Thirteen Reasons Why I Wish You Could Have Known My Father

“Daddy’s Song“
by Jack­son Browne (from “The Pretender”)

1. He had a very dry, witty sense of humor.

He actu­ally looked a bit like Henry Fonda and had a droll, dry sense of humor much like the char­ac­ter of Nor­man Thayer in “On Golden Pond.” (But my father’s humor was not bit­ing or cruel.) Just when you least expected it … zing! you would find your­self laugh­ing heartily.

2. He never allowed us to dis­re­spect our mother.

Many men today could take a les­son from our father’s gen­er­a­tion. They knew how to com­mand respect — for them­selves and the moth­ers of their children.

I remem­ber mouthing off to my mother a few times and liv­ing to regret it! That old car­toon series, “Wait ‘Til Your Father Gets Home,” comes to mind. I used to hear his foot­steps and try to hide (which was futile) because I knew that as soon as he came through the door, my mother was going to tell him exactly what I did, and then he was com­ing straight to my room … and, well, you know the rest: “To the moon!”

3. He was a gen­tle­man who would never use foul or dis­taste­ful lan­guage in the pres­ence of his wife or daugh­ters — or allow any­one else to do so.

Men in my father’s gen­er­a­tion did not curse or use foul lan­guage in front of their wives or daugh­ters. It sim­ply wasn’t done.

I remem­ber once bring­ing a video­tape of “The Ver­dict” over to my par­ents’ house. I really thought they would enjoy watch­ing it. But the begin­ning scene is the last one they saw. When Jack Warden’s char­ac­ter comes to the office of Paul Newman’s char­ac­ter to find him passed out and late for a court appear­ance, Jack War­den drops sev­eral f-bombs in the process of rous­ing Paul Newman’s char­ac­ter. My father got up, pulled the tape out of the vcr, and told me in no uncer­tain terms that we would not be watch­ing the rest of the movie because of that lan­guage. I was sur­prised and, at first, annoyed because they were going to miss one of my all-time favorite movies. But I respected his feel­ings on the subject.

4. He was a reg­u­lar “guy.”

It wasn’t until Big­Bob and I were mar­ried that I found out my father was really a reg­u­lar “guy.” Up until that time, he was just my dad — I had never really viewed him in any other way.

The two of them worked alone on a home improve­ment project one day. I never heard the details, but I was assured by Big­Bob later that my dear ol’ dad was, in fact, a “guy” quite capa­ble of engag­ing in “guy” ban­ter when his wife and daugh­ters were not around. I have an idea what that meant. I don’t really want to know for sure, but I sus­pect it involved some of the lan­guage he would never use in front of us.

5. He could fix any­thing. And if he said, “I can’t fix it,” you just had to junk the item in ques­tion because it was a total lost cause.

He was the mas­ter at all things mechan­i­cal. So many times over the course of the past fif­teen years, some­thing has bro­ken or quit work­ing and I have started to walk over to the phone to call and ask if he will look at it for me, only to catch myself when I remem­ber that he is gone.

6. He always kept my car run­ning perfectly.

I remem­ber the first time I had to actu­ally pay for some­one to fix my car. I thought the world had spun off its axis.

Why?

Because Papa was an auto mechanic — a trans­mis­sion spe­cial­ist employed by a Lincoln-Mercury deal­er­ship for 27 years. We always had cars that were impec­ca­bly main­tained and ran per­fectly. And if some­thing did go wrong, it was just a mat­ter of giv­ing him suf­fi­cient time to repair it. He always could. Plus, he never let the gas tank fall below half-full, and scraped the ice off the wind­shield and warmed up the engine for me in the win­ter so that all I had to do, quite lit­er­ally, was get in and drive off to school. I was spoiled rotten!

Look at this pic­ture of him stand­ing next to his 1966 Mer­cury Park Lane, the ugli­est car ever built. This photo was taken in 1989 just before he sold it. It had well over 100,000 miles on the orig­i­nal engine, but looked like the day he brought it home brand new from the deal­er­ship where he worked. My sis­ter and I called it “The Tank” and hated when he made us drive it.¹

My par­ents kept that car so long that it was noto­ri­ous around Lodi. Peo­ple would say, “Oh, I saw your par­ents at … ” or “Did your par­ents enjoy going to … ?” because they saw the car parked in var­i­ous locales around town.

One day I drove by the mall and glanced over at the park­ing lot. There was “the Ken­ny­mo­bile,” as Big­Bob called it. When I got home, I called my mother and asked, “So what did you buy at Macy’s?” She started laugh­ing, know­ing that I did not go shop­ping myself, but just drove by and there, like a bea­con in the fog, was this unmis­tak­ably ugly turquoise car!

I spent a lot of time in the back­seat of The Tank. We used to drive to South Dakota to see our rel­a­tives. He would wake us up about 3:30 a.m. and we would stum­ble to the garage, curl up in the back­seat with our pil­lows and blan­kets, and go back to sleep. He’d wake us up again as the sun was ris­ing over the moun­tains in Sparks, Nevada, just in time to have break­fast at his favorite cafe. Then it was back on the road across scenic (not) east­ern Nevada, across the Salt Flats of Utah, and all the way to Rock Springs, Wyoming. That was just the first day.

And, for the record, that’s a dis­tance of about 1,100 miles and he did vir­tu­ally all the dri­ving.² Then we would check into his favorite motel and get up the next morn­ing to drive the remain­ing 900 or so miles to the lit­tle town in north­east­ern South Dakota where my par­ents grew up. We’d stay for ten days and then jour­ney back home, arriv­ing on Sun­day night so that he could go to work on Mon­day morn­ing. I still don’t know how he did it. I would collapse!

7. He worked harder than any other human being I have ever known (with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of my mother).

He worked all the over­time offered by his employer, then came home and worked in the yard, around the house, and per­form­ing small jobs (like a brake change) for his friends. The man just didn’t sit still.

8. He taught us to appre­ci­ate and take care of the things we worked to earn.

His tool­box is sit­ting in the garage right where he left it. His friends in the neigh­bor­hood come over to bor­row a wrench or drill bit or other item. They still tell me, “Your dad took bet­ter care of his tools than any mechanic I have ever known. His tools were always clean.” I would use the word “fas­tid­i­ous” to describe his habits and philosophy.

9. He never thought of him­self or my mother as “old” or “aging.”

And that’s what kept both of them young for so long. It’s all about your attitude!

I will never for­get the time a local widow stopped by to ask a ques­tion about her car. After­ward, we were eat­ing din­ner and my par­ents were talk­ing about how long she had been liv­ing alone. My mother asked my father how old the woman was. He responded, “Oh, she’s real old. She must be about 60.”

Things got very quiet as we watched my mother decide how to respond. Finally, she said, “That old, huh?”

My father got a very sheep­ish grin on his face as he real­ized what he had said. You see, my mother was, at the time, 62 years old! But he didn’t think of her as a 62-year-old woman. In his mind, she was still his young bride and nei­ther of them had aged a bit!

We laughed and laughed … and teased him about that inci­dent for many years. When­ever the sub­ject of age came up, we’d say, “Oh, be care­ful here, Papa!”

10. He taught us to be kind to animals.

Bar­ney was a Cairn ter­rier. My sis­ter adopted him from a res­cue orga­ni­za­tion, but he ended up liv­ing with my par­ents. I told peo­ple that I’d finally got­ten some­thing I’d always wanted: A baby brother!

That dog was treated prac­ti­cally as well as my sis­ter and I were when we lived with our par­ents. He was totally pam­pered and spoiled to the point that he almost became human. He had a huge vocab­u­lary because my par­ents talked to him all the time. And my father actu­ally used to go to the back­yard and drag the bar-b-que out for the pur­pose of cook­ing 1 ham­burger patty. Why? For Barney’s din­ner, of course!

You think I could make this stuff up?

I would post a photo of Bar­ney, but we don’t have any. He freaked out every time we tried to take his pic­ture, with or with­out a flash. He ran and hid behind a chair and sat there shak­ing. After a cou­ple of attempts, we never tried it again because to do so would have been cruel. We spec­u­lated that per­haps he was mis­treated by a prior owner. My father always won­dered if some­one hit him with a flash­light, caus­ing him to think the cam­era sig­naled more abuse. We’ll never know.

11. He had an iron will to live.

Through two open-heart surg­eries, the sec­ond of which included the implan­ta­tion of both a pace­maker and defib­ril­la­tor, he was deter­mined to fol­low his physi­cians’ orders and live. He did any­thing his doc­tors’ told him to, reli­giously adher­ing to a low-fat, low-cholesterol, no-salt diet, exer­cis­ing, refrain­ing from lift­ing, etc. He was a model patient.

When the doc­tors wanted to per­form open heart surgery for a sec­ond time in 1989, they explained to him that it would be a painful, ardu­ous ordeal. We all told him that he had to made his own deci­sion because it was his body. He asked the sur­geon if the surgery would pro­long his life and for how long. The doc­tor responded that he would def­i­nitely die quickly if he did not have the oper­a­tion, but if he did, his life might be extended for as long as ten years. That was all he needed to hear. He took the con­sent forms, signed them, and pre­pared him­self for what was to come. It was a 7.5 hour surgery, fol­lowed by many months of recov­ery. But it kept him with us for 3.5 more years and he never regret­ted his decision.

12. He wanted to live so badly for one very sim­ple rea­son: His boys.

After my par­ents became grand­par­ents, I used to come over to their house and think, “Who are you peo­ple and what have you done with my parents?”

That’s prob­a­bly not an unusual reac­tion. Like most peo­ple, they were trans­formed when the first grand­son arrived. Sim­ply put, no one and noth­ing mat­tered more to Papa than his boys. He would have allowed the doc­tors to do any­thing they wanted to him so long as he could come home, sit in his rock­ing chair, and have his boys climb up on his lap.

The Jan­u­ary 17, 2007, Word­less Wednes­day photo is of my father watch­ing car­toons with my old­est nephew. The lit­tle wooden chairs and match­ing table are in my bed­room now. They were orig­i­nally pur­chased for my sis­ter, and then I used them (she’s eight years older). My father refin­ished them for the grand­sons and I just couldn’t bear to give the set away so I am sav­ing it in case I ever have grandchildren!

I think he laughed the hard­est the day he spent hours child­proof­ing my sister’s house for her. He installed lit­tle gad­gets on every cup­board door and drawer in the house. He had just about fin­ished the kitchen when my old­est nephew tod­dled in.

“Hi, Papa,” he said, as he stud­ied what my father was doing.

Then my nephew walked right over to a drawer, opened it, popped the lit­tle catch that released the drawer so that it could open all the way, looked at it, and then pushed it back in. As he did it, we all just stared in amaze­ment, real­iz­ing that my father had just wasted his entire day installing those giz­mos. Nobody said any­thing for a cou­ple of moments. And then I looked over at my father and the edges of his mouth were turn­ing up … before we knew it, we were all laugh­ing until we cried. My father mum­bled some­thing like, “Can you believe that lit­tle … ?” So much for the childproofing!

As to my #1Son … he some­how became “Peanuts.” I have no idea why. One day Papa just started call­ing him that.

When­ever we would come to my par­ents’ house, Papa would hear us drive up and be at the door before we could even pull the car all the way onto the dri­ve­way. The kids would make a mad dash for the door, hug and kiss him, and then he would tell them, “Go find Nana!” They would tear into the house, yelling, “Nana! We’re here!” My father was so busy chas­ing them, he usu­ally didn’t even notice or bother to greet us. But we didn’t care. I don’t know who had more fun: The kids, my par­ents or us as we watched them together. I think it was a toss-up.

13. He would be so proud of his boys today.

Papa’s boys are now 23,³ 20, 17 and 15, and they’re all more than six feet tall.

There’s noth­ing I wouldn’t give for a photo of the four of them envelop­ing my father in a big bear hug! I can just see him grin­ning proudly …

1. It had the old-fashioned, highly sen­si­tive power brakes. I remem­ber nearly send­ing him through the wind­shield a cou­ple of times when he was teach­ing me to drive.
2. My mother only drove across the vast expanses where, in those days, there was no speed limit or traffic.
3. My old­est nephew took my father’s death so hard that, to this day, we dare not talk much about Papa with him because he gets very upset.

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