Malcolm's Memories: The Joy of My Father's Joy
I never saw my father cry.
I heard him cry once, in the dark, while burying a family dog in our field by the light of an oil lantern. Then, there was the day he came home with a new car. I had never seen him so happy. I think about that often, especially on this special day for fathers.
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I grew up in an era before goofy dads were running jokes on sitcoms. They were strong, assertive back then, full of silent authority. Dads were everywhere, at least in the evenings when they got home from work. And on weekends.
They tended more toward showing you how to do stuff, rather than talking about it. How to hold a baseball bat and stand. He read books to me most nights, and I ended up writing some. If I had trouble assembling an airplane model, he'd stand by a while, then say, "Maybe try it the other way."
He ignited my imagination about the world. We'd put notes in bottles and toss them into the ocean. Just before turning out my bedroom light at night, he'd say, "I wonder where our bottle is tonight." And I'd fall asleep dreaming of faraway places that actually found some of them.
He taught me how to work hard, even when no one was watching, and sometimes get a reward. And to do the chores without being told; my breakfast came only after the animals had theirs.
On hot weekend afternoons, around noon, working out back, he’d pause and peer at me closely. “You look like you could use a cheeseburger.”
He was always right!
I’ve written here about how Dad taught me the alphabet before school and television. How he kept me from smoking. How he taught me to respect guns. And about the stars.
I watched him intensely. On car trips along two-lane highways before Interstates, motel chains, and computers, he’d go into a tourist home to inquire about a room. If Dad emerged rubbing his hands, we had a room. And I’d announce, “We have a room.”
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Mom would say, “How do you know?”
Dad would get in the car: “We have a room.”
He often dispensed lessons obliquely. When I could not get the dang lawn mower going after 20 pulls of the rope, he just happened to pass by. “I’m sure you checked the gas,” he said, walking away.
Of course, I had not. But he taught the lesson without throwing the stupidity in my face.
It took me days to screw up the courage to call a classmate on our kitchen phone (I forget her name now) and invite her to go to the movies with me that Friday.
She said, “No!” And hung up.
Just then, Dad happened to walk by again. “You know,” he said, “one day you won’t even remember her name.”
My Dad, like many masculine creatures from those days, didn’t talk a lot. But when he did, I listened. Closely.
One time, I was accused of being rude to two old ladies on our party phone line who were talking all afternoon. When I wanted to call Billy Kerr.
Apparently, a young voice had interrupted their endless chatter: “Yakety-yak. Yakety-yak. When are you old biddies going to stop talking?” And the phone was slammed down.
That was the allegation, anyway, as recounted by my mother, who took their call shortly after. It seems that our party line had only one family with a child. So, I was a suspect.
“Wait til your father gets home!” Mom said.
On his arrival, Dad listened to the official reading of the charges. He nodded. He took me into the dining room. He knelt down face-to-face.
“Listen to me,” he said very slowly. “We…don’t…do…that.”
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And so, I never did that again.
Dad loved to bargain. I do not. When buying my first house, I described it to him and sought his advice. “And it has a swimming pool!” I said excitedly.
“OK,” he said. “When you go back tomorrow, the first thing you say is, ‘How much do you think it would cost to fill in the pool?’”
I was dumbfounded. “But I like the pool!”
He sighed deeply. “I know that. They don’t know that. You have small children. It’s dangerous.”
Dad took months to buy a new car. He loved the haggling. We had a used ’48 Mercury woody wagon. He paid $730. Years later, he said he wanted more for it than he paid. It was “The Challenge.”
One day, weeks later, he came home to proudly show the receipt. He got $731 credit toward a new car.
Then, there was the day I saw Dad giddy. The first and only time. It was amazing and wondrous fun to see the usually quiet adult man bubbling over with joy and excitement. He could not help himself.
Dad was an immigrant from Canada. He had grown up on an isolated dairy farm without electricity. His mother was the one-room schoolhouse teacher; she got $5 extra per year for chopping her own firewood.
In those days, they rode to town in a buggy or sleigh with blankets and heated bricks for their feet. Everywhere we lived, Dad would erect a flagpole, and he would raise the U.S. flag before going to work. It was my duty to lower it at dusk. I have one now, too.
One evening, when I was maybe nine, he drove into our rural driveway in a bright-red Chrysler convertible. He was chuckling and rubbing his hands. “What do you think?” he said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
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Only one answer was possible.
It really was nice-looking. So shiny and unscratched. I was impressed by it, for sure. But I was more fascinated with the bubbly Dad who was usually taciturn. He walked me around it to admire every angle.
“Get in!” he said. And he put the roof down. It folded slowly and neatly into the back. He had to show us how the cover snapped on and off over it.
Then, we all had to go for a ride, a nice long one as it happened. “Dinner will wait,” he told Mom, who didn’t argue, though her hair was blown all over.
I had heard Dad laugh loudly before, usually at Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko. But I never heard him chuckle driving a car until then. Everyone agreed on the smooth ride and the sound quality of the radio.
Watching Dad with his new car, I imagine, was how my parents felt watching me at Christmas when I got new cars for my electric train set, and then one year, a record player that could automatically change a whole stack of records one after the other.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said. And everyone agreed,
Whenever I feel sad, I try to think about Dad's uninhibited joy over his red Chrysler convertible in the driveway. He was just so very happy that evening. It’s probably just coincidence that for all these years my cars have been red too.
Inevitably, his passing was not pretty; smoking eventually got to his lungs. He left a surprise behind.
It’s hard to believe, but he’s been gone now longer than I had him. Tomorrow's my birthday. I am much older than he ever was. But the memories surrounding him remain indelible.
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Watching my oldest son with his first child, I remarked that he was fathering just like my father. “Gee,” said my wife, “I wonder where he learned that.”
So, in a way, Dad lives on.
This is the 41st in an ongoing series of personal memories. Links to all the others are below.
Malcolm's Memories: Me and Huck Down by the River
Malcolm's Memories: Making Oscars & Johnny's Toilet Paper Joke
Malcolm's Memories: She Loved Books So Much She Opened a Little Library
Malcolm's Memories: The Day Bill Buckley Asked My Help; Small Town Etiquette
Behind Johnny's Desk, Before Ford Was POTUS, and a Dog Makes Her Rounds
A Hooker in the House, Whistle War, and Ann Landers' Worst Mistake
More Neat People and a Nuclear Sub I've Met Along the Way
Malcolm's Memories: A Toddler's First Fourth
Malcolm's Memories: Train, Streetcars, and Grandma
The True Story of an Unusual Wolf, a Pioneer in the Wild
That Time I Wore $15K in Cash Into a War Zone
I Fell in Love With the South, Despite That One Scary Afternoon
More Memories: Neat People I've Met Along the Way
Unexpected Thanksgiving Memory, a Live Volcano, and a Moving Torch
The Horrors I Saw at the Three 9/11 Crash Sites Back Then
The Glorious Nights When I Had Paris All to Myself
Inside Political Conventions - at Least the Ones I Attended
Political Assassination Attempts I Have Known
The Story a Black Rock Told Me on a Montana Mountain
That Time I Sent a Message in a Bottle Across the Ocean...and Got a Reply!
As the RMS Titanic Sank, a Father Told His Little Boy, 'See You Later.' But Then...
Things My Father Said: 'Here, It's Not Loaded'
The Terrifyingly Wonderful Day I Drove an Indy Car
When I Went on Henry Kissinger's Honeymoon
When Grandma Arrived for That Holiday Visit
Practicing Journalism the Old-Fashioned Way
When Hal Holbrook Took a Day to Tutor a Teen on Art
The Night I Met Saturn That Changed My Life
High School Was Hard for Me, Until That One Evening
When Dad Died, He left a Haunting Message That Reemerged Just Now
My Father's Sly Trick About Smoking That Saved My Life
His Name Was Edgar. Not Ed. Not Eddie. But Edgar.
My Encounters With Famous People and Someone Else
The July 4th I Saw More Fireworks Than Anyone Ever
How One Dad Taught His Little Boy the Alphabet Before TV - and What Happened Then
Muhammad Ali Was Naked When We Met
When I Met Santa Claus in Indiana, He Knew My Name
An Easter Bunny Story That Revealed More Than I Expected
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