Fathers and Grandfathers

In my entire life I’ve never met a man as honorable and honest as my dad. He was a good-natured and soft spoken guy with a clear vision of humanity that included compassion for everyone, in every circumstance. For example, one time my cousin and my brother took Dad to a strip club, hoping to shock my dad for a few laughs and prove how grown up they were now that they were old enough to get into places like that. When my cousin asked Dad what he thought about a woman who’d take her clothes off and dance like that, my dad answered, “She probably has babies at home that need to be fed.” When my cousin told me this story years after it happened he said what started out to be a joke on my dad ended up being a life lesson on learning to walk in other people’s shoes. That was my dad---always caring, always seeing the best in others, always teaching without preaching. 

My dad’s formal education ended in the lower grades as did his association with the Catholic Church. His parents were Italian immigrants and he was the youngest of three kids. He lost his mother in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918/19 and at age eleven he became a latch-key kid in a coal mining town in southern Illinois where one of his jobs each day was to go to the tavern to fetch a pail of beer for his dad when he came home from working underground picking coal in the mines. At the tavern my dad also played the piano by ear to earn a few coins before he was even old enough to wear long pants but even with that background, he wasn’t much of a drinker. At a party here and there but that was it. He was a good, hard working man who always put his family’s needs first, but he gave Mom credit for them being able to build the financial security my folks enjoyed later in life. 

My grandfather died when I was a toddler but I heard lots of stories about how he’d sit on the porch singing opera and playing the accordion in the evenings. Like my dad, he was also a good-natured and fair-minded man and he allowed my dad to drop out of going to church on Sundays with the rest of the family when a priest picked him up by the seat of his pants and his shirt collar and pretended he was going to throw him into an open door on a pot belly stove to teach him about the fires of hell. My grandfather, though, told my dad he still had to go to church just not to same church so every Sunday dad walked alone to the only other church in town. There, Dad learned that “Jesus loves all the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white.” And he got to build things with a hammer and nails and he spent the rest of his life teaching himself how to build and remodel things.

My grandfather didn’t want his sons to work in the mines so he devised a plan. He raised potatoes and sold them to the local grocery store owner he had befriended. When he’d saved up enough money to buy a bus ticket he sent my uncle up north to Michigan---still a teenager---to work in the factories and between the two of them they saved up a ‘nest egg’ to move the whole family up north. And that’s how my dad ended up working for a quarter an hour crawling inside of hot machines to pull wood veneer sheets out. Somewhere along his work life, Dad learned how to be a tool and die maker and he was so good at it that the draft board during WWII wouldn’t let him sign up. He was deemed an essential worker in an essential industry. So he spent the entire war working 14-16 hour shifts making patterns and prototypes for airplane parts and munitions. But what I remember most about dad’s working years is when he’d come home from the factory he carried one of those black lunch boxes with the rounded top and he always had a few squares of a Hersey Candy Bar inside for my brother and me. And it just occurred to me why each night I have two squares of dark chocolate and I’m never attempted to eat any more. 

I don’t know how my dad picked up his respect for knowledge and education. Except for the newspaper, he wasn’t a reader yet when I was in college and taking classes in philosophy, world religion and logic we could discuss those topics and he held his own talking about Socrates, Plato, mythical utopian cities and the origins of our values and laws. Life was his teacher, I guess. He’d witnessed Ku Klux Klan hangings while hiding in the woods when he was a kid. He saw the unfairness of the blacks, Italian and Irish getting paid less than whites in the coal mines while they all worked side by side. And I’ll never forget the look of horror and disgust on his face on Bloody Sunday 1963 when the nightly news showed the fire hoses and attack dogs that were turned on the black marchers in Selma, Alabama. I’ll also never forget the look of shear happiness that lit up his face when Tiger Woods won his first PGA in 1999. He was proud of Tiger for breaking the color barrier in a game that dad loved his entire life. Dad was the most fair-minded and ethical person I’ve ever known and I know I got the luck of the draw to have him as my father, my teacher and the person who I’ve most admired and loved my entire life. I hope I made him half as proud as he made me. ©

Mom and Dad on their Honeymoon

Snow, Golf and Growing up Near the Klan

Monday was one of those cold Michigan days where nothing was moving in the neighborhood because the snowplows hadn’t been down the side streets yet. We got eight inches of snow over the weekend and I managed to shovel my sidewalk from the driveway to the front door because Amazon was due to delivery that day and few things keeps them from their appointed rounds---or is that the U.S. Postal Service? I have to admit I’m loving their two day delivery service with Prime. When I got the free introductory month with my new Kindle Fire I didn’t think I would keep the plan but now I’m on the fence about it. If you could see the stack of Amazon boxes in the garage waiting to go to recycling, you’d know I’ve been making good use of the service. 

Can you believe it, I played a game of golf this week! Well, not exactly. It was a game of miniature golf at a new indoor place that uses glow-in-dark balls and probably saves themselves a ton of money on electricity by not having to light up the place. It was fun but the psychedelic colors outlining the course, the busy wall murals that glowed in the dark and the god-awful black carpeting with patches that looked like neon barf gave me a headache and reminded me of bad parties in the ‘70s. It was a senior hall event and I tied for second place in my foursome plus I got to brush up on my billiards geometry doing it. Prior to the game, five of us Gathering Girls had lunch together at a popular café near-by that’s known for their good food. We were laughing so much it’s a wonder we didn’t get kicked out. 

I hate regular golf and, trust me, I tried hard to like the game. My dad was a life-long golfer, started out as a caddie before he hit his teens, even taught the game to high schoolers at one point in time and in retirement he played nearly every day, sometimes twice. My brother, niece and various others in the family play and a guy I dated back in my 20's golfed. I was highly motivated to learn. The boyfriend and I even took lessons offered at a golf course and all I learned was that I REALLY hated golf. If I want to take a nice walk I don't need to chase a little ball I can barely see as it flies down the fairway, assuming I’m lucky enough to hit it straight. 

Still, some of my best memories of my father revolve around the game. I don’t remember if we ever golfed together but my best ever movie experience was taking my dad to see Tin Cup with Kevin Costner and Don Johnson playing the lead characters. There was a scene in the film where Costner's character was in the woods and had an opportunity to cheat, but he didn’t do it even though his caddie was encouraging him to shave some shots off his score. According to Dad no real golfer would ever do that. “It’s a game of honor,” he said. “But wouldn’t the temptation be overpowering,” I asked, “when he could have won the tournament?” “He would know,” my dad answered, “he would know in his heart that he didn’t win fair and square and a hollow victory is no victory at all.” He saw the game of golf as a metaphor for life, a game you play against yourself for self-improvement---facing the challenges, knowing how you handled them are the true lessons and pay-off in a game where there's always room for improvement.

Fast forward to a time when Dad was dying of cancer and Tiger Woods had broken the color barrier in professional golf to go on to win the 1999 PGA Championship. Dad loved Tiger. In his last months, I read him every single magazine article I could find about the young golfer. My father was so proud that he had lived long enough to see America’s race relations change that much over his lifetime and we had many deep conversations about what is now labeled ‘White Privilege.’ Dad grew up in a town in Southern Illinois where grown black men would step off the sidewalk whenever a white adult or child like him passed by. He once hid in the woods watching the KKK hang a black guy and when a storekeeper in town died Dad saw him all decked out in his Klan outfit while lying in his coffin which, according to dad, was the only time Klan members revealed themselves.

My dad saw both sides of prejudism growing up. His father, an immigrant from Italy who worked in the coal mines, was paid less than whites but more than blacks and Irishmen even though they all worked side-by-side doing the same thing. In a museum of racial memorabilia I actually saw a sign like the one my dad described seeing at a coal miners' office. It listed the step-down wages paid to six different nationalities and "Niggers." The push-back against immigrants in this country is nothing new.

It might not seem like it when we’re knee-deep in our struggles to make the world a better place for our descendants but when we view the progress made by the generations that came before us it's easier to see that we are creeping closer and closer to a par game in racial equality. And that game is a game of honor, one where we know in our hearts when we’re not playing fair. ©

Color Coding Widows

I wish the world would go back to color-coding people, or rather the clothing society requires us to wear. You know what I mean---make all the widows wear black for a year, have all the harlots wear red to advertise their wares. Protect all the virgins with pale pink. We could even take the color-coding a step farther and put all the hot heads in neon orange and the people into Zen could wear sky blue. Think how much easier life must have been when the good guys all wore white hats and the bad guys wore black---well, at least they did in the movies of my youth. I suspect in the real Old West it wasn’t quite that simple. But then again, stereotypes some times are based in fact and in the case of color, also on the availability of dyes for clothe. There was a time in the history of the world, for example, when it was against the law for anyone but royalty to wear purple because the dye was so scarce. Another example of dyes dictating status or occupation could be found in turn-of-the century coal miners who only wore white because the dyes from colored clothing would get absorbed in their skin when they sweat, making them sick.

What got me to thinking about color coding widows is the general topic of insensitive things people say to us. This is a common complaint in widow circles and usually I can chalk up the insensitive remarks I hear as people just being inept at wording their concerns and attempts to comfort. Maybe that’s because I much prefer to put words on paper when I have something important to say. On paper I can edit and hone the message; in person I could very well be one of those people who unknowingly say something too blunt, too cheery, too stupid or too crass. So when I hear someone else say something insensitive I’ll rewrite it in head to what I think they really mean. But what I struggled to rewrite today came as a note in a Christmas card. It said, “I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas now that you don’t have Don to take care of.”

Why, yes, I am! I’m out singing Christmas carols in the streets every night. I’ve rented a sleigh and I’ve been delivering gifts to orphans by day. I’ve stocked up on champagne for the dozen parties I’ve planned and I have a tree up in every room. Oh, and guess what! It’s not because I feel “Free at Last, Free at Last” it’s an attempt to fill the giant, frigging hole Don’s absence left behind in my heart.

If I was wearing widows black people might be reminded that I’m still experiencing my first year of firsts and holidays are anything but joyous. If I was wearing widows black I’d have an excuse if I wrote a reply like above and dropped in the mail. If I was wearing widows black others would understand why I got up in the middle of a Christmas luncheon at the senior center and rushed out of the room in tears. But I’m not wearing widows black and people don’t say insensitive things to be mean. People do care and when I’m in the mood to be fair to the person who wrote that Christmas card note I’ll rewrite her note in my head to read something like this: “You spent so many years caring for Don. I hope you are taking care of yourself during this difficult first year without him.”

I’ve become obsessed by the skin on my forehead. It feels like the pair of lizard skin shoes I used to own in 1970---who am kidding? I still have those high heels tucked in the back of my closet. No, I’m not a shoe hoarder. Not even close. Also in the back of my closet is one memorable outfit from each decade of my life. Those heels are part of an ensemble from my man-shopping days; the time of my life when I first met Don, then I traded my high heels in for tennis shoes. When I earmark an outfit to represent this decade of my life I think it will be all black. In the meantime, does anyone have a good cure for lizard skin foreheads? ©