This post is going to be more snippets than actual stories. I wish I had the pictures I'd taken of my father over the years. They said so much more than my words can say. But moving so often and then going to prison and leaving my things behind means that things get lost, so most of my pictures are in my head.
My dad had this way about him. He loved to laugh but he could get angry fast. He didn't have the normal ethics that most people have and that made some of his actions questionable at times. He worked several jobs to keep our family with a place to live and food to eat. I know that a lot of the jobs he mentioned were stories but it was part of his mystique and you had to pick out what was real and what wasn't.
He worked as a bus driver in Schenectady for a while. That I know is true because my mom told me about some of his adventures, like bringing a cab down the hill into Schenectady and having it go sideways, and him being able to bring it to a near perfect parallel park-type stop. She said he came home and was laughing, but he definitely needed to take a shower. I also know he worked at the local cab company in Schenectady and he loved it.
He finally got a full time job with NY as a lock operator. I can remember him coming home after working 3-11 and bringing home Mike's giant subs and a Neba for my mom. I can still taste both of those so clearly. I wish I could find someone who'd worked at one of the stores so maybe I could find out where they'd gotten their sub bread, cause it was so darn good.
The year I was supposed to start kindergarten, my family found a home in Mariaville. It was still under construction but they worked out the financing and bought it. I remember seeing it the first time, with no grass but tons of clay mud, and boards leading to the front door. The downstairs had sawhorses and we put a board across one of them and turned it into a teeter-totter. The house had a flat roof then and a creek that ran through the back yard near the back boundary. There were trees lining the creek and one of them just happened to have huge thorns on it.
When we moved out there, we had a siamese cat named Ookie. She wasn't really an outdoor cat but she managed to get out one day. My mom was worried but my dad wasn't. "It's a long drop and she's not dumb enough to jump off that porch, Edie," he told her. Ookie proved him wrong. She got out there, something spooked her, and off she jumped....only to climb right up that thorny tree! My mom kept at him to get her down but he said she'd come down when she was good and ready. Later that evening, dad got tired of listening to my mom so he got out the ladder to reach the cat. Only, like most cats, she just kept climbing higher. He ended up getting her but not until he had some really long scratches from that tree's thorns. Not to mention the ones he got from Ookie when he finally got her.
There was a night when my dad was cleaning out his VW bus, right outside our downstairs door. It was a double-paned, thermal sliding door and he had it open so all he had to do was jump down and into the house as he cleaned. Well, my mom went down to get some milk for the morning, saw the door open, didn't know that dad was in the bus, and closed it. As she started up the stairs, she heard a crash. My dad, not knowing the door was closed, had jumped off and gone right through the door! He turned around, went back through it, and then yelled about who the hell had closed it. She started yelling back until she saw the blood. I think he needed 8 stitches to close the gash on his head.
I wasn't there when my nephew was born. I was sitting in Schenectady County Jail. My mom wrote a note and had my dad drop it off at the jail. It told me all the details. My dad was overjoyed to be a granddad. My favorite picture that I'd taken was one of him asleep, stretched out on the couch. Sleeping right on top of him, with my dad's arm wrapped around him, was my nephew. The cutest part was Jim's fingers one one hand had been twirling my dad's hair as he fell asleep and when I snapped the picture, they were still in my dad's hair, with the other hand in his favorite sleeping position, two middle fingers in his mouth, like he was holding a bowling ball.
When I got home from prison, we took a trip to the Catskill Game farm with my nephew and his mom. They had one of those sets of stocks and you could pick a sign to put underneath that described why you were in them. I used one that said 'musical snorer' for him and snapped the picture. I didn't notice until I got them developed that his hands were one up and one down, both with the middle finger extended! Only my dad.
He lived life to the fullest and had few regrets. I miss him every day and this time of the year, I always seem to miss him more intensely.
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