My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. – Clarence Budington Kelland
His father died when he was seventeen.
His mother went insane, which may have been the only smart thing to do.
Some think mental illness runs in the family, but it was the Great Depression.
So Dad was an orphan with two baby sisters and a strong sense of survival.
World War II, he guarded POWS in Texas and FDR in New York.
I have handmade wooden footlocker; Dad traded three packs of Pall Malls to a kraut.
He was the guy who put up the Christmas trees on the shore of Lake Gleneida.
Summers, he mowed lawns until he got on with the Post Office.
Sorted mail for some thirty years, his right arm growing longer than his left.
No way he’d take the Assistant Postmaster job, extra money not worth extra hassle.
We played catch once. The next day he couldn’t lift his arm.
He hit me twice, seventeen years apart. He was wrong both times and he knew it.
I was twenty-four when he told he’d had a wife before Mom. He’d been tricked into marriage with a fake pregnancy and cautioned me to always use protection.
Told him I appreciated how he wasn’t one of those fathers going on and on about what was best for me. “Got tired of wasting my breath,” he said.
He didn’t say much, which was good, because he could be brutal.
Ironic perhaps, as he once told me, “Son, you don’t have to tell the truth all the time.”
If you are stupid and keep your mouth shut, maybe no one will notice.
If you are smart and quiet about it, you might gain an advantage.
My father loved to bowl and was proud to be the captain of Dube’s Duffers.
He had his first heart attack at the age of fifty-four. Soon as I got the news, I rushed to the wrong hospital. When I finally found him, he was in an ICU, beds like the spokes of a wheel. The next morning, he was the only patient who had survived the night.
He was tough. At my 50th high school reunion, I confessed I was a little scared of my dad. My childhood buddy responded with, “Hell, the whole neighborhood was.”
Dad survived a couple more heart attacks, some cancer, a few strokes.
He renewed his license in rehab, but he never drove again.
For his 80th birthday, Mom took him to Vegas.
He loved to gamble, but what he loved most to bet on was a sure thing.
Which he never believed in.