Sometimes, when I’m driving through small towns – past junked Camaros rusting in front yards, old stately churches with more years than members, a Casey’s General Store and a sad, solitary bar rotting on Main Street – I think about my dad.
There was this bar in town, Bill’s Tap, where he’d migrate to on the weekends when I was a kid. Usually he’d drive the old ‘86 Ranger with its flaking wheel wells and foam bubbling out of the seat, to shoot pool. Other times, when he was drinking, he’d take my sister’s 10-speed. The place was dark and dank and smelled of Old Milwaukee, and my dad always joked with my friend’s mom, Linda, that they were the only ones in the joint with a full set of teeth.
As a kid, I never understood the allure of Bill’s Tap. But my dad held an unexplainable affinity for the derelict; whether cruising past decaying houses and abandoned factories or admiring graffitied boxcars brooding in the rain. I should have realized sooner that he did the same with people. And it wasn’t a comparison to make himself feel better, or even the grandiose hopes of the profoundly compassionate. Rather, I imagine that my dad simply enjoyed people at face value.
His best friend, Stub, was no exception. Although Stub was a custodian at a local elementary school, they worked together on the weekends rehabbing old houses. Sometimes, when all the fouled carpet, moldy drywall and soiled couches filled their dump trailer to the brim, they’d ‘borrow’ a few square feet from the school.
“Throw her in there, Barn,” Stub said, motioning towards the big green dumpster. The microwave wasn’t overly large, but it wouldn’t squeeze inside a normal trash can, and they weren’t about to make another trip to the landfill for one lousy appliance.
Upon returning a few days later, they found that the microwave had been removed and was sulking next to the curb.
My dad shook his head and lamented, “They actually dug it out, Stub! Can you believe it?”
Stub narrowed his eyes. “I’ll fix that,” he said, and opened the dumpster door, rummaged, and returned with a giant bottle of fetid mayonnaise. He uncapped the lid and doused the microwave, then spread it around with a stick for good measure. They tossed the microwave back in for round two.
“They ain’t gonna dig that out now,’ concluded Stub.
I imagine garbage Nazi Cecil Rockwell, of Rockwell Waste, thumbing open the lid for a quick peek before unloading. He spies the microwave, the fallout of rancid mayo, and weighs his options. Ultimately, he closes the lid, returns to the cab and empties the dumpster – appliance and all – in bitter defeat.
My dad’s dumpster antics extended beyond corporate collection. We always had at least a couple of cats in our house, and instead of throwing out the litter, my dad would stockpile the waste in the garage until a massive quantity had been hoarded. Then, in the middle of the night, he’d cruise over to his friend Alan’s and top off their trash can.
I remember sitting in the truck as he emptied the last of the litter. “What’s so funny?” I asked as he returned to the cab, a wide grin splashed across his face.
“I just dumped all of our old cat litter into Alan’s trashcan.”
I was still young, and the appeal of irony hadn’t yet begun to ferment. “Why is that funny?”
“Because it’s heavy, and it smells. And now his trash can is exploding with it.”
“Oh.”
Years later, my dad’s run-ins with cat litter would come full circle when my friend Boz spent the night. We slept in the basement, and during the night, feeling lazy and not wanting to drag ourselves all the way upstairs to use the bathroom, we decided to, yes, go in the cat litter box. I mean, that’s what it was for, am-I-right?
The next day I heard my dad holler from the basement, “Dan, what in the world did you feed the cats?”
Pranks aside, my dad had his own cache of sayings as well.
“I did it just for you!” was his paramour, which forever graced us on the heels of some self-centered act, like ordering his favorite pizza which just so happened to be someone else’s favorite, or refilling the toilet paper. And he’d bark a laugh after said zinger, completely aware that he was trying to pawn off his own selfish motivations as if they were charity.
I recall once where he cracked a one-liner that I didn’t quite catch. “What?” I responded.
“I don't chew my cabbage twice,” my dad replied with an air of haughty snark, as if he had just happened across a real pearl of witticism.
At this point in my life, irony hadn’t just blossomed, but choked out nearly all of my senses. I glimpsed an opening. “What?” I asked again.
“I don't chew my cabbage twice,” he repeated in naïve contradiction.
I smiled darkly. “You don’t say?”
Realizing he had been played, my dad whimpered an embarrassed snort in defeat.
Usually, however, his irreverent commentary was reserved for the rich and famous.
“Randy Moss,” he’d say. “He’s the money-man, Dan. The money-man.” Or, "Barbara's gettin' older," he'd repine with a hint of disappointment, as if the idea of aging was something uniquely dissatisfactory to poor old Barbara Walters.
“Frog Radio’s on,” he’d inform me, whenever Dennis Voy garbled over the static of KMAQ. My dad stashed a portable radio and dollar-store pair of reading glasses in every room of the house, so no matter where he sat, both were within arm’s reach. Yet it was his downstairs radio which logged the most hours, for in the basement sat his great hobby - his model trains.
I recall making the trip down to the expo center, where we’d wander through and admire the elaborate displays: miniature locomotives hauling freight under caves, through towns and over bridges. My dad would haunt the aisles, sparking conversations with the peddlers while poking through their wares; beautiful black and crimson Chicago Great Western engines pristine in their packaging, beat-up old boxcars with missing wheels and couplings, bags of petite pine trees.
His own train table was a work of art spanning half the house’s footprint, and decades of his life. I recall helping him fix derailments as a child, and laying track on the OSB. As an adult, I’d witness only the results of his latest project as the grandchildren turned the dials and honked the horns. Even now, these images seem a distant memory, visions scalped from another lifetime.
Sometimes, when I’m driving through small towns – past train cars moping idly on the track - I think about my dad.
I imagine him shuffling down the steps to the basement, past awards and yellowed photos adorning the walls, and old drawings I sketched in high school. The steps are wooden and creak under his weight. Was he light-headed or dizzy as he placed his feet upon the cement? Did he suddenly lose his balance, an impending siren like the acidic warning moments before nausea? Did he see the world go dark, feel his heart misfiring, his internal wiring coming undone?
I imagine he placed a hand upon his chest, and staggered. The trains sat on their tracks, useless sentries bearing witness. Ten thousand loops they’d ridden at the direction of his hands, only to observe those hands grasp desperately for purchase. The wooden stool kicks out, and together they fall.
Sometimes, when I’m driving through small towns, I think about my dad.
I envision him at my age; were his hands as callused, his wrinkles as pronounced? Did he tire of the same songs on the same radio stations, laugh and swear at bad drivers and burn every yellow light? Did he lose patience with his customers, his friends, his children? It’s all guesswork born of an active imagination – a dual gift and curse - the sum of all memory, where there is only rewind.
My dad had this friend, Mark S. McAvan, who lived way out in the sticks, where I imagine he collected beat-up old muscle cars, industrial batteries, and stockpiled ammunition to his freedom-loving heart’s content. Despite the missing teeth (I have no doubt that he’d played a round or two of pool at Bill’s Tap), Mark S. was rather brilliant, in his own way, yet would engage in the most peculiar behavior, like the time he made a wager (with himself) about how long he could go without showering before his co-workers complained.
Like my dad, Mark S. was a kind, gentle soul who loved to fish, which is why the pair always wound up on some riverbank whenever he moseyed into town. Sometimes they’d take my dad’s Ranger, other times Mark’s latest relic. On the occasion of a breakdown, Mark S. would hop out, pop the hood and take a look. If, after cycling through the extent of his abilities, the vehicle would still not kick on, he would resort to one last ditch effort. Like a Jedi playing a mind trick, he’d wave his hand in front of the engine block and pronounce in the somber tone of a high priest, “Heal thyself.”
I don’t think it ever really worked for Mark S. McAvan, and it hasn’t for me, either. But I’m better with houses than I am with cars, better with fixing than I am healing.
My dad was best in the yard.
You could always spot him tooling around on his riding lawnmower with a nub of a cigar hanging out of his mouth – and it was never a full or even half cigar, but always a nub. He loved a good bargain (like the cheap, expired cans of Shasta he scored from The Old German Store. “Marked down to nine cents a can with a ten-cent rebate,” he proudly boasted. “They’re paying me to drink it!” And he’d take another swig, bitterly cringing at the awful taste), so I often wondered if there was some black market in town where he kept scoring killer deals on ‘gently used’ cigars.
“I think that tree is dying,” he tells me. I’m standing on the porch, feeling the summer sun against my skin, unaware that it will be my dad’s last. He had his garden and extra lot and proud hardwood trees overlooking the front yard. “It’s an ash tree, you know, the kind with seeds.”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering the helicopters twirling down as a child.
“Ken Lafferty says their prone to disease.” And he takes a puff. “You remember Ken Lafferty?”
“The master gardener.”
“That’s right, Dan.” And he snickers, proud of instilling such useless information into his son’s brain.
There’s a pause. I feel the slight tickle of a warm breeze, and for a brief moment it whisks me back to my youth. I imagine Huffy bikes, wooden ramps and skinned knees; lawnmower derbies with red wagons and skateboards tied loosely on the back and poor souls hanging on for dear life; tents and trampolines, and the wide-eyed innocence of youth.
“You gonna cut it down?” I ask.
“I imagine the city will. It’s technically on their property.”
I think of all the annoyance and abuse my dad (and his possessions) suffered at our hands, and how it just bounced right off. “It’s kind of sad to see it go,” I say.
My dad shrugs and flicks the ashes of his cigar into the grass. “Yeah, well, what can you do?”
“It was a good tree,” I conclude, feeling a profound sadness at the idea of its passing, the thought of losing this giant that had been towering over me my entire life. And I think, but don’t say, what will you do when its gone?
My dad takes one last draw on his cigar, mulls over my sentiments, and walks inside without the final word.
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While you were reading
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