wanderingsoul
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Memories of My Dad - Friday, May 28, 2004
I’ve never written anything about my dad—not a poem. I wrote about the Kentucky Derby, and how it was a special day for me and my dad. But nothing else. And that is strange for me. So I am sitting here now and trying to face that, to question it, to ask WHY I have never written a poem for my dad. Probably because he always said everything I wrote was perfect. Nothing I wrote was ever less than wonderful to him. He would shake his head in amazement at my every word. He would tell me I should be a writer. He would say he didn’t know how I could write like that—it was better than anything he had ever read. That meant a lot to me. My dad was a reader. He read all the time. I don’t think I ever saw him eat dinner without reading. So if my writing was better than anything HE had ever read, that meant something.
So why have I never written him a poem? It would have been perfect to him. Every word would have been like it came out of the deepest source of wisdom in the universe. He would have marveled at every syllable (though he barely knew what a syllable was), would have been in awe at every rhyme (because how anyone could make words rhyme and make sense at the same time mystified him). Maybe because my dad can’t be summed up in words. Maybe because as perfect as my words might have been to him, they are never perfect enough for me. Maybe because I know that no words I could ever write would ever come close to what he meant to me. I just don’t have enough talent to do him justice. And I can’t write anything less than perfect for my dad—because nothing I have ever written was ever anything less than perfect to him.
So I’m just going to write things that are important to me, things that I doubt I have to write down because I will never forget them. They are things my dad told me about himself, about his life. He told them to me so many times I would just roll my eyes—but I would always listen to them. Because despite the fact that I had heard them more times than I could ever count, I loved to hear them. They were history—my dad’s history, a history no one would ever read about or study. But they were real things that had happened to a real person and I had inherited my dad’s history as much as I had inherited his genes.
When my dad was a little boy it was the time of the Depression. He and his mom and dad moved around a lot—mostly when the rent was due. Sometimes they would put pennies in the electric meter—because somehow that kept it running even when it was shut off. I have no clue how. And when they did that, they would be careful to pull the dark green shades and close the curtains so that no light would show through—they didn’t want the people from the electric company to know they had lights.
They were so poor—as was just about everyone—that sometimes my dad would come home from school and his mom would tell him there was no food in the house, he would have to go to his grandmother’s. His grandmother was better off. His grandfather had a good job and they always had enough—not more than they needed, but enough. He would hate it, though, because his grandmother was a “witch.” She mumbled and her lips moved when she read. And she made a lot of chicken soup—and the feet were still in the pot.
Speaking of chickens… my dad once set the garage on fire when was a little boy. Said all he remembered was the chickens flying out and his dad yelling at him. He was very young.
He was younger still when his dad gave him a nut and bolt to play with—and he put it in his mouth and started choking. His dad had to hold him upside down and shake him. My dad was always afraid of choking after that.
Once my dad and his mom were walking home from somewhere—were walking across the Western Gateway Bridge that connected Schenectady to Scotia. It was cold and someone stopped and gave them a ride across the bridge. My dad told his dad—he always told his dad things. He told me his dad and his mom had a big fight that night. They had a lot of them. His mom was 2nd generation Irish and had a temper that terrifying. And his dad was a bit of a ladies man. And a jealous man also. Once his dad came home and the first thing my dad said to him was “Mommy wore whipstick.” My dad was VERY young then, and hadn’t gotten the l’s right yet. He said they had a fight then, too. I think his dad may have hit his mom—but I don’t remember. But I know in later years my grandmother threw a butcher knife at my grandfather—parted the hair on his head and stuck in the door jam. So I guess she got back at him more than once in her life. They were married until the day they died—a few months apart in 1964.
I know she got her revenge on my dad more than once. She used to give him a bath by the sink. And when he was standing there undressed, she would spank him with her wet hands. And she would list all the things he had said or done that he shouldn’t have said or done. But my dad would still do them the next time.
My dad had a friend. His name was Johnny Ponsello (forgive me, dad, if I spelled that wrong). They used to like to stand on opposite sides of a picket fence—when they were both too small to see over the top of it—and drop bricks over the top, at each other. They never actually hit each other though.
Once my dad’s mom gave him money to go to the store to get a loaf of bread. She gave him a dime. He and Johnny Ponsello and Rosie Guerra went to the store and when they came back my dad gave his mom the bread—and told her the man had not given him any change. My dad was probably around 7 at the time. His mom looked down at him and saw his pockets bulging. She told him to empty his pockets. He shook his head and told her no. It was the only time he ever told his mom no. She emptied out his pockets for him—and threw all the penny candy—probably a good 5 cents worth—which was enough to fill his pockets, Johnny’s pockets and Rosie’s pockets—all over her freshly mopped floor. Then she locked him in the attic stairway and told him “The Boogey Man will get you!”
My dad loved to ice skate when he was a teenager. Of course, he couldn’t have “regular” ice skates. He had to have “racing” skates. He was too cool for the regular ones. The racing skates had longer blades—much more cool. He used to go to Central Park in Schenectady to skate on the lake. He said his ankles were never strong enough to skate properly. But he skated well anyway. One day he was skating and fell. My dad was about as graceful as I am—got the full measure of his “coordination genes.” He managed to gash his face with the blade of his skate. Said he had about a 4 inch cut. He had to walk home from the park—it was a good 3 or 4 miles. It was a very cold day—which was good, or he probably would have bled to death and no one would be reading this right now. When he got home, his mother screamed and took him to his grandmother’s—the witch. There was no money for a doctor. The witch put some salve on his face and that was it. But my dad never had a scar from that. Today we would have stitches and plastic surgery. My dad had a witch’s salve.
My dad wanted to play football in high school. But he was 5’8” tall and weighed 117 lbs. No way he was making the team when half the school was made up of tall, muscular Polish kids. The coach wanted my dad to run track. He did for a little bit—ran high hurdles. The coach said he had a natural stride for it and was fast. My dad always attributed his ability to run to the fact that he and his friend Johnny had always run from Mt. Pleasant (where they lived) downtown to the movies when they were younger. By car, that is a 10 minute drive. And there is a big hill—easy to run down, would kill you to run up. But it gave my dad training for running that could have made him a school champion. But he wanted to play football. And if he couldn’t play football, he wasn’t going to run track. My dad was an only child and had his spoiled ways.
My dad went into the Navy at 17. He dropped out of school and joined up. He wanted to be on a submarine, but he had bad teeth—somehow that mattered. World War II was going on then. My dad loved being in the Navy. He had a lot of stories to tell me about his navy years—he was in the navy until he was 21.
He was in a place in the north of Africa called Bizerte (probably way off on the spelling). He was in a bar and this tall African man was there. Remember, it was the 1940s and political correctness wasn’t even imagined. He told me he could tell this guy was “one step from the bush.” He didn’t mean it as a slur. But the guy had a pouch on a leather string. And in the pouch was a piece of German skin. My dad wanted that badly. He offered the guy money—sailor’s always had money. He offered him cigarettes. But the guy wouldn’t sell or trade. Then my dad took out a whistle. It was a standard issue whistle—you were supposed to blow it if you got in trouble—which sailor’s often did. My dad said the guys eyes got as big as saucers and all he wanted was that whistle. So my dad left the bar minus one whistle and plus one pouch containing a piece of German skin. He was beyond pleased with himself. Of course, it disappeared when he was home on leave. He figures his mother found it and threw it away. She wouldn’t let him have anything like that—it had germs.
My dad spent some time in a Marine brig. He went AWOL once. He was 18. Wasn’t that he wanted to go AWOL, he had just gotten so drunk on leave that he couldn’t find his way back to the ship. The MP’s found him though. He said that the one thing a sailor NEVER wanted to do was spend time in a Marine brig. The rules of the Geneva Convention do NOT apply to sailors in marine brigs.
My dad once did the impossible. He slept through general quarters. Now, if you have ever watched tv you probably have seen movies where a ship was in the war and the general quarters alarm was raised. Sirens go off, people shout—there is NO WAY you could sleep through it. But my dad did—and ended up doing kitchen duty for MONTHS because of it.
My dad always knew he was going to die at the age of 86, in November, at 3 a.m. He knew this all during the time he was in the war. He said he was never afraid of dying because he knew it wasn’t his time—he knew when his time was. But he said he came close to his time a few times. Once was when he was fooling around with some buddies on ship. Nothing much was going on so they were just firing rounds from this big “gun”—which was about 15 ft. long and resembled a cannon more than a gun. My dad had his turn but got bored and stopped. His buddies asked him if he was going to fire any more. He said no, he was tired of it. When they cleaned the gun, they found the very next shell was crooked. If it had been fired, it would have blown up the gun and my dad along with it.
A lot of my dad’s war time memories were of being on liberty. He told me one time he was in New York City. He was drinking—of course—and got off the train at the wrong station. Ended up in Harlem. Here he was walking down a street in the middle of the night—all alone, a young white sailor in a black neighborhood. He was approached by a group of black men. A white boy in Harlem could only be looking for trouble—they were going to give it to him. But then he heard a voice from one of the side streets call out “Leave him alone. He’s from my ship, he’s ok.” Remember, it was the 1940s—before desegregation and the civil rights movement. The guy was a black sailor my dad was friends with. Not many white sailors were friends with black sailors back then. But my dad never thought much of that—to him, a man was a man. The black sailors had taught him how to play pinochle—which they played for money—and were more than happy to take that money from my dad. But my dad didn’t mind—it was the price of learning. And he would loan them one of his hats when they didn’t have theirs—you could get in trouble for not having your hat. It was pretty unheard of for a white guy to let a black guy wear his hat. But again, my dad never thought of those things. And it saved his life that night. My dad said he has no clue how he got back to his ship the next morning—but he does remember dancing in some bars where he was the ONLY white face—and drinking with some beautiful women.
My dad said his mom always told him not to go too close to the edge of the ship. He would laugh and say that if she only knew… he was a hell of a lot safer on the ship than he was off of it.
When the war was over, my dad left the navy. He was in the reserves—in for “the duration.” He was part of what they called the “Donald Duck Navy.” But there was no excitement in the peacetime navy. Not for a boy of 21. So he got out, took his 52/20 (which was $20 a week for 52 weeks) and tried to figure out what he wanted to do. He thought he might want to be a pilot—this was a man who was afraid to fly when I knew him. He took the test. Part of it was to line something up—don’t remember what. But apparently he lined it up perfectly—and the guy asked him if he had flown in the war. He hadn’t. My dad decided not to pursue becoming a pilot. He reasoned that there were a lot of guys who had flown during the war—they would get the jobs before he would. But he was always very proud of the fact that he had lined those things up perfectly—and had made the man think he had been a pilot.
I guess we remember what is important to us. My dad had other memories he shared with me from time to time—but the ones he shared most often were these. They were the ones he cherished. His boyhood—a boyhood long past by the time I knew him. But in many ways, I think I knew the boy my dad had been more than I knew the man my dad had become. But one thing I always knew about my dad—even when we were at each others throats—my dad loved me more than anything. I know this, not because he really did believe that everything I wrote was perfect—I know this because he chose to share those memories with me. He gave me his boyhood. He entrusted it to me, to keep and remember when he could no longer remember it—or to remember it after he was gone. He gave that to me—the most precious moments of his life he gave to me.
My dad was 77 when he died on May 29, 2002—it was Memorial Day. A fitting day for a man who remembered World War II as the best time of his life. And as long as we celebrate Memorial Day, as long as we honor the men and women who have died for the freedoms we now possess—we will be remembering my dad. And the irony of it all would not be lost upon my dad--a parade every year on the anniversary of his death--for a man who hated parades.
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And by and by my Soul returned to me, And answered "I Myself amd Heav'n and Hell"
Omar Khayyam
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