special treat. He made them seem like a holiday of sorts. It was probably because it was the only day he didn’t have to get up and go to work. I’d have slept in if I were him. He was up at the crack of dawn.

You’d wake up to the sound of bacon sizzling in the frying pain, and him singing “Beautiful Dreamer” to the top of his lungs. And you’d sit down to a plate full of fishcakes, grits, bacon, eggs, and English muffins all in one setting. You’d eat so much that your belly would hurt for the rest of day.

And even though he was a "dyed-in-the-wool" Red Sox nut, I rather doubt that he ever made it past the bottom of the third. Give him the whir of that oscillating tabletop fan on a hot summer afternoon, the monotone sound of Curt Gowdy barking through his nose, and this guy was out like a light in seconds flat.

He’d snore so loud you’d think the ceiling was gonna cave in. That is until you tried to change the channel. He’d jump right up out of his deep sleep and shout, “Hey, I was watching that!” Funny thing is, he knew the count, how many men they had on, and who was stepping up on deck. Go figure.

Even his grandchildren got to enjoy his unconventionality. And he was that in so many funny different ways. He thought nothing of rummaging through the trash looking for interesting stuff. It was like a treasure hunt to him. Every so often he’d come home with a bagful of neat stuff that he found in the trash.

He found toys and gadgets of all kinds. Sometimes he’d come home with a really old table radio, or a 1930’s telephone, and one time he came home with an old mimeograph machine. What a ball and a half I had with that thing, let me tell ya.

With that mimeograph machine I published my very own comic book. It was entitled “Tuff Town,” and it was all about people beating each other up over the most miniscule things. There was even one story in there about a kid who beat up his own father for a nickel.

I was only in the third grade at the time. So I was about eight years old. I ran off twelve copies of my ten-page funny book and handed them out to the kids on my end of Arlington Street. They in turn, passed them along after they read them. For years afterwards I was running into kids I didn’t knew who only knew me through those “Tuff Town” funny books.

About twenty-five years later I bumped into a kid who told me that he still had a copy of that funny book. He said he held onto it in case I ever became famous. So I guess he can safely let go of it now since the chances of that ever happening are just about nil.

Another thing that amazed me about this guy is that he always found a way to provide us with a glorious Christmas, even though he never had two nickels to rub together. He somehow managed to come up a generous amount of gifts for each one of us four kids come Christmas morning. God only knows how he did it.

He and I went through every proverbial phase of growing up. We stood at odds with each other during my hippie days. We grew apart when I left the nest and headed out for parts unknown. We found each other again when my big brother passed away. It was just as if I had never left.

He instilled me with a sense of family loyalty and pride. He did that through example. No matter how much trouble we got into, he always told us that we could always come home. “No matter what you do, you are my child. You can always come home.”

It was during my Everett High School years when I first caught a glimpse of the true quality of his character. One of the kids in my classroom came walking up to me and said, “Guess who I met this morning?”

“Who?”

“You’re father.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I was thumbing a ride to school down the Square. He picked me up. When I told him I was late for school he said he’d drop me off. We got to talking. He’s a pretty cool guy. Wish I had a father like that. You’re a lucky dude.”

I am a lucky dude. I could write volumes about this guy. There was never a time I couldn’t turn to him when I was in trouble, even when we were at odds with each other. And I am ever so grateful for the time we got to share together.

I watched him grow old. And he did ever so gracefully. I never once thought that the day would come when he would be gone. I keep looking over my shoulder every now and then and half expect to find him there.

If I ever do I won’t hesitate to tell him how sorry I am for betraying his trust over that dime. It happened during the summer following my stint in Miss Cook’s kindergarten class up at the Horace Mann.

My mother started working the afternoon shift at Transitron in Melrose. My sister looked after me for that hour or so between when my mother left for work and my dad got home. After dinner one night when everybody else headed up to the Horace Mann playground, he gave me a dime to spend at Manny’s so long as I promised not to leave the backyard until it was time to come in.

Manny’s store was what eventually became TeeGee’s sub in Henry Gray’s building on Ferry Street. I could get to Manny’s through his back door so I didn’t even have to step out of my own backyard to get there.

I knew my dad was gonna fall asleep on the couch. He knew I was safely playing in the backyard so he had no worries. After I ate all my penny candy I went upstairs to check out the situation. Sure enough, he was sawing wood on the couch so I snuck up to the playground.

Minutes later he showed up and waved me over. Naturally, I ran to him with my head hung low. I expected him to really let me have it while we walked back down Arlington Street, but all I he ever said was, “I thought I could trust you. I always had faith in you. I am so disappointed that my heat is broken. I always thought there was something extra special between us.”

You don’t know how much I wished he had hit me with the belt instead. At least then I’d have felt like I paid for my crime, but that wasn’t his style. His letting you off the hook when you didn’t deserve it was a far more devastating experience. I’ve punished myself over that stupid dime at least a hundred thousand times. And you can add one more to the pile right there.

I miss this guy so much it hurts. He praised every work of art I ever drew, even the ones that didn’t deserve it. And he encouraged me no matter how foolish my ideas came across. “Give it a shot,” he’d say. “You only live once.”

Life passes by like the batting of an eye. People come and go so quickly sometimes. And the cherished moments we share with each other are so far and few between that they become our most precious possessions.

Just because someone no longer walks amongst us doesn’t mean that you’ve lost what it was that bound your hearts together. That is the one true gift that we all bring to the table. We all possess the ability to ignite a cherished memory in each other’s heart. And in that memory do we live on beyond our journey.

Whenever you fondly recall a special moment you’ve shared with someone who has journeyed beyond the far horizon, you bring them back to life. Those who do not believe are cheating themselves out of the spirituality that embraces our mechanical universe. After all, the truth is still the truth whether or not anyone believes it.

So Happy Father’s Day everybody. Spend a special moment with somebody who means the world to you. If not in person, then by all means in spirit. It’s what makes life worth living. And we do appreciating the value of all that this life has to offer because – “We’re from Everett!”