Writer's Note: Yesterday was Father's Day. Did not submit this by deadline because I was too busy trying to be a good dad, myself. I was literally born late, I show up late for work, I will be late to my own funeral. Who cares?
It was around seven years ago. I had just been hired as a social worker at a nursing home in Potwater, Kan. Janice, the director of nursing, engaged me in conversation about where I was from, who my parents were and all that.
"My dad worked at the refinery in Skelly, Kan. for over 40 years," I said. "He retired a few years ago."
"Oh!" she said, breaking out all smiles. "Is your dad Gerald?"
"So I suppose you know him like everybody else?" I said. From the time I was a kid, I remember people stopping him -- "Hi Gerald" -- at the grocery store, barbershop, tire and auto store, the bank. He knew everybody, just a hail-fellow-well-met.
"Wow! You're really popular, Dad," I'd say.
Yeah, he'd talk forever to everyone. Except me. Unless he was delivering a lecture. Then he'd keep you sitting there 'till the cows came home.
Janice was in her 50s when I worked with her at the nursing home. But in the early 1970s when she was a young woman of college age, she bartended at the Amvets, a private club at the west end of town. Dad was always talking about the place in conversation, I remember. The place, as Janice, told me was owned and operated by Leroy, a tough talking, cherry Skoal chewing Korean War vet who had a soft spot for veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.
She remembered my dad with his sideburns, dark browned hair and superfly clothes, the pipe he smoked and was never without. A plastic pouch of Captain Black, as natural to Dad's life as Cutty Sark scotch and cars with carburetors, blocks and u-joints outside the mouths of vehicles and dismantled in the garage.
Some of my earliest memories are of Dad and his friends (Dad had a lot of friends) in the garage taking apart cars and piecing them back together with a never ending supply of Craftsman tools for every occasion. Once in awhile, one of those friends might bring over a son or daughter who would play in the kitchen with my sister and me. What our dads worked on and created in that garage was always such a brilliant mystery to me. An enigma.
"He was always a gentleman," Janice said.
I've always been proud whenever any one's told me that about Dad. And in a bar too. How many guys have I seen besotted and drooling sadly in bars, scamming over women who would never ever have them?
Not my dad. He was always a gentleman.
"Dad always had a great work ethic," I said as Janice shook her head, knowingly. "That's one thing I picked up from him."
For Dad, who was raised in the middle of a pasture in a community barely more modern than an Amish village, checking cars in Skelly, Kan., (pop. 4,000 at that time) constituted hitting what Grandpa Guy always called "the Big Town."
Dad saved his earnings, bought a 1958 Plymouth Fury. Later traded it in for a '58 Pontiac Chieftain he purchased from the Showroom Floor. You could do that in those days -- work in a gas station and save up enough money for a down payment on a spankin' new car.
He had a crapload of chemistry hours from Skelly Junior College, the big shivery burnt red-brick building behind a big old lawn on Main Street. (The brick building beside it housed Skelly High School.) So they hired him as a bottle washer in the lab of what was then Midian Refinery. (The place would undergo about four takeovers before Dad retired -- at which time it was called Fortress Refinery.)
"Grandma and Grandpa were making your dad's car payments when he was in the Army," Mom once told me.
I never sought confirmation from Dad on this matter. His parents -- hard working people of the soil -- made him who he is and if they sprung for a few car payments, oh well.
Upon returning home from the Army, Dad and a buddy of his entered a competition at the firing range at the county fairgrounds. A bunch of cops were taking part. Dad and his friend kicked the cops' asses. A week later, Dad, like his friend, was getting calls from the Skelly Police Dept., offering him a job. But he'd just gotten a promotion from the refinery. He stuck with the refinery.
It was around seven years ago. I had just been hired as a social worker at a nursing home in Potwater, Kan. Janice, the director of nursing, engaged me in conversation about where I was from, who my parents were and all that.
"My dad worked at the refinery in Skelly, Kan. for over 40 years," I said. "He retired a few years ago."
"Oh!" she said, breaking out all smiles. "Is your dad Gerald?"
"So I suppose you know him like everybody else?" I said. From the time I was a kid, I remember people stopping him -- "Hi Gerald" -- at the grocery store, barbershop, tire and auto store, the bank. He knew everybody, just a hail-fellow-well-met.
"Wow! You're really popular, Dad," I'd say.
Yeah, he'd talk forever to everyone. Except me. Unless he was delivering a lecture. Then he'd keep you sitting there 'till the cows came home.
Janice was in her 50s when I worked with her at the nursing home. But in the early 1970s when she was a young woman of college age, she bartended at the Amvets, a private club at the west end of town. Dad was always talking about the place in conversation, I remember. The place, as Janice, told me was owned and operated by Leroy, a tough talking, cherry Skoal chewing Korean War vet who had a soft spot for veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.
She remembered my dad with his sideburns, dark browned hair and superfly clothes, the pipe he smoked and was never without. A plastic pouch of Captain Black, as natural to Dad's life as Cutty Sark scotch and cars with carburetors, blocks and u-joints outside the mouths of vehicles and dismantled in the garage.
Some of my earliest memories are of Dad and his friends (Dad had a lot of friends) in the garage taking apart cars and piecing them back together with a never ending supply of Craftsman tools for every occasion. Once in awhile, one of those friends might bring over a son or daughter who would play in the kitchen with my sister and me. What our dads worked on and created in that garage was always such a brilliant mystery to me. An enigma.
"He was always a gentleman," Janice said.
I've always been proud whenever any one's told me that about Dad. And in a bar too. How many guys have I seen besotted and drooling sadly in bars, scamming over women who would never ever have them?
Not my dad. He was always a gentleman.
"Dad always had a great work ethic," I said as Janice shook her head, knowingly. "That's one thing I picked up from him."
"Playin' baseball meant settin' up a bunch of rocks in the pasture. In summer, you always went barefoot. There were two kids in my Sunday school class, me and Johnny Wrampe.""I was always really bashful," Dad told me. He couldn't say two words to anybody. "You know how I got over it? Working in a filling station." He wore a spiffy uniform with a hat, kept a rag in his back pocket, filled gas tanks, checked tire pressure, wiper fluid level, belts and hoses...talked to sheriff's deputies, school teachers, farmers, bank presidents, housewives...
For Dad, who was raised in the middle of a pasture in a community barely more modern than an Amish village, checking cars in Skelly, Kan., (pop. 4,000 at that time) constituted hitting what Grandpa Guy always called "the Big Town."Dad saved his earnings, bought a 1958 Plymouth Fury. Later traded it in for a '58 Pontiac Chieftain he purchased from the Showroom Floor. You could do that in those days -- work in a gas station and save up enough money for a down payment on a spankin' new car.
He had a crapload of chemistry hours from Skelly Junior College, the big shivery burnt red-brick building behind a big old lawn on Main Street. (The brick building beside it housed Skelly High School.) So they hired him as a bottle washer in the lab of what was then Midian Refinery. (The place would undergo about four takeovers before Dad retired -- at which time it was called Fortress Refinery.)
"Grandma and Grandpa were making your dad's car payments when he was in the Army," Mom once told me.
I never sought confirmation from Dad on this matter. His parents -- hard working people of the soil -- made him who he is and if they sprung for a few car payments, oh well.
Upon returning home from the Army, Dad and a buddy of his entered a competition at the firing range at the county fairgrounds. A bunch of cops were taking part. Dad and his friend kicked the cops' asses. A week later, Dad, like his friend, was getting calls from the Skelly Police Dept., offering him a job. But he'd just gotten a promotion from the refinery. He stuck with the refinery.
At least that's the story Grandpa told me. The old man was always telling stories. Hard to tell what was true and what was mythology.
A few years back I wrote a children's book (unpublished) about Grandpa's life. Recently, I was at Dad and step-mom, Marcia's, house, discussing some official business when somehow we got off on a tangent about Dad's early life.
"Playin' baseball meant settin' up a bunch of rocks in the pasture." "In summer you always went barefoot." "There were two kids in my Sunday school class, me and Johnny Wrampe."
"Playin' baseball meant settin' up a bunch of rocks in the pasture." "In summer you always went barefoot." "There were two kids in my Sunday school class, me and Johnny Wrampe."
Dad and Marcia were on my front porch recently, giving me some vinyl records they'd purchased at a garage sale when I brought up some idea I'd been kicking around.
"Hey Dad, remember that book I wrote about Grandpa," I said. "When am I gonna' write one about you?"
"You think so, huh?" He's always saying that. I can remember him saying that when I was 7-years-old.
"I don't think I should put that in a children's book," I replied.
(Pause) I continued: "You know, someone could never get away with that today, with all the radar and satellites and sirens, all the back-up and everything."
"No, you'd be a damn fool to try it today."
"Didn't you ever feel any compunction, regarding the safety of all this drag racing and out running the cops?" A question I'd been dying to ask him for some time.
"There weren't that many people around then."
Steve freakin' McQueen.
And then he said something about country roads and how the land west of Braum's Ice Cream and the car wash at the corner of Central and Oil Hill Roads in Skelly -- area where a strip mall, doctor's office, Wal-Mart, Burger King and Game X Change are now -- was a no man's land of dirt roads, trees and fields.
I should say that Dad entered the Army. Once when I was a kid I asked him if he ever met Elvis. "No, he was coming out when I was going in."
The summer before my senior year of high school, a recruiter spent about two hours at my house, telling me how great the Army was supposed to be. He had me chomping at the bit to sign up. Give me all I want -- the car, the college, girls who'd give you all kinds of lovin' 'cuz you wearing a uniform.
After he left, Mom told me, "You know he's just selling you a crock of shit?" Which, he was, but I now realize that was his job. I lacked such discriminating factors in those salad days and I let Mom talk me out of signing up as easily as I'd almost let the fat little recruiter talk me into joining.
It's just that -- what John F. Kennedy said about asking what you can do for your country -- that's always meant something to me. Dad served his country in uniform, which is a hell of a lot more than I've ever done and for that reason, Gerald Guy will always be a better man than me.
"I didn't go willingly. They came after me," he told me one Saturday morning as we sat in patio chairs, drinking iced tea and looking over his newly mowed lawn.
He rarely ever lectures me anymore. Guess he feels retired. Although sometimes, "Mr. Advice" still shows up from the backdoor. It's all good, I decided awhile back I prefer him as he is. Around now I'll need to appeal to his wisdom more than I have in years. Kids giving me drama and all. Dad is a great resource, from which I can tap.
But no more tapping for money. That's all over.
Back at the nursing home in Potwater, there were always fires to put out. Administration, activities director, nursing staff -- they'd all be on my ass. I'd fill up with more anxiety than news director Miles Silverberg from early '90s CBS sitcom, Murphy Brown.
"Find your happy place, Jeff," Janice told me, while standing near the bathroom by the nurses' station.
"I wish I had that stoic reserve like my dad," I told her.
"Well you will."
"No Janice, it's too late."
I take more after Mom. Emotive. Anxious. Manic. Neurotic.
Pacing around my front porch Saturday night, drinking a Leinenkugel. Maria, Max and Gabby were at the in-laws, hanging out at the clubhouse in their retirement village. I called this old man.
"What are you doing?" he answered.
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. You never answer the phone. It's always Marcia."
"What do you think about that?"
"Sound like you're about to hit the hay."
"Well it's almost 10 o'clock. Going to a kid's ball game in Derby at 7 tomorrow morning." (He and Marcia are always watching grandkids play ball. They say if they stopped being on the go now, they'd go downhill fast.)
"So did you get your Father's Day card in the mail?" he asked. He's always asking if I got something in the mail. He and Marcia have always been prompt about inserting things via U.S. mail. Most of the time, I've just handed Dad birthday, Father's Day and Christmas cards in person. But I made an exception this time. I mailed that bad boy. Dropped it right into the slot.
"Now that card you mailed me, was that a Father's Day card or a birthday card 'cuz it could be either one, that one that said, 'When I grow up, I'm going to be just like you' and it's underlined."
Told him it's a Father's Day card. His birthday had been a week earlier. Never made it out to hand him the birthday card.
"So I was thinking I might mix you a Father's Day cocktail."
"Like what?"
"Martini, Gin and Tonic, whatever you want," I said, adding "but only, only if it's okay. Did your doctor tell you to stay away from alcohol?"
"Oh we're not supposed to, but we'll have a beer, a margarita sometimes. Everything in moderation."
"I see," I said, making a mental note to mix his drink a little weaker, mine a bit stronger.
"By the way, I do want to be like you when I grow up."
"Okay good," he answered. No big deal.
"Well I better get my ass off the phone. See ya."
"Bye, bye."
When I was a kid (circa 1978) this song came on the radio. Dad turned up the volume.
