There's no such thing as an absentee father. You're either a father or you're gone.
=Picking it up right where I left it.
Now, my dad... he was the polar opposite of my mom. He drank but rarely. He was at home about as often. Dad traveled. A lot. His influence was such that the only time I can remember him home was rarely. I do have some memories.
"Dad," I asked him in the year...196something or other "can I fly to the moon?" It was before the moon landing. I think I was eight or nine.
My dad, whom I reckon to be the smartest man in the entire world, or at least he was when I was under the age of 10, looked up from where he was slide ruling and said, "You can do anything you set your mind to, if you work at it hard enough."
He was right, mostly. OH, and my dad did use a slide rule. He could slide rule like there was no tomorrow. He even tried to teach me how to slide rule. Even today, with the calculators and all that stuff there is just something magical about a slide rule. At least to me.
As I was saying, dad was right, mostly. You can do whatever you set your mind to, if you work hard enough, have resources enough, time enough, opportunity enough... maybe a little bit of help from here or there. So yeah. The idealism of the 50's and 60's. That would be cool, Dad. That would have been groovy.
My father was not an absentee father. He was just gone a lot. He had Quality Control meetings to attend and he was still finishing up his masters in Engineering and he had orchestra to perform at and municipal band to perform at and he was a Rotarian and a member of the Eagles, on and on and on. My dad was a busy man.
He did find time for us kids. When he was at home and mom had had just about all she could fill up with and was starting to throw the really heavy things, dad would toss us into the car and we would go see a movie... or go on a picnic... or go to the library... or just go somewhere just to go until mom cooled off, fell asleep or got magically sober.
There was this once, I remember, where dad put us all in the blue station wagon... a mercury, I think, and drove us 30 miles out of town. He stopped at one of those middle of the road rest stops... the one literally in the middle of the road, between the north and south, betwixt the east and west. There was a concrete picnic table and a trash can. We ate Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread and we stayed there until it was dark and probably safe to go home.
The memories here that are certain to me are the station wagon, the trip (not the distance), the reason and the middle of the road rest area. I don't know if we ate, but I remember we did. The trash can in my memory is far to shiny, but that could just be the way it was.
There was another when dad took us four boys to see a Jerry Lewis movie. "The Big Mouth" at the Strand, which was the only theater in town. Now, those specific details I remember. I remember because it was night, and the movie had Colonel Sanders of KFC fame in it. These aren't edited or false memories. Anything else might be, but those two details are solid.
Now, dad was, like mom, sometimes very good. He gave us our sense of curiosity, or sense of logic and the ability to know where to research and how. My Google foo is very strong thanks to my dad.
He tried to give us his gift of performing music. If it had strings or valves then my dad could play it. Gary, my oldest brother, learned to play the guitar and could sing very well. Sam was trumpet, James was coronet. I was... well, to say I was uninspired musically would be an understatement. Anyone who has heard me sing, seen me dance or even pretend to conduct knows I have very little sense of rhythm. I can carry a tune, but I don't necessarily carry it where it needs to go.
What I did get from my dad was the ability to figure things out. To make really, really good guesses. To be a machine whisperer. That phrase may be a bit over-used... the 'whatever whisperer', but if you've been there you know what I mean. It is the ability to look at a machine, any machine, and even some electrical stuff and go "oh. That's obvious." And if it's broken to say "Oh, well... sure it's broken. This is why." And this knowledge is give to us by the machine itself. There is a certain logic to machines, there is a certain "it is this way" to it. Broken machines know how they are supposed to be and they want to be that way, and they will often tell you what they need to be whole again or at least be able to do their job. They are kind of like humans in that way.
So, I couldn't play music, which I'm pretty sure disappointed my dad, and I didn't grow big and tall, which most of his family were, but by gum, I could fix things. I had an deep interest in science and he fed that interest with everything he had. He rarely gave me an answer when he knew I could look it up. We had a full set of World Encyclopedia AND a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica... not to mention a decades worth of World Books, which detailed the major events of the Globe for that year. Granted, all media was biased but I didn't know it and so I grew to have an incredible fondness of literature and knowledge of all kinds.
This I owe to my father.
My father was a man who could have gone many different places. His brother, John, became a world respect professor of languages who spent time in a Russian Gulag because he decided to go for a walk. At night. In Moscow. In the 60's. John was an odd duck, even among odd ducks. He never learned how to drive and once hitchhiked across the US with five hundred dollars in his pocket.
Dads other brother, James, became this master class business man, who somehow knew when to hold 'em, fold 'em and walk away. There Was this big computer tech company called Memorex Telex. The same folks who did the "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" thing. Somehow, uncle James knew enough about the universe to sell his stock just a bare few months before Memorex Telex went belly up. He made a nice nest egg.
What I'm trying to point at is the my dad's side of the family was smart, with a capital sm. Dad could have done anything. He was working on a double major, physics and engineering, with a minor in chemistry when he met my mom. They started seeing each other, I'm guessing and were married three months before I was born.
I carry just a tad bit of guilt knowing that my dad had to put his education on hold because I was in the incubator. Not that it was my fault, mind you. I didn't suddenly say "Okay! It's my time to be born!" But... the universe is a funny old place, and so maybe I did. Regardless, my existence is owed to my father screwing up his life. He could have left my mom. It had happened to her once before, when Gary was born, which is a whole other story to be told when I introduce my oldest brother.
My father, however, was a very honorable man. A man who knew that once a process has been set in motion, you don't just walk away from it and leave it for someone else to clean up. You do what is needed and leave you campground in the same condition, if not better, as when you got there. He passed this honor to his children, and although we bore it and bear it proudly, sometimes it was to our detriment.
My dad, my father, my pater, was a good, decent, honorable man, who may have been gone a bit too much, who sometimes forgot that children are not adults, who had a wicked sense of humor and a savage sense of justice. My father gave his sons - Gary, me, Sam and James, everything he knew to give to help us survive in this crazy world. He knew it wouldn't be enough, but he hoped that we would be smart enough to figure the rest of it out.
It didn't quite work out that way.
My father was a very spiritually Christian man. He had a firm belief in God and, I think, the afterlife. He did not, however, believe that sin, with a capital S, existed. He did not recognize that sin was a part of life. Dig this, because this was his rationale: He had a hard time reconciling a God that would punish his children as ministers tend to say this God does. Therefore, the 'religious' version of Sin did not exist. It was a man made thing. A thing to control the populace. A guilt control. And it works.
This came from a discussion my dad and I had about the nature of everything. I think I was eight. I asked him if he believed in God. He said yes, and went on with "The more I understand science, the more I know God exists." I think that Einstein said it first, but I'll give my dad credit. He was as smart as any old Einstein.
My dad's dad was a minister. Chester before me, Granpa Chester was a tent minister who also worked as a mailman. He delivered mail during the week and sermons on the weekend is my tired old joke. I never knew him. He died in 1951 in an accident involving a Model T and a locomotive. My uncle James was driving. Granpa's last words were "Look out for that..."
That's a joke, son. Ironically, I have always loved the railroad. And Model T's. Life is a funny old thing.
So this is the deal about Dad's. Any male can be a father. Not every male can be a dad. My dad was a dad. He just wasn't there all the time. He did his best to hide away from my mom's illness, and when he though we were in danger, he did his best to hide us away, too.
Remember, this was the 50's and 60's. People didn't "Share" their feelings. They didn't come clean. Yes, there was AA and the 12 steppers. So what? They didn't help my mom, my dad, or any of us kids. And no, she didn't ever go to any meeting. Drinking was socially acceptable back then. I'm also pretty sure she didn't want to enter that sort of environment. Mom spent a few years in a sanitarium for Catalepsy, so 'treatment' of any name may have been a sensitive spot for her.
My parents, for good or ill, and sometimes both, were good folk. They were products of their world and lived their lives as best they could. Dad didn't want children. Mom wanted a daughter. They both were disappointed. Life is funny like that, full of balance when you least expect it.
Gary, the oldest of us boys, is, or was, technically my half brother. My dad wasn't his dad. In fact, nobody knew who Gary's dad was, except maybe mom. And she never told.
Which is where I'll leave it so I can start up next time.
Now, my dad... he was the polar opposite of my mom. He drank but rarely. He was at home about as often. Dad traveled. A lot. His influence was such that the only time I can remember him home was rarely. I do have some memories.
"Dad," I asked him in the year...196something or other "can I fly to the moon?" It was before the moon landing. I think I was eight or nine.
My dad, whom I reckon to be the smartest man in the entire world, or at least he was when I was under the age of 10, looked up from where he was slide ruling and said, "You can do anything you set your mind to, if you work at it hard enough."
He was right, mostly. OH, and my dad did use a slide rule. He could slide rule like there was no tomorrow. He even tried to teach me how to slide rule. Even today, with the calculators and all that stuff there is just something magical about a slide rule. At least to me.
As I was saying, dad was right, mostly. You can do whatever you set your mind to, if you work hard enough, have resources enough, time enough, opportunity enough... maybe a little bit of help from here or there. So yeah. The idealism of the 50's and 60's. That would be cool, Dad. That would have been groovy.
My father was not an absentee father. He was just gone a lot. He had Quality Control meetings to attend and he was still finishing up his masters in Engineering and he had orchestra to perform at and municipal band to perform at and he was a Rotarian and a member of the Eagles, on and on and on. My dad was a busy man.
He did find time for us kids. When he was at home and mom had had just about all she could fill up with and was starting to throw the really heavy things, dad would toss us into the car and we would go see a movie... or go on a picnic... or go to the library... or just go somewhere just to go until mom cooled off, fell asleep or got magically sober.
There was this once, I remember, where dad put us all in the blue station wagon... a mercury, I think, and drove us 30 miles out of town. He stopped at one of those middle of the road rest stops... the one literally in the middle of the road, between the north and south, betwixt the east and west. There was a concrete picnic table and a trash can. We ate Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread and we stayed there until it was dark and probably safe to go home.
The memories here that are certain to me are the station wagon, the trip (not the distance), the reason and the middle of the road rest area. I don't know if we ate, but I remember we did. The trash can in my memory is far to shiny, but that could just be the way it was.
There was another when dad took us four boys to see a Jerry Lewis movie. "The Big Mouth" at the Strand, which was the only theater in town. Now, those specific details I remember. I remember because it was night, and the movie had Colonel Sanders of KFC fame in it. These aren't edited or false memories. Anything else might be, but those two details are solid.
Now, dad was, like mom, sometimes very good. He gave us our sense of curiosity, or sense of logic and the ability to know where to research and how. My Google foo is very strong thanks to my dad.
He tried to give us his gift of performing music. If it had strings or valves then my dad could play it. Gary, my oldest brother, learned to play the guitar and could sing very well. Sam was trumpet, James was coronet. I was... well, to say I was uninspired musically would be an understatement. Anyone who has heard me sing, seen me dance or even pretend to conduct knows I have very little sense of rhythm. I can carry a tune, but I don't necessarily carry it where it needs to go.
What I did get from my dad was the ability to figure things out. To make really, really good guesses. To be a machine whisperer. That phrase may be a bit over-used... the 'whatever whisperer', but if you've been there you know what I mean. It is the ability to look at a machine, any machine, and even some electrical stuff and go "oh. That's obvious." And if it's broken to say "Oh, well... sure it's broken. This is why." And this knowledge is give to us by the machine itself. There is a certain logic to machines, there is a certain "it is this way" to it. Broken machines know how they are supposed to be and they want to be that way, and they will often tell you what they need to be whole again or at least be able to do their job. They are kind of like humans in that way.
So, I couldn't play music, which I'm pretty sure disappointed my dad, and I didn't grow big and tall, which most of his family were, but by gum, I could fix things. I had an deep interest in science and he fed that interest with everything he had. He rarely gave me an answer when he knew I could look it up. We had a full set of World Encyclopedia AND a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica... not to mention a decades worth of World Books, which detailed the major events of the Globe for that year. Granted, all media was biased but I didn't know it and so I grew to have an incredible fondness of literature and knowledge of all kinds.
This I owe to my father.
My father was a man who could have gone many different places. His brother, John, became a world respect professor of languages who spent time in a Russian Gulag because he decided to go for a walk. At night. In Moscow. In the 60's. John was an odd duck, even among odd ducks. He never learned how to drive and once hitchhiked across the US with five hundred dollars in his pocket.
Dads other brother, James, became this master class business man, who somehow knew when to hold 'em, fold 'em and walk away. There Was this big computer tech company called Memorex Telex. The same folks who did the "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" thing. Somehow, uncle James knew enough about the universe to sell his stock just a bare few months before Memorex Telex went belly up. He made a nice nest egg.
What I'm trying to point at is the my dad's side of the family was smart, with a capital sm. Dad could have done anything. He was working on a double major, physics and engineering, with a minor in chemistry when he met my mom. They started seeing each other, I'm guessing and were married three months before I was born.
I carry just a tad bit of guilt knowing that my dad had to put his education on hold because I was in the incubator. Not that it was my fault, mind you. I didn't suddenly say "Okay! It's my time to be born!" But... the universe is a funny old place, and so maybe I did. Regardless, my existence is owed to my father screwing up his life. He could have left my mom. It had happened to her once before, when Gary was born, which is a whole other story to be told when I introduce my oldest brother.
My father, however, was a very honorable man. A man who knew that once a process has been set in motion, you don't just walk away from it and leave it for someone else to clean up. You do what is needed and leave you campground in the same condition, if not better, as when you got there. He passed this honor to his children, and although we bore it and bear it proudly, sometimes it was to our detriment.
My dad, my father, my pater, was a good, decent, honorable man, who may have been gone a bit too much, who sometimes forgot that children are not adults, who had a wicked sense of humor and a savage sense of justice. My father gave his sons - Gary, me, Sam and James, everything he knew to give to help us survive in this crazy world. He knew it wouldn't be enough, but he hoped that we would be smart enough to figure the rest of it out.
It didn't quite work out that way.
My father was a very spiritually Christian man. He had a firm belief in God and, I think, the afterlife. He did not, however, believe that sin, with a capital S, existed. He did not recognize that sin was a part of life. Dig this, because this was his rationale: He had a hard time reconciling a God that would punish his children as ministers tend to say this God does. Therefore, the 'religious' version of Sin did not exist. It was a man made thing. A thing to control the populace. A guilt control. And it works.
This came from a discussion my dad and I had about the nature of everything. I think I was eight. I asked him if he believed in God. He said yes, and went on with "The more I understand science, the more I know God exists." I think that Einstein said it first, but I'll give my dad credit. He was as smart as any old Einstein.
My dad's dad was a minister. Chester before me, Granpa Chester was a tent minister who also worked as a mailman. He delivered mail during the week and sermons on the weekend is my tired old joke. I never knew him. He died in 1951 in an accident involving a Model T and a locomotive. My uncle James was driving. Granpa's last words were "Look out for that..."
That's a joke, son. Ironically, I have always loved the railroad. And Model T's. Life is a funny old thing.
So this is the deal about Dad's. Any male can be a father. Not every male can be a dad. My dad was a dad. He just wasn't there all the time. He did his best to hide away from my mom's illness, and when he though we were in danger, he did his best to hide us away, too.
Remember, this was the 50's and 60's. People didn't "Share" their feelings. They didn't come clean. Yes, there was AA and the 12 steppers. So what? They didn't help my mom, my dad, or any of us kids. And no, she didn't ever go to any meeting. Drinking was socially acceptable back then. I'm also pretty sure she didn't want to enter that sort of environment. Mom spent a few years in a sanitarium for Catalepsy, so 'treatment' of any name may have been a sensitive spot for her.
My parents, for good or ill, and sometimes both, were good folk. They were products of their world and lived their lives as best they could. Dad didn't want children. Mom wanted a daughter. They both were disappointed. Life is funny like that, full of balance when you least expect it.
Gary, the oldest of us boys, is, or was, technically my half brother. My dad wasn't his dad. In fact, nobody knew who Gary's dad was, except maybe mom. And she never told.
Which is where I'll leave it so I can start up next time.