"Father Far and Away"
[Note: These events took place in May of 1975. I originally wrote them in six parts in 2008. On Father's Day 2019, while looking for something else, I came across these posts and was surprisingly caught up in them as if reading them for the first time. I like when that happens. The title comes from an assessment that many of my friends and extended family felt about my dad. Had we been a family with better cars and deeper pockets, or parents of some lesser stock, this story would never have happened. Looking back on life from age 63, I wouldn't change a thing.]
When I was growing up, my family NEVER stayed in motels. Dad could not see spending a month's house payment for a few nights in a little room with two beds. We vacationed all across northern Michigan and on the banks of Georgian Bay, Canada, but we always camped in a tent. I don't recall any family road trips being more than a day's drive from home, and Dad's definition of a day's drive was what he could do himself from dawn to dark with as few stops as possible. (Mom did drive, of course, but whenever Dad was in the car, he drove.) Leave before daybreak and arrive after dark, and you never need a motel. It was simple math.
One summer, when I was eight (1964), Dad miscalculated a "day's drive," and we spent the night in Niagara Falls, but not as most people do it. (There was only six of us then. Jimmy came in 1968.) We loaded up our VW "bus" and headed for a family reunion at my Uncle Roy's house in Lancaster County, PA. The straightest route took us through Port Huron, Michigan, and across Ontario, Canada, to Niagara Falls. It was the first time we kids had seen this misty marvel and we stayed longer than planned, enjoying both the American and Canadian side. By the time, we were all back in the V-dub, Dad looked again at the map and knew we could not make it to Lancaster County at a decent hour so he announced we were spending the night.
It was May, 1975. Dad, Mom, and my little brother Jim (age 7) had driven twelve hours south to pick my brother Dave and me up after my first year of college. Kathy and Paul stayed back home due to jobs.We hadn't been home since Christmas Break.
It was great to see the folks; it was great to see my little brother who had become my little buddy when our siblings had gone off to college without us. Now I, too, had been away for most of the year, but we had three wonderful months waiting on the other end of a long, winding haul up I-75 to Michigan.
We carried our things from the dorm to the back of our 1964 Ford Country Squire. [Dad had sold the VW bus in 1966, and had purchased the station wagon from his brother Bob.]
Dave began loading his things above the folded down rear seats of the car, but Dad soon pulled the items out and re-packed them.
My brother stood back with a shrug, swallowing the urge to explain why he had packed the items as he had. He was only two years older than I but much closer to the rites of manhood, much more eager to take the lead, much more confident that he could pack a car without Dad's help. All this was in his subtle shrug that my father did not see.
I was nineteen, but as the fourth-born child I was all too willing to stand back and let Dad do such things. After years of pitching tents, clearing land, building a barn, digging the well, and building our family home, I had learned both how to work and how to step back when Dad was in "I'd rather do it myself" mode.
This was a happy scene, but Dad's smile momentarily faded as his eyes assessed the mass and density of each box and duffel bag we handed him until it was all as snug as a chick in an eggshell. Flipping up the tailgate with a thud, he raised the electric window with the twist of a key. His smile returned. Mom kissed us "hello" as if for the first time as we climbed into the car, and we were off. The plan was to drive all afternoon and evening with no stops except to grab some burgers and change drivers as needed.
In the five years prior to this trip, Dad and Mom had enrolled four children into college. Things were tight, but they had always been tight. Anyone looking at out cars could tell you that. The station wagon was one of three old cars in the family fleet, each had well over 100,000 miles on the odometer.
My father's motto with cars was, "Use 'em up; wear 'em out; make 'em do; or do without." It was his intention to drive each of our cars until the wheels fell off. In some families that is just an expression, but I’m here to tell you that on that day in May, 2005, about halfway home in the late afternoon, on northbound I-75 just west of Berea, Kentucky.... the right-rear wheel of our Country Squire station
wagon literally fell off and began tumbling violently around in the well just behind my seat.
Fortunately we were in the right lane, the slow lane, the gas-saving lane, so the vehicle veered itself onto the shoulder of the interstate and Dad brought the lame thing to a halt. It was the last thing on any of our minds, but we were about to spend our first night in a motel with Mom and Dad.
***
Beginning in the late 1980s, nearly all cars (barring trucks and SUVs) were made with front-wheel drive, meaning the same front wheels that steer the car also power the car (like a tricycle).
This was not true for most American cars through most of the 20th Century. They were rear-wheel drive (more like a bicycle than a tricycle). From Henry Ford’s first mass-produced Model T to the fabulous 1964 Mustang and beyond, the power from the engine under the front hood was transmitted (via a transmission and a driveshaft) through a long, high hump in the car floor to a differential between the rear axles which turned the wheels.
The relationship between man and machine was once rooted in the bond between man and beasts of burden. Since the beginning of recorded history, man has bred and bought and sold and sought the animals best suited to help him in his toil. From sled dog to African elephant, camel to horse, between man and these beasts there was a good-faith trade of sweat for care.
The animal understood that in exchange for the power of its legs, the strength of its back, the lather dripping from the collar or saddle it willingly wore, the man would provide enough food and water for another day. He may even provide shelter for a momentary rest from the endless dominion of plodding his domain.
Then
came the Industrial Revolution, when man created machines to replace nearly every working beast. But for quaint exceptions, the snowmobile replaced the dog sled, the tractor replaced the draft horse, and the car replaced the carriage [from which the word "car" comes]. With this latter change, man transferred his care from horses to an obsession with horsepower. And for much of the machine age, he began caring for steel and gears and belts and bolts as if the relationship were meant to last a lifetime.
But soon this care for machines was reduced to mere maintenance, and in time that maintenance part of owning cars was given to others. So much so that today men and women alike know little about how their cars work and care only that they do.
Make no mistake, America was built on know-how, and there will always be a chosen few who know the how, but more and more consumers know less and less about the things they depend on everyday. They turn the key, push the button, flip the switch and expect the machine do their will, and when the machine goes kaput, they merely cast it aside for another with little emotion other than frustration.
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Wherever consumers consume, dumpsters, scrap iron yards and acres of junk cars have become testaments to both planned obsolescence and man’s infatuation and short attention span for the machines in his disposable world.
I confess that when it comes to cars, I take care of the things I can see and touch, but under the hood my skills are limited to the user-friendly yellow parts that are clearly labeled. Beyond that, I call our friends at "Total Car Care."
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But my father was one of the old-school men who was not a mechanic by trade but of necessity. He did not so much enjoy working on old cars, but he knew it was part of the deal in owning them. Since saving money was the purpose of driving older high-miles cars, it made no sense to pay someone else to keep them running, and the owner of the garage in Berea, Kentucky, seemed to understand Dad's plight.
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So there we stood with the rear end of our car still held in the air as if waiting for a prostate exam. Clee was still pumping gas in the other car, so we climbed in the second seat door and wrestled out the clothes and things we needed for the motel. Dave and I actually managed to find our swim suits stuffed among our college clothes. We grabbed them but hid them inside some other things, uncertain of when it would be prudent to let Dad know we'd found a silver lining of this otherwise dark cloud.
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"You all go ahead over to the motel. I'm going to stay here and make a list of the parts I need to get at the junk yard." Dad said, and then he smiled. "Hey, look! A pool. Too bad we don't have our suits."
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"Huh?. Oh that..." Dave and I acted as if we hadn't seen it, but Jim held up a pair of shorts and announced, "I'm in."
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"Good thinking," Dad laughed, and Dave and I held up the suits we'd wadded under our arms.
.
"Now you're talkin', he laughed again.
Mom joined in, "Dad and I will just put our feet in."
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"Sounds good, Bev, but go ahead and check in without me. I'll be there in a little while."
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Walking to the motel, something occurred to me for the first time. From the moment the wheel fell off, Dad had not blown his top--not even a hint of anger or frustration toward the costly inconvenience that sidelined our journey home.
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There had been times when Dad would not have handled this as well. Like most men, the slightly younger version of Dad, the Dad we’d worked with as young teens, sometimes cursed the obstacles of life. He’d start a day with goals--ambitious goals--which can be a good thing, but he sometimes failed to realize that they were somewhat arbitrary and at times unrealistic.
I don't know about his weekday goals, but for about ten years we shared Saturdays from before sun rose 'til long after it set, working out at the property. Whether it was sharpening all of his chain saw blades before dawn, or felling three tall oaks by noon, or uprooting a half-ton stump by dusk, sometimes the goals Dad set were hindered by machinery that broke down. The kind of obstacles that say, “You thought you were doing something else today, but I have news for you: your time will now be spent fixing this thing you need to work again before you can return to the thing you want to do.your work again.” The Dad I knew hated when things broke and tended to be vocal about it until they were fixed, but something had happened in the more recent years he spent with my little brother Jim by his side. Maybe he was just glad the broken axle had not resulted in a tragic accident.
We three boys swam in the outdoor pool that night. Had the whole thing to ourselves. Though it was nearly June, the night air was cool which made the water feel almost warm. As we were drying off with the towels from our room, it felt for a moment like the kind of "motel" vacation we had never taken as a family.
Early the next morning, before the gas station opened for business, Clee took my dad to the junk yard five miles up the road in hopes of finding a rear axle for our 1964 Ford Country Squire.
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When we woke up Dad was already at work on the car.
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[The previous paragraphs were first written and posted from a farm in Kansas in 2007. Back then there were three large Belgian draft horses in the pasture beside the acres of lawn my wife Julie and I mowed during our stays at "home" (Julie's home). The horses were occasionally put to the quaint task of pulling hay wagons full of campers at the summer camp across the small lake. In winter they pulled a surrey with antique sleigh bells ringing across the snowy pastures. It was Julie's father who taught me nearly everything I know of the relationship between a farmer, his land, and the team of horses that helped him work it. Today, is June 17, 2019. The farm was sold in 2016. The horses, and goats, and chickens are gone, and we are enjoying time with her folks in their efficient little home in St. Joseph, Missouri. ]
***
The Meaning of Cozy
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I have shared in other pieces that my mother had the gift of childlike glee. These spells of high-pitched enthusiasm came at predictable times: the first snow fall of the season, the first sign of spring after a long winter, and the first day at our favorite beach after a chilly spring. They also happened whenever she got something big and new with Dad‘s approval--especially if it had been a long time coming. .
If she bought something “big” without Dad’s okay...say a new vacuum cleaner...she would be more frightened than giddy because Dad liked having a say in such things; he studied up on them the week before, could tell Mom all the pros and cons of each model and tell Mom why his choice was the best buy. But Mom would occasionally come home with a "big" purchase based only on a statement like, "I liked it better than the other one they had," and Dad would just shake his head as if quoting P.T. Barnum to himself. Mom often said that she lacked Dad's confidence, but actually it takes quite a bit of confidence to buy "the one you like"... what she lacked was confirmation...
but I digress...
.
A few times in her life really big and new items came to Mom almost like gifts for no occasion, like the time her new fruitwood, French provincial piano was delivered or when her maple dining room table and chairs came through the front door. She couldn’t help but smile each time she sat at them. It took years for the giddiness of such things to wear off--in fact, I'm not sure it ever did until the table sat empty and the piano fell silent near the end.
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But the times I remember Mom’s childlike joy most were the times she‘d step into a place and chirp with glee, “Isn‘t this cozy.” It typically happened the first dozen times she stepped through the zipper door of our family tent when our camp site was finally set up for the week. It would happen again each night when it was time to turn in. We’d all be side by side in six sleeping bags, staring at the faint shadows of branches in the moonlight on the tent roof, soaking in the smell of the canvas, listening to the crickets chirp, and Mom would say in the dark… “Isn’t this cozy!”
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To this day for me, cozy is not merely the feeling of comfort found in a feather bed with flannel sheets with a patchwork comforter on top; it’s not a cabin with a fireplace and a winged-back chair. Cozy must be shared. It can happen anywhere except alone. Perhaps it's a feeling that begins in the womb and is subconsciously recreated whenever loved ones huddle close against the elements or some subtle unknown force.
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Cozy may be four kids and a mom sharing three towels on a beach blanket when the wind switches and a cold breeze comes in off the lake. It may be the whole family tangled together on the couch because no one wants their feet to touch the floor during a scary movie. It can be two silver-haired sisters, in the twilight of their years, together again on a front porch glider with a lap blanket on their knees.
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Cozy is whenever the lost time, a lost cause, a change of winds or fortune is trumped by the single most important fact: we’re together, safe and sound, and that‘s what matters. It’s the scene at the end of Peter Rabbit, when Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter, after a long day of work and misadventure, are watching their mother make chamomile tea?
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When we came in from the pool that night, with our car still up in tractions across the way, we stepped into the simple room with two double beds and a roll-away all in a row. There was barely room for the five of us to walk. Jim dove on his bed, rolled over, crossed his legs at the ankles, laced his fingers behind his head, and grinned as if in the lap of luxury.
.“Isn’t this cozy?” Mom chirped.
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Dave and I just raised our eyebrows. It had been years since we shared a bed, and cozy wasn't quite the feeling generated by maintaining an invisible line down the middle while trying to sleep, but after being away for a year, we couldn't help but smile at Mom's familiar line. It confirmed what Dad’s surprisingly pleasant mood had already suggested: we’re together, safe and sound, and that‘s what matters. My little brother Jim was 7, Dave was 21, and I was 19, but whether we would admit it or not, you're never too old for cozy.
***
I woke up to the sound of Mom unpacking a grocery bag of breakfast things and lunch snacks that Dad had picked up on his way back from the junk yard. Had it been twenty years later, the filling station would no doubt also have been a convenience store, but in 1975, the notion of combining gas and groceries had not yet occurred to men like Clee. Back then they were called “service stations” and there wasn’t a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, or Slurpy in the place.
The inside of most gas stations was only big enough for a few paying customers to stand while they
waited for service in the garage. Gas customers rarely got out of the car. They paid the same man who filled up the tank, checked the oil, and cleaned the windshield came to the driver's window and made change from coin contraption on his belt. Not until the concept of “self service” (pumping your own gas) brought foot traffic into the station to pay, did corner gas stations gradually become "convenience stores., but that transformation was still a few years away.
After Dad found a '64 Ford rear axle at the junk yard, Clee was kind enough to stop by a grocery store on the way back to the station for some food.
We ate a quick bite of powdered donuts, and got dressed to go help Dad, but Mom had surprising news: “Dad told me to tell you boys just to stay here and swim. There’s nothing you can do over there.”
“Are you sure?” Dave asked.
“He said if he needs one of you, he’ll come get you. So put on your suits and enjoy the pool. We don’t have to check out until noon.”
We did just that. Basking in the sun. Jumpin’ in the pool. Drying off to soak in the sun again. It was not a new pool--in fact it was the painted-cement kind, so hard to maintain that many were eventually filled in, leaving a pool-shaped patch of lawn or asphalt. .
Beyond the chain-link fence was the parking lot that ran to edge of Clee's property where Dad was working on the car, which was safely held up on blocks. He was out of earshot, but Dave (who played center field and had a great arm) could have easily thrown him a ball from inside the pool fence.
It's hard to tell time around a pool, but after an hour or so, the three of us lined up along the edge of the deep end with our chins resting on our crossed arms on the side of the pool. In the distance, we could see dad through the heat-mirage lines rising from hot pavement, and a sense of guilt came from the scent of chlorine on our skin.
“It just doesn‘t seem right,” Dave said, and then his eyes squinted toward the gas station. “Is that Dad pumpin’ gas?”
“Looks like him,” Jim said.
“Why would he be pumpin’ gas?” I asked.
Jim ventured a guess: “Maybe he has to do that to pay for the repair. Sort of like washing dishes at a restaurant when you don‘t have enough to pay.”
“That does it,” Dave said, angry at himself, “I can’t be swimming over here while Dad’s pumpin’ gas over there.”
He pulled himself onto the cement deck in one athletic motion, grabbed a towel, and ran to the room. Jim and I stayed in the pool, still soaking in guilt.
“Dad did say he’d call us if he needed us,” Jim reminded, not wanting to leave the pool, “and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to stay away until Dad needs me.”
“I know what you mean, Jim. I think he likes workin' alone from all those days of building houses by himself when we were little. Seems like whenever he worked on cars, he was alone, too, except when he’d call one of us for something. He’d be out in the garage under a car and yell, ‘Tom, go down to my tool board and get my crescent-wrench,’ and all the way down the steps I’d be trying to remember what a crescent-wrench was. I’d grab three or four things that looked kind of "wrenchy" and hope one of them was what he wanted. Pipe wrenches, box wrenches, adjustable pliers, and with any luck at all an actual crescent-wrench." [Dad had an authentic Crescent brand wrench, but the term "crescent-wrench" is spoken as if one word and is generically used for any adjustable wrench other than a pipe wrench. Old adjustable wrenches are sometimes called “monkey wrenches“ because the forerunner was invented by Charles Moncky in 1858.]
Jim interrupted. "But, Tom, you work with tools all the time."
"You can use tools and not know their names. It's only when two people are working together--or one's trying to teach the other--that agreeing on the names of things matters. Sure, I know all of his tools and what they do NOW, but back then I called a Phillips head a 'star' screwdriver because it made star prints when I poked it into Play-doh.'”
Jim laughed and turned his face toward me. He was a towhead, and with his cheeks reddened from the morning sun, his hair looked all the whiter. “Now that you're away, he calls me to bring him tools, but if I'm not sure which one he's talking about I just ask him.”
“Just like that?" I was bewildered. "And he explains it?”
"Well, sure. How else would I know what to bring? I’d ask him ‘which one’s the crescent-wrench?’ and he’d say, ‘It’s an adjustable wrench with a thumb knob that opens and closes to fit the nut. Bring the big one--it says Crescent right on the handle--not the little red one. Center of the board to the left of the ball peen hammer."
"Wait.... You would ask Dad to explain what he meant?" I asked looking Jim in the eyes, "And he did?"
"Yep. All the time. Just like that.”
"And the crescent-wrench says Crescent on the handle?" I asked, wondering how I'd missed that simple clue all those years.
"Yep. Right there in big letters."
"I guess I remember that," I mumbled, trying to hide my shock that a 7-year-old knew what a crescent-wrench but even more amazed that he had grown up with the same dad twelve years later who now knew the meaning of teachable moments. “Wow, Jim! You've got it made. Dad used to talk to us as if his generation was born knowing the names of tools."
“You should have asked him questions?”
“Maybe I did in the beginning, and maybe he did explain. All I know is eventually I felt like I was supposed to already know so I quit asking. Alls I knew was if I brought him the wrong tool, he’d be sore, so I always brought him plenty of choices."
"He was the same with knots. He knows all the knots and can tie them at with his eyes closed--sheepshank, bowline, clove-hitch--but we boys never knew any of them. One time just a few years ago, we were tying down a tarp over a load of lumber and Dad says, ‘just throw a double half-hitch in it.’"
"I started some complicated triple knot with no name and he yelled again, ‘just throw a half-hitch.’ I actually had the nerve to yell back at him, ‘Dad, has it ever occurred to you that I don’t know what a half-hitch is!’”
“You actually said that?” Jim was shocked, because in all his observation and the long oral history of his three older brothers working with Dad, he'd yet to see or hear of one of us "talking back" like that.
“Yes. I said it. Dave and I had been working with him all Spring Break, tearing down that building in Mt. Clemens to get the wood to build the house. Now it was Saturday. It was late and dark and drizzling rain. We still had to drive out to the property and unload it all in the barn before going home. We were all tired, and I just kinda snapped.”
“What did he say back?” Jim’s eyes were wide.
“He said, ‘You mean to tell me you don’t know how to tie a half-hitch?’ He was mad, and I said, ‘No, Dad, I don’t. Why don’t you come over to this side of the trailer and show me how to tie a half-hitch.”
“You said that?” Jim gasped, "I would have kept the trailer between."
“I don’t know where I got the courage but I did. Dad shook his head all the way as if he was about to tie a grown man’s shoe, but he calmly showed me how to tie a half hitch and explained why it was perfect for this situation. He started out sarcastic, like 'how could I have a 16-year-old son so ignorant of knots,' but then doing it step-by-step like that he must've remembered the time somebody had shown him how. After he was done he took a deep breath, looked up at me, and said, ‘I’m sorry I never taught you that before now.’ The teeth were gone from his voice, and I felt bad for talking back to him."
"See? All you did was ask him to show you. I do that all the time." Jim said.
"There's nothing wrong asking with a question, but I asked it just to yell back at him. I think I wanted him to feel that way, and then when he did, I felt like a creep."
Jim was about to speak, but then his eyes looked past me. He saw Dave, dressed and jogging over to the station. I wondered again whether I should have stayed or gone with Dave. It was like watching a coin toss in slow motion until Dave stepped beyond our view into the station door. “Well, anyway,” I said with my mouth in the crook of my arm, “that’s why I’m taking Dad at his word that he’ll call us if he needs us.”
“Dad’s not so much like that anymore,” Jim said. "The mad part, I mean. He's more like the teach you how part now."
“I’ve noticed,” I smiled and looked down at the water in the shadow of my arms, pondering whether or not I should point out to Jim that Dad was now a year shy of fifty with a seven-year-old son. He had not only mellowed--he was, in fact, a wiser man. A decade before, at forty, working with three boys who would rather be playing, I think he always felt one step ahead of Murphy’s law. Now, with Jim, it was different. With this broken axle, it was different.
I'd heard Dad say he believed God was sovereign and in control of everything that comes at us--good or bad--and it's all part of a purpose beyond what we may understand. He’d said that for years, but I think it must've sunk in that if that’s true...then life is as much about the obstacles as the goals. [I later put it this way in a letter to him: "Life is the meal God serves while we're reading our hand-written menus."]
Deciding not to say anything about Dad's age or Jim's youth, I turned to face the sun. Jim did the same then broke the silence with the original question: “So I wonder why Dad was pumping gas?”
I slipped below the water and a pushed off the pool wall, torpedoing back and forth five times before coming up for air on the far side. Jim was already there, arms perched again on the rough but rounded concrete edge of the pool. After catching my breath, I mumbled some lines out of the blue:
"But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, [not alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!"
"Say what?" Jim said opening only one eye in the bright sun.
"It's part of a poem by Robert Burns I learned in Freshman Speech class. You asked why Dad is pumping gas, and it reminded me of that poem, "To a Mouse."
His other eye opened. "Some guy wrote a poem about pumpin' gas... to a mouse?"
"No, that's the poem's name--but come to think of it--yes, he wrote it to a mouse that he accidentally dug up with a plow. It was nesting underground like that little one we found when we were laying the sewer pipe with Dad. Were you with us the day that happened?"
"Nope. I'da remembered a thing like that. Was it dead?"
"We thought so at first. He was curled up in a ball. Dave picked it up and it scared us when it moved--real slow like it was coming out of a coma. Then Dad explained that it had been hibernating in its little nest below the frost line. It was still groggy when Dave put it back down on the ground."
"What happened to it?"
"We kept digging the sewer line, and it crawled off into the trees like it was sleep walkin'."
"Seems like you should have killed it. What if that same mouse gets in the house some day. Mom hates mice."
"Then we would kill it because it would be in our space, but at that moment we had broken his space. It was just like in that poem. That's why I liked it first time I read it, but then at the end it's like something hits Burns about life while he's talking to the mouse. 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley.'"
"What's 'Gang aft agley'?" Jim asked.
"It's Scottish. Burns was Scottish," I said, a bit surprised to enjoy teaching a 7-year-old about a poem--a thing I'd never done before."'Gang aft agley' means 'Often go wrong'--or 'don't turn out as planned'." I quoted the six lines again and added, "There's a book by John Steinbeck called Of Mice and Men, and the title comes from that poem. I'm not sure why. [It would be another two years before I would actually read Of Mice and Men and know why the title was perfect.] Anyway, I guess I thought of the poem because this trip has not gone the way Dad planned."
I backstroked across the pool and looked over at the station. Another car had pulled up and as Dad began filling the tank, Dave walked over to the Country Squire and looked underneath. Dad ran in and out of the station--to make change I guess--and the customer's car rolled away. Then he and Dave were talking again. We could hear nothing but a song sparrow chirping on the chain link fence, a sound that seemed out of place for a silent movie flickering on a far away screen.
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Jim sighed again, "I wonder why Dad's pumping gas," and at that moment, Dad turned to wave at us in the pool. Had he heard us talking? Could he see us? Our heads were barely above the pool's edge and our voices barely above a whisper. We felt 'caught.' We'd gone swimming hundreds of times while Dad was at work--far away at work... at his job, but we'd never been swimming so indifferently while he was hard at work and could see us. What if his suggestion to swim had faded in the heat of the day? Such things can happen after hours of knuckle-busting wrench work. But he sent Dave back our way with a pat on his shoulder and waved again. We waved back blankly.
"What did he say," I asked as Dave approached the fence.
“The owner had to go back to the junk yard to get Dad one more part so he asked Dad if he minded tending the station 'til he got back. There’s nothing we can do on the car until then."
"So he's still okay with us swimming?" I asked.
Dave shrugged. "I guess. I offered to pump gas, but he said he'd better stick to what Clee set up. It's kind of weird... I mean... the guy left Dad in charge of the place. There's nobody else there right now, but Dad told me to come back and tell Mom it will be another hour or so."
"What time is it?" I asked. None of us had on a watch. It felt like eleven o'clock, but it was actually well past noon.
We thought Mom had spent the entire morning propped up on the bed in front of a cold rush of "air conditioning" billowing from the wall unit. Like most Americans at the time, we had never lived in a house that had the luxury of air conditioning, and to sit directly in such a sensation was a pastime all its own. We figured all morning she'd been flipping channels with a remote control, which was another touch of modernity unfamiliar to our family. "Would you look at that!" she had said that morning as we left for the pool. "I can turn the channels and everything from right here." So naturally, we hadn't given Mom much thought after leaving the room.
But what we didn't know was that about an hour before noon, Mom had gotten nervous about checking out on time and went to visit with the lady at the front desk who told her we could keep the room until we were ready to leave. Mom had a way of making fast friends with total strangers, and the two women had kept right on talking for nearly an hour 'til Mom remembered she needed to make Dad lunch. On the way out the door, the lady said, "Here. Take him a bucket of ice. Your husband's over there workin' in the heat. Poor man's going to want a shower before you hit the road, and the boys look like they're enjoying the pool. Just keep the room key. No hurry. We're mostly empty anyhow."
Swimming has a way of making you forget to eat until suddenly you're so hungry you could eat a whole bag of potato chips. And just as our stomach alarms were about to go off, Mom came walking across the parking lot with a stack of sandwiches and glasses of ice water on the little plastic tray from the room.
"Lunch time," she announced as if approaching her own pool behind the kind of house she'd never dreamed of owning. We had, in fact, been the only ones swimming all morning as well as the night before, and it did feel like 'our pool.' She put the food on a round metal table that wobbled as it straddled a huge crack in the cement deck. "I'm going to take some sandwiches over to Dad and then come back to put my feet in. What did you find out over there, Dave. Is he almost done? I feel bad. Us over here and him working on the car in this heat."
"We do, too..." I'd started to explain our guilt but Jim said at the same time, "Dad's pumping gas. He's runnin' the station." And
Dave squashed Jim's line with "It's okay, Mom. He's just keeping an eye on things 'til Clee gets back" I added, "We were goint to go help, but..."
Jim blurted,"I thought maybe it was like washing dishes..."
"It's nothin', Mom," Dave said, "Everything is just the way it should be..."
Jim continued, "I was only trying to say that..."
"Nothing," Dave said firmly. The exchange felt like that slap happy game we sometimes played with our stacked hands on the table. Dave's hand was on top since he was the one who'd actually been with dad, so Jim and I got the hint and held our tongues.
Dave was trying to keep Mom calm, from jumping to conclusions and tumbling into the very kind of panic that Dad did not need brought with his lunch. He calmly continued, "Clee just went to get one more part for Dad. It's not even gunna cost us because Clee says it should have been attached when they bought it this morning. Dad's almost done. I was just over there, and he sent me back. Let me take the lunch over to him. You just wade your feet. Really, Mom, everything's just perfect... just perfect."
Dave was right. Mom sometimes needed help tip-toeing around the imagined pitfalls in her mind. Hadn't she, after all, just a few years before when we were digging the well in what would someday be the basement of our house, gotten all worried when a man stepped out of the woods, just crossing through our land. He was curious about the concrete culverts sunk in the earth, puzzled by us pulling up five-gallon buckets of dirt from a hole twenty-five feet deep, shocked to hear Mom talking to a man way down in the hole.
We'd been digging the well for six long Saturday's in a row. If all went well from dawn to dusk, we could sink a crock a day. The stranger laughed and said, "A well? You're digging a cistern well?--all you'll get is salt water 'round here. Why do you think they call it the Salt River?" He was referring to the river just east of our land, and on that ominous note, the man walked away not knowing he'd just picked a scab from my mother's nervous skin.
"Don't tell your father what that man said," she whispered to Dave and Paul as they lowered the extension ladder down the well to Dad. But all throughout lunch, she was uneasy. So much so that on her way back home she momentarily thought her '65 Plymouth was the old '39 Ford with a column stick shift and put it into "R" (as in "reverse") while driving 50 MPH down the road... but that's another story. I allude to it here only to say that Dave was right, it was best for him to take the sandwiches to Dad. Mom ate with Jim and I, and then went back to the air-conditioned room.
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Sometime after 2:00 PM, we heard the latch of the pool gate lift. There was Dad in his filthy clothes, arms black to the elbows, but a smile shone through the grime. “Wow! You guys are brown as berries,” he laughed. [Dad always said that when we were tan.] “Well, she’s ready to go!” he announced pointing at the Country Squire, which we had driven unnoticed from the station to the motel.
“You never called for help,” I said, still feeling bad about the way this day had gone.
“I didn’t need it. Clee had some free time toward the end, and it went fast with his help.I‘m going to take a quick shower and change out of this shirt. Unfortunately I didn‘t bring another pair of pants, but we‘ll be home before you know it.” [It was no less than an eight-hour drive at 55 MPH, but he was feeling a second wind.]
Dad and Mom stopped by the motel office to make sure we were square, and then we stopped by to get gas at the station. “It’s the least I can do,” Dad explained, “He won’t take a penny for everything he did for us--not even the tow.” Mom’s jaw dropped, “What? But he did so much. What about the parts?” “I paid for the junk-yard parts, of course, but that wasn’t bad at all. I tried to leave some money on his counter, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
Clee approached the car as if we were regulars. “Fill ‘er, up, Don?”
“Yes. It ought to take us pert-near home,” Dad said.
I smiled to hear Dad say “Pert near.” I'd heard Clee say it the night before. Somehow in their long day together, Dad had picked up the phrase from a man who had shared his truck, his tools, and his time with a family in need.
I didn't explain them,the lines to Jim but they underscored the silent dread I was feeling at the thought of starting another year so far from home. We turned back toward the old Country Squire, and the others were getting in. "Wait for us," Jim laughed. My eyes blurred a little, as I tousled his summer-blond hair with my hand.
When I was growing up, my family NEVER stayed in motels. Dad could not see spending a month's house payment for a few nights in a little room with two beds. We vacationed all across northern Michigan and on the banks of Georgian Bay, Canada, but we always camped in a tent. I don't recall any family road trips being more than a day's drive from home, and Dad's definition of a day's drive was what he could do himself from dawn to dark with as few stops as possible. (Mom did drive, of course, but whenever Dad was in the car, he drove.) Leave before daybreak and arrive after dark, and you never need a motel. It was simple math.
One summer, when I was eight (1964), Dad miscalculated a "day's drive," and we spent the night in Niagara Falls, but not as most people do it. (There was only six of us then. Jimmy came in 1968.) We loaded up our VW "bus" and headed for a family reunion at my Uncle Roy's house in Lancaster County, PA. The straightest route took us through Port Huron, Michigan, and across Ontario, Canada, to Niagara Falls. It was the first time we kids had seen this misty marvel and we stayed longer than planned, enjoying both the American and Canadian side. By the time, we were all back in the V-dub, Dad looked again at the map and knew we could not make it to Lancaster County at a decent hour so he announced we were spending the night.
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“Wow! Are we staying in a motel?“ I asked.
“We’ll see,” Mom said, and Dad shot a perturbed glance her way.
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Dad was a firm believer in not getting our hopes up, and Mom had a habit of raising faint hope with the words “We’ll see.” It was a source of constant tensions in that tag-team sport called parenting..
I leaned over to Dave and whispered, “We’ll see means no.”
In fairness, Dad did find a few motels, and he went in while we waited in the car, but each time he came out with that look he wore whenever something was not necessarily out of their budget but definitely out of the question. It was a look I could read at age eight, but did not understand until I was married with a budget of my own.
That night the six of us slept at the far end of the parking lot behind Louis Tussaud's wax museum, which incidentally we had not entered that day. “It’s just a bunch of wax dummies that look sort of like who they're supposed to be,” Dad explained. "It's not for kids," Mom added, but Dave and I had seen a scary movie on TV about a guy who killed people and hid the bodies inside the wax figures at a museum. So of course, we were drawn to the place in the day but not to excited to sleep behind it at night. Fortunately, we did not know we were behind it until the next morning.
Dad slept with his back to the driver-side door, feet stretched to the far floor. Mom curled on the front bench seat with her head against his chest. Kathy was on the middle bench, and Paul and Dave shared the rear bench with their legs sprawled in every direction. I was over the engine compartment in the back. Other than the fact that the prickly mat came right through my clothes, it wasn't a bad place to stretch out. In the middle of the night I woke to a single snore, peeked up at the silhouette of Dad's head leaning back like a PEZ dispenser, and fell back asleep.
Dad slept with his back to the driver-side door, feet stretched to the far floor. Mom curled on the front bench seat with her head against his chest. Kathy was on the middle bench, and Paul and Dave shared the rear bench with their legs sprawled in every direction. I was over the engine compartment in the back. Other than the fact that the prickly mat came right through my clothes, it wasn't a bad place to stretch out. In the middle of the night I woke to a single snore, peeked up at the silhouette of Dad's head leaning back like a PEZ dispenser, and fell back asleep.
It was not until ten years later that I stayed in a motel with my parents, but that first-time event was quite by accident.
***
It was great to see the folks; it was great to see my little brother who had become my little buddy when our siblings had gone off to college without us. Now I, too, had been away for most of the year, but we had three wonderful months waiting on the other end of a long, winding haul up I-75 to Michigan.
We carried our things from the dorm to the back of our 1964 Ford Country Squire. [Dad had sold the VW bus in 1966, and had purchased the station wagon from his brother Bob.]
Dave began loading his things above the folded down rear seats of the car, but Dad soon pulled the items out and re-packed them.My brother stood back with a shrug, swallowing the urge to explain why he had packed the items as he had. He was only two years older than I but much closer to the rites of manhood, much more eager to take the lead, much more confident that he could pack a car without Dad's help. All this was in his subtle shrug that my father did not see.
I was nineteen, but as the fourth-born child I was all too willing to stand back and let Dad do such things. After years of pitching tents, clearing land, building a barn, digging the well, and building our family home, I had learned both how to work and how to step back when Dad was in "I'd rather do it myself" mode.
This was a happy scene, but Dad's smile momentarily faded as his eyes assessed the mass and density of each box and duffel bag we handed him until it was all as snug as a chick in an eggshell. Flipping up the tailgate with a thud, he raised the electric window with the twist of a key. His smile returned. Mom kissed us "hello" as if for the first time as we climbed into the car, and we were off. The plan was to drive all afternoon and evening with no stops except to grab some burgers and change drivers as needed.
In the five years prior to this trip, Dad and Mom had enrolled four children into college. Things were tight, but they had always been tight. Anyone looking at out cars could tell you that. The station wagon was one of three old cars in the family fleet, each had well over 100,000 miles on the odometer.
My father's motto with cars was, "Use 'em up; wear 'em out; make 'em do; or do without." It was his intention to drive each of our cars until the wheels fell off. In some families that is just an expression, but I’m here to tell you that on that day in May, 2005, about halfway home in the late afternoon, on northbound I-75 just west of Berea, Kentucky.... the right-rear wheel of our Country Squire station
wagon literally fell off and began tumbling violently around in the well just behind my seat.Fortunately we were in the right lane, the slow lane, the gas-saving lane, so the vehicle veered itself onto the shoulder of the interstate and Dad brought the lame thing to a halt. It was the last thing on any of our minds, but we were about to spend our first night in a motel with Mom and Dad.
***
Beginning in the late 1980s, nearly all cars (barring trucks and SUVs) were made with front-wheel drive, meaning the same front wheels that steer the car also power the car (like a tricycle).
This was not true for most American cars through most of the 20th Century. They were rear-wheel drive (more like a bicycle than a tricycle). From Henry Ford’s first mass-produced Model T to the fabulous 1964 Mustang and beyond, the power from the engine under the front hood was transmitted (via a transmission and a driveshaft) through a long, high hump in the car floor to a differential between the rear axles which turned the wheels.
Why the brief primer in automotive design? Because many readers, know little about what makes their car go--much less how transmissions changed toward the end of the century. But the main reason, I need to explain because a basic understanding of rear-wheel drive hardware is essential to this part of the story.
So let’s see… where were we. Oh, yes…
We were headed north on I-75 in a 1964 Ford Country Squire, tooling along in the right lane at 55 MPH, which, believe it or not, was the national speed limit from 1974 to 1988. It was imposed during the "oil crisis" caused by OPEC's embargo against the U.S. which sent gasoline prices to an all-time high of 59 cents a gallon! (It was half that just a few years before.) In response to such unthinkably high prices, the Feds demanded that we "Slow Down and Save." Hence, the 55-MPH speed limit in cars with speedometers and power to cruise at 120 MPH.
.
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So Dad was putting along; everyone else was dozing off or staring out their window. When all of a sudden, just outside of Berea, Kentucky, something in the rear axle snapped-- Kerplunk! Wham! Whup-whup-whup! Smell of rubber. Sound of grinding steel. The car rolled to a shaky halt on the shoulder of the interstate, leaning slightly to the right, as we held our breaths in trembling silence.
“Is everyone alright?" Dad asked, "Did anything come up through the floor? Stay in the car while I go see what we hit.”
Mindful of the traffic, Dad slipped out his door around the rear of the car to my side. Shaking his head in disbelief, he motioned for us to get out and have a look. The tire was in shreds. Worse yet, the wheel itself was leaning at a 45 degree angle and pressed down in the gravel under the weight of the car.
“Oh, Don,” Mom sighed, “Can we put on the spare?”
“It’s not just the tire, Mom,” Dave explained as Dad shook his head, “The whole wheel is off.”
“We must have broken the axel,“ Dad added. “I don’t know how it stayed in the well like that.”
“I felt it pounding around right behind my seat,” I said.
“I thought it was going to come right through the car,” Jim added.
“So now what?” Mom asked trying to stay calm.
“So now I go up that exit ramp and see if that gas station has a tow truck. Dave, why don’t you come with me and Tom you stay here with Mom and Jim.”
Until that moment, I had not noticed that we were just a stone’s throw from an exit. We could see a faded Marathon Gas sign high on a pole, but not the station below it. Within a half hour, an old tow truck rolled across the overpass, came down the far on-ramp, crossed the “emergency use only” short cut, made a three-point turn on the shoulder and backed up to our car. Dad, Dave, and a large man about Dad’s age in dirty coveralls got out of the truck. The name “Clee” was sewn on his pocket.
.
The man nodded kindly in our direction but got right on the ground to see the damage. He shook his head,
let down the hoist, and double-hooked the bumper. [This was back when bumpers were made of steel and actually were strong enough for such a task.]
The man nodded kindly in our direction but got right on the ground to see the damage. He shook his head,
let down the hoist, and double-hooked the bumper. [This was back when bumpers were made of steel and actually were strong enough for such a task.]
“I don’t want to pull it on that bad wheel,” he said, “It’s pert-near off already. Likely drop right out when we lift ‘er up so step back.”
He slowly lifted the car onto its front wheels. Sure enough the broken wheel dropped to the ground. He and Dad picked it up and heaved it in the back of the truck.
“I can take you and the wife and him,” Clee said, pointing at Jim.
Dave and I walked to the station in as little time as it took Clee to wait for a long gap in traffic, make a slow, wide U-turn, and lumber up the ramp. I’m not sure which looked sadder, my parents and Jim squeezed into the front of that truck or the sight of the car itself being hauled off like road kill by the tail.
Standing there alone with my brother in the setting sun, I asked him the question that had been on my mind for an hour.
“Do you think it was all those neutral drops?” I whispered.
.A “neutral drop” was what boys back then did to cover the fact that they were driving an uncool car that could not “burn rubber” [squeal the tires from a dead start]. We would sometimes rev the engine of the station wagon in neutral and then drop it into gear so the tires squealed when you took off. The sudden jolt was extremely hard on every moving part involved. We never did the stunt in front of our house, of course, but it did occasionally happen when we were with a car load of boys headed to the beach. Dave did it more than I did, and we felt bad the summer before when Dad had to replace the universal joint in the drive shaft, which had developed a strange rattle. After that Dave and I drove the family car more gingerly--except the time when he wanted to see if it would go over 100 MPH as the speedometer indicated. It did no problem. If the wheel had come off at that speed, I would not be writing this story.
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I asked Dave the question again: “Was it all those neutral drops?”
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“I don’t know. I was thinking the same thing, but it's been over a year ago since Dad replaced the U-joint. Besides this wasn't the drive shaft; it was the axel. And don't forget: Mom's been driving this car for a year without us. She's awful hard on cars," said the neutral-drop king without a hint of irony.
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Crossing the road to the station, we agreed not to bring up the subject again, and to this day we have never talked about the possible connection between our foolish tire-squeeling and the wheel falling off that day. [In fact, it is only safe to write about it now because Dad is not here to read this.]
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The filling station was small, just two pumps, but on the north end of its cement-block building it had a garage stall for repairs. Unfortunately there was a car in the stall up on the lift. Just beyond the station was a long single-story motel that looked like it had been built about the same time as the gas station when the interstate came through in the early Sixties.
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Dad and Clee were again looking under the car while it was still hoisted in the air. There are some young men our age who would have walked right up to that conversation and joined in, but Dave and I decided to stay back just in case Clee was explaining possible causes of such a freak accident. Suddenly, Dad smiled and thanked Clee who ran off to pump gas for a car that had just pulled in. (This was before the time of self-service gas stations.)
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"We're spending the night." It was a relief to see Dad smiling. "In the morning he's going to take me to the junk yard to get the parts we need and let me do the repairs myself."
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"So whatever broke can be fixed?" Mom said somewhat in shock.
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"Sure. Anything can be fixed on a car if you've got the parts."
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"What about tools?" Dave asked.
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"Clee says he's happy to let me use his tools."
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"How much?" Mom winced. "We don't even know this man."
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"Sure we do. His name is Compton. Friends call him Clee. He knows the guys at the junk yard and he says they'll take good care of us. He's calling the motel to get us the best rate, too. As soon as he lets down the car, we'll grab what we need and check in."
.
He said it as if we'd stayed in a motel before, but his nonchalance could not hide the relief that we were safe, this bad thing happened at a good place, and this problem--like nearly all problems in his life--was something he could fix.
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Jim and I looked at the motel a short walk away. In spite of the circumstances, we couldn't help but feel excited about the fact that we were staying the night. It was then Jim pointed to the edge of the motel parking lot. There was an outdoor pool. We tried hard not to smile.
***
The relationship between man and machine was once rooted in the bond between man and beasts of burden. Since the beginning of recorded history, man has bred and bought and sold and sought the animals best suited to help him in his toil. From sled dog to African elephant, camel to horse, between man and these beasts there was a good-faith trade of sweat for care.The animal understood that in exchange for the power of its legs, the strength of its back, the lather dripping from the collar or saddle it willingly wore, the man would provide enough food and water for another day. He may even provide shelter for a momentary rest from the endless dominion of plodding his domain.
Then
came the Industrial Revolution, when man created machines to replace nearly every working beast. But for quaint exceptions, the snowmobile replaced the dog sled, the tractor replaced the draft horse, and the car replaced the carriage [from which the word "car" comes]. With this latter change, man transferred his care from horses to an obsession with horsepower. And for much of the machine age, he began caring for steel and gears and belts and bolts as if the relationship were meant to last a lifetime.But soon this care for machines was reduced to mere maintenance, and in time that maintenance part of owning cars was given to others. So much so that today men and women alike know little about how their cars work and care only that they do.
Make no mistake, America was built on know-how, and there will always be a chosen few who know the how, but more and more consumers know less and less about the things they depend on everyday. They turn the key, push the button, flip the switch and expect the machine do their will, and when the machine goes kaput, they merely cast it aside for another with little emotion other than frustration.
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Wherever consumers consume, dumpsters, scrap iron yards and acres of junk cars have become testaments to both planned obsolescence and man’s infatuation and short attention span for the machines in his disposable world.I confess that when it comes to cars, I take care of the things I can see and touch, but under the hood my skills are limited to the user-friendly yellow parts that are clearly labeled. Beyond that, I call our friends at "Total Car Care."
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But my father was one of the old-school men who was not a mechanic by trade but of necessity. He did not so much enjoy working on old cars, but he knew it was part of the deal in owning them. Since saving money was the purpose of driving older high-miles cars, it made no sense to pay someone else to keep them running, and the owner of the garage in Berea, Kentucky, seemed to understand Dad's plight.
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So there we stood with the rear end of our car still held in the air as if waiting for a prostate exam. Clee was still pumping gas in the other car, so we climbed in the second seat door and wrestled out the clothes and things we needed for the motel. Dave and I actually managed to find our swim suits stuffed among our college clothes. We grabbed them but hid them inside some other things, uncertain of when it would be prudent to let Dad know we'd found a silver lining of this otherwise dark cloud.
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"You all go ahead over to the motel. I'm going to stay here and make a list of the parts I need to get at the junk yard." Dad said, and then he smiled. "Hey, look! A pool. Too bad we don't have our suits."
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"Huh?. Oh that..." Dave and I acted as if we hadn't seen it, but Jim held up a pair of shorts and announced, "I'm in."
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"Good thinking," Dad laughed, and Dave and I held up the suits we'd wadded under our arms.
.
"Now you're talkin', he laughed again.
Mom joined in, "Dad and I will just put our feet in."
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"Sounds good, Bev, but go ahead and check in without me. I'll be there in a little while."
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Walking to the motel, something occurred to me for the first time. From the moment the wheel fell off, Dad had not blown his top--not even a hint of anger or frustration toward the costly inconvenience that sidelined our journey home.
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There had been times when Dad would not have handled this as well. Like most men, the slightly younger version of Dad, the Dad we’d worked with as young teens, sometimes cursed the obstacles of life. He’d start a day with goals--ambitious goals--which can be a good thing, but he sometimes failed to realize that they were somewhat arbitrary and at times unrealistic.
I don't know about his weekday goals, but for about ten years we shared Saturdays from before sun rose 'til long after it set, working out at the property. Whether it was sharpening all of his chain saw blades before dawn, or felling three tall oaks by noon, or uprooting a half-ton stump by dusk, sometimes the goals Dad set were hindered by machinery that broke down. The kind of obstacles that say, “You thought you were doing something else today, but I have news for you: your time will now be spent fixing this thing you need to work again before you can return to the thing you want to do.your work again.” The Dad I knew hated when things broke and tended to be vocal about it until they were fixed, but something had happened in the more recent years he spent with my little brother Jim by his side. Maybe he was just glad the broken axle had not resulted in a tragic accident.
We three boys swam in the outdoor pool that night. Had the whole thing to ourselves. Though it was nearly June, the night air was cool which made the water feel almost warm. As we were drying off with the towels from our room, it felt for a moment like the kind of "motel" vacation we had never taken as a family.
Early the next morning, before the gas station opened for business, Clee took my dad to the junk yard five miles up the road in hopes of finding a rear axle for our 1964 Ford Country Squire.
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When we woke up Dad was already at work on the car.
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[The previous paragraphs were first written and posted from a farm in Kansas in 2007. Back then there were three large Belgian draft horses in the pasture beside the acres of lawn my wife Julie and I mowed during our stays at "home" (Julie's home). The horses were occasionally put to the quaint task of pulling hay wagons full of campers at the summer camp across the small lake. In winter they pulled a surrey with antique sleigh bells ringing across the snowy pastures. It was Julie's father who taught me nearly everything I know of the relationship between a farmer, his land, and the team of horses that helped him work it. Today, is June 17, 2019. The farm was sold in 2016. The horses, and goats, and chickens are gone, and we are enjoying time with her folks in their efficient little home in St. Joseph, Missouri. ]
***
The Meaning of Cozy
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I have shared in other pieces that my mother had the gift of childlike glee. These spells of high-pitched enthusiasm came at predictable times: the first snow fall of the season, the first sign of spring after a long winter, and the first day at our favorite beach after a chilly spring. They also happened whenever she got something big and new with Dad‘s approval--especially if it had been a long time coming. .
If she bought something “big” without Dad’s okay...say a new vacuum cleaner...she would be more frightened than giddy because Dad liked having a say in such things; he studied up on them the week before, could tell Mom all the pros and cons of each model and tell Mom why his choice was the best buy. But Mom would occasionally come home with a "big" purchase based only on a statement like, "I liked it better than the other one they had," and Dad would just shake his head as if quoting P.T. Barnum to himself. Mom often said that she lacked Dad's confidence, but actually it takes quite a bit of confidence to buy "the one you like"... what she lacked was confirmation...
but I digress...
.
A few times in her life really big and new items came to Mom almost like gifts for no occasion, like the time her new fruitwood, French provincial piano was delivered or when her maple dining room table and chairs came through the front door. She couldn’t help but smile each time she sat at them. It took years for the giddiness of such things to wear off--in fact, I'm not sure it ever did until the table sat empty and the piano fell silent near the end.
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But the times I remember Mom’s childlike joy most were the times she‘d step into a place and chirp with glee, “Isn‘t this cozy.” It typically happened the first dozen times she stepped through the zipper door of our family tent when our camp site was finally set up for the week. It would happen again each night when it was time to turn in. We’d all be side by side in six sleeping bags, staring at the faint shadows of branches in the moonlight on the tent roof, soaking in the smell of the canvas, listening to the crickets chirp, and Mom would say in the dark… “Isn’t this cozy!”
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To this day for me, cozy is not merely the feeling of comfort found in a feather bed with flannel sheets with a patchwork comforter on top; it’s not a cabin with a fireplace and a winged-back chair. Cozy must be shared. It can happen anywhere except alone. Perhaps it's a feeling that begins in the womb and is subconsciously recreated whenever loved ones huddle close against the elements or some subtle unknown force.
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Cozy may be four kids and a mom sharing three towels on a beach blanket when the wind switches and a cold breeze comes in off the lake. It may be the whole family tangled together on the couch because no one wants their feet to touch the floor during a scary movie. It can be two silver-haired sisters, in the twilight of their years, together again on a front porch glider with a lap blanket on their knees.
.Cozy is whenever the lost time, a lost cause, a change of winds or fortune is trumped by the single most important fact: we’re together, safe and sound, and that‘s what matters. It’s the scene at the end of Peter Rabbit, when Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter, after a long day of work and misadventure, are watching their mother make chamomile tea?
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When we came in from the pool that night, with our car still up in tractions across the way, we stepped into the simple room with two double beds and a roll-away all in a row. There was barely room for the five of us to walk. Jim dove on his bed, rolled over, crossed his legs at the ankles, laced his fingers behind his head, and grinned as if in the lap of luxury.
.“Isn’t this cozy?” Mom chirped.
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Dave and I just raised our eyebrows. It had been years since we shared a bed, and cozy wasn't quite the feeling generated by maintaining an invisible line down the middle while trying to sleep, but after being away for a year, we couldn't help but smile at Mom's familiar line. It confirmed what Dad’s surprisingly pleasant mood had already suggested: we’re together, safe and sound, and that‘s what matters. My little brother Jim was 7, Dave was 21, and I was 19, but whether we would admit it or not, you're never too old for cozy.
***
I woke up to the sound of Mom unpacking a grocery bag of breakfast things and lunch snacks that Dad had picked up on his way back from the junk yard. Had it been twenty years later, the filling station would no doubt also have been a convenience store, but in 1975, the notion of combining gas and groceries had not yet occurred to men like Clee. Back then they were called “service stations” and there wasn’t a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, or Slurpy in the place.
The inside of most gas stations was only big enough for a few paying customers to stand while they
After Dad found a '64 Ford rear axle at the junk yard, Clee was kind enough to stop by a grocery store on the way back to the station for some food.
We ate a quick bite of powdered donuts, and got dressed to go help Dad, but Mom had surprising news: “Dad told me to tell you boys just to stay here and swim. There’s nothing you can do over there.”
“Are you sure?” Dave asked.
“He said if he needs one of you, he’ll come get you. So put on your suits and enjoy the pool. We don’t have to check out until noon.”
We did just that. Basking in the sun. Jumpin’ in the pool. Drying off to soak in the sun again. It was not a new pool--in fact it was the painted-cement kind, so hard to maintain that many were eventually filled in, leaving a pool-shaped patch of lawn or asphalt. .
Beyond the chain-link fence was the parking lot that ran to edge of Clee's property where Dad was working on the car, which was safely held up on blocks. He was out of earshot, but Dave (who played center field and had a great arm) could have easily thrown him a ball from inside the pool fence.It's hard to tell time around a pool, but after an hour or so, the three of us lined up along the edge of the deep end with our chins resting on our crossed arms on the side of the pool. In the distance, we could see dad through the heat-mirage lines rising from hot pavement, and a sense of guilt came from the scent of chlorine on our skin.
“It just doesn‘t seem right,” Dave said, and then his eyes squinted toward the gas station. “Is that Dad pumpin’ gas?”
“Looks like him,” Jim said.
“Why would he be pumpin’ gas?” I asked.
Jim ventured a guess: “Maybe he has to do that to pay for the repair. Sort of like washing dishes at a restaurant when you don‘t have enough to pay.”
“That does it,” Dave said, angry at himself, “I can’t be swimming over here while Dad’s pumpin’ gas over there.”
He pulled himself onto the cement deck in one athletic motion, grabbed a towel, and ran to the room. Jim and I stayed in the pool, still soaking in guilt.
“Dad did say he’d call us if he needed us,” Jim reminded, not wanting to leave the pool, “and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to stay away until Dad needs me.”
“I know what you mean, Jim. I think he likes workin' alone from all those days of building houses by himself when we were little. Seems like whenever he worked on cars, he was alone, too, except when he’d call one of us for something. He’d be out in the garage under a car and yell, ‘Tom, go down to my tool board and get my crescent-wrench,’ and all the way down the steps I’d be trying to remember what a crescent-wrench was. I’d grab three or four things that looked kind of "wrenchy" and hope one of them was what he wanted. Pipe wrenches, box wrenches, adjustable pliers, and with any luck at all an actual crescent-wrench." [Dad had an authentic Crescent brand wrench, but the term "crescent-wrench" is spoken as if one word and is generically used for any adjustable wrench other than a pipe wrench. Old adjustable wrenches are sometimes called “monkey wrenches“ because the forerunner was invented by Charles Moncky in 1858.]Jim interrupted. "But, Tom, you work with tools all the time."
"You can use tools and not know their names. It's only when two people are working together--or one's trying to teach the other--that agreeing on the names of things matters. Sure, I know all of his tools and what they do NOW, but back then I called a Phillips head a 'star' screwdriver because it made star prints when I poked it into Play-doh.'”
Jim laughed and turned his face toward me. He was a towhead, and with his cheeks reddened from the morning sun, his hair looked all the whiter. “Now that you're away, he calls me to bring him tools, but if I'm not sure which one he's talking about I just ask him.”
“Just like that?" I was bewildered. "And he explains it?”
"Well, sure. How else would I know what to bring? I’d ask him ‘which one’s the crescent-wrench?’ and he’d say, ‘It’s an adjustable wrench with a thumb knob that opens and closes to fit the nut. Bring the big one--it says Crescent right on the handle--not the little red one. Center of the board to the left of the ball peen hammer."
"Wait.... You would ask Dad to explain what he meant?" I asked looking Jim in the eyes, "And he did?"
"Yep. All the time. Just like that.”
"And the crescent-wrench says Crescent on the handle?" I asked, wondering how I'd missed that simple clue all those years.
"Yep. Right there in big letters."
"I guess I remember that," I mumbled, trying to hide my shock that a 7-year-old knew what a crescent-wrench but even more amazed that he had grown up with the same dad twelve years later who now knew the meaning of teachable moments. “Wow, Jim! You've got it made. Dad used to talk to us as if his generation was born knowing the names of tools."
“You should have asked him questions?”
“Maybe I did in the beginning, and maybe he did explain. All I know is eventually I felt like I was supposed to already know so I quit asking. Alls I knew was if I brought him the wrong tool, he’d be sore, so I always brought him plenty of choices."
"He was the same with knots. He knows all the knots and can tie them at with his eyes closed--sheepshank, bowline, clove-hitch--but we boys never knew any of them. One time just a few years ago, we were tying down a tarp over a load of lumber and Dad says, ‘just throw a double half-hitch in it.’""I started some complicated triple knot with no name and he yelled again, ‘just throw a half-hitch.’ I actually had the nerve to yell back at him, ‘Dad, has it ever occurred to you that I don’t know what a half-hitch is!’”
“You actually said that?” Jim was shocked, because in all his observation and the long oral history of his three older brothers working with Dad, he'd yet to see or hear of one of us "talking back" like that.
“Yes. I said it. Dave and I had been working with him all Spring Break, tearing down that building in Mt. Clemens to get the wood to build the house. Now it was Saturday. It was late and dark and drizzling rain. We still had to drive out to the property and unload it all in the barn before going home. We were all tired, and I just kinda snapped.”
“What did he say back?” Jim’s eyes were wide.
“He said, ‘You mean to tell me you don’t know how to tie a half-hitch?’ He was mad, and I said, ‘No, Dad, I don’t. Why don’t you come over to this side of the trailer and show me how to tie a half-hitch.”
“You said that?” Jim gasped, "I would have kept the trailer between."
“I don’t know where I got the courage but I did. Dad shook his head all the way as if he was about to tie a grown man’s shoe, but he calmly showed me how to tie a half hitch and explained why it was perfect for this situation. He started out sarcastic, like 'how could I have a 16-year-old son so ignorant of knots,' but then doing it step-by-step like that he must've remembered the time somebody had shown him how. After he was done he took a deep breath, looked up at me, and said, ‘I’m sorry I never taught you that before now.’ The teeth were gone from his voice, and I felt bad for talking back to him."
"See? All you did was ask him to show you. I do that all the time." Jim said.
"There's nothing wrong asking with a question, but I asked it just to yell back at him. I think I wanted him to feel that way, and then when he did, I felt like a creep."
Jim was about to speak, but then his eyes looked past me. He saw Dave, dressed and jogging over to the station. I wondered again whether I should have stayed or gone with Dave. It was like watching a coin toss in slow motion until Dave stepped beyond our view into the station door. “Well, anyway,” I said with my mouth in the crook of my arm, “that’s why I’m taking Dad at his word that he’ll call us if he needs us.”
“Dad’s not so much like that anymore,” Jim said. "The mad part, I mean. He's more like the teach you how part now."
“I’ve noticed,” I smiled and looked down at the water in the shadow of my arms, pondering whether or not I should point out to Jim that Dad was now a year shy of fifty with a seven-year-old son. He had not only mellowed--he was, in fact, a wiser man. A decade before, at forty, working with three boys who would rather be playing, I think he always felt one step ahead of Murphy’s law. Now, with Jim, it was different. With this broken axle, it was different.
I'd heard Dad say he believed God was sovereign and in control of everything that comes at us--good or bad--and it's all part of a purpose beyond what we may understand. He’d said that for years, but I think it must've sunk in that if that’s true...then life is as much about the obstacles as the goals. [I later put it this way in a letter to him: "Life is the meal God serves while we're reading our hand-written menus."]
Deciding not to say anything about Dad's age or Jim's youth, I turned to face the sun. Jim did the same then broke the silence with the original question: “So I wonder why Dad was pumping gas?”
I slipped below the water and a pushed off the pool wall, torpedoing back and forth five times before coming up for air on the far side. Jim was already there, arms perched again on the rough but rounded concrete edge of the pool. After catching my breath, I mumbled some lines out of the blue:
"But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, [not alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!"
"Say what?" Jim said opening only one eye in the bright sun.
"It's part of a poem by Robert Burns I learned in Freshman Speech class. You asked why Dad is pumping gas, and it reminded me of that poem, "To a Mouse."
His other eye opened. "Some guy wrote a poem about pumpin' gas... to a mouse?"
"No, that's the poem's name--but come to think of it--yes, he wrote it to a mouse that he accidentally dug up with a plow. It was nesting underground like that little one we found when we were laying the sewer pipe with Dad. Were you with us the day that happened?""Nope. I'da remembered a thing like that. Was it dead?"
"We thought so at first. He was curled up in a ball. Dave picked it up and it scared us when it moved--real slow like it was coming out of a coma. Then Dad explained that it had been hibernating in its little nest below the frost line. It was still groggy when Dave put it back down on the ground."
"What happened to it?"
"We kept digging the sewer line, and it crawled off into the trees like it was sleep walkin'."
"Seems like you should have killed it. What if that same mouse gets in the house some day. Mom hates mice."
"Then we would kill it because it would be in our space, but at that moment we had broken his space. It was just like in that poem. That's why I liked it first time I read it, but then at the end it's like something hits Burns about life while he's talking to the mouse. 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley.'"
"What's 'Gang aft agley'?" Jim asked.
"It's Scottish. Burns was Scottish," I said, a bit surprised to enjoy teaching a 7-year-old about a poem--a thing I'd never done before."'Gang aft agley' means 'Often go wrong'--or 'don't turn out as planned'." I quoted the six lines again and added, "There's a book by John Steinbeck called Of Mice and Men, and the title comes from that poem. I'm not sure why. [It would be another two years before I would actually read Of Mice and Men and know why the title was perfect.] Anyway, I guess I thought of the poem because this trip has not gone the way Dad planned."
I backstroked across the pool and looked over at the station. Another car had pulled up and as Dad began filling the tank, Dave walked over to the Country Squire and looked underneath. Dad ran in and out of the station--to make change I guess--and the customer's car rolled away. Then he and Dave were talking again. We could hear nothing but a song sparrow chirping on the chain link fence, a sound that seemed out of place for a silent movie flickering on a far away screen.
.
Jim sighed again, "I wonder why Dad's pumping gas," and at that moment, Dad turned to wave at us in the pool. Had he heard us talking? Could he see us? Our heads were barely above the pool's edge and our voices barely above a whisper. We felt 'caught.' We'd gone swimming hundreds of times while Dad was at work--far away at work... at his job, but we'd never been swimming so indifferently while he was hard at work and could see us. What if his suggestion to swim had faded in the heat of the day? Such things can happen after hours of knuckle-busting wrench work. But he sent Dave back our way with a pat on his shoulder and waved again. We waved back blankly.
"What did he say," I asked as Dave approached the fence.
“The owner had to go back to the junk yard to get Dad one more part so he asked Dad if he minded tending the station 'til he got back. There’s nothing we can do on the car until then."
"So he's still okay with us swimming?" I asked.
Dave shrugged. "I guess. I offered to pump gas, but he said he'd better stick to what Clee set up. It's kind of weird... I mean... the guy left Dad in charge of the place. There's nobody else there right now, but Dad told me to come back and tell Mom it will be another hour or so."
"What time is it?" I asked. None of us had on a watch. It felt like eleven o'clock, but it was actually well past noon.
We thought Mom had spent the entire morning propped up on the bed in front of a cold rush of "air conditioning" billowing from the wall unit. Like most Americans at the time, we had never lived in a house that had the luxury of air conditioning, and to sit directly in such a sensation was a pastime all its own. We figured all morning she'd been flipping channels with a remote control, which was another touch of modernity unfamiliar to our family. "Would you look at that!" she had said that morning as we left for the pool. "I can turn the channels and everything from right here." So naturally, we hadn't given Mom much thought after leaving the room.
But what we didn't know was that about an hour before noon, Mom had gotten nervous about checking out on time and went to visit with the lady at the front desk who told her we could keep the room until we were ready to leave. Mom had a way of making fast friends with total strangers, and the two women had kept right on talking for nearly an hour 'til Mom remembered she needed to make Dad lunch. On the way out the door, the lady said, "Here. Take him a bucket of ice. Your husband's over there workin' in the heat. Poor man's going to want a shower before you hit the road, and the boys look like they're enjoying the pool. Just keep the room key. No hurry. We're mostly empty anyhow."
Swimming has a way of making you forget to eat until suddenly you're so hungry you could eat a whole bag of potato chips. And just as our stomach alarms were about to go off, Mom came walking across the parking lot with a stack of sandwiches and glasses of ice water on the little plastic tray from the room.
"Lunch time," she announced as if approaching her own pool behind the kind of house she'd never dreamed of owning. We had, in fact, been the only ones swimming all morning as well as the night before, and it did feel like 'our pool.' She put the food on a round metal table that wobbled as it straddled a huge crack in the cement deck. "I'm going to take some sandwiches over to Dad and then come back to put my feet in. What did you find out over there, Dave. Is he almost done? I feel bad. Us over here and him working on the car in this heat."
"We do, too..." I'd started to explain our guilt but Jim said at the same time, "Dad's pumping gas. He's runnin' the station." And
Dave squashed Jim's line with "It's okay, Mom. He's just keeping an eye on things 'til Clee gets back" I added, "We were goint to go help, but..."
Jim blurted,"I thought maybe it was like washing dishes..."
"It's nothin', Mom," Dave said, "Everything is just the way it should be..."
Jim continued, "I was only trying to say that..."
"Nothing," Dave said firmly. The exchange felt like that slap happy game we sometimes played with our stacked hands on the table. Dave's hand was on top since he was the one who'd actually been with dad, so Jim and I got the hint and held our tongues.
Dave was trying to keep Mom calm, from jumping to conclusions and tumbling into the very kind of panic that Dad did not need brought with his lunch. He calmly continued, "Clee just went to get one more part for Dad. It's not even gunna cost us because Clee says it should have been attached when they bought it this morning. Dad's almost done. I was just over there, and he sent me back. Let me take the lunch over to him. You just wade your feet. Really, Mom, everything's just perfect... just perfect."
Dave was right. Mom sometimes needed help tip-toeing around the imagined pitfalls in her mind. Hadn't she, after all, just a few years before when we were digging the well in what would someday be the basement of our house, gotten all worried when a man stepped out of the woods, just crossing through our land. He was curious about the concrete culverts sunk in the earth, puzzled by us pulling up five-gallon buckets of dirt from a hole twenty-five feet deep, shocked to hear Mom talking to a man way down in the hole.
We'd been digging the well for six long Saturday's in a row. If all went well from dawn to dusk, we could sink a crock a day. The stranger laughed and said, "A well? You're digging a cistern well?--all you'll get is salt water 'round here. Why do you think they call it the Salt River?" He was referring to the river just east of our land, and on that ominous note, the man walked away not knowing he'd just picked a scab from my mother's nervous skin.
"Don't tell your father what that man said," she whispered to Dave and Paul as they lowered the extension ladder down the well to Dad. But all throughout lunch, she was uneasy. So much so that on her way back home she momentarily thought her '65 Plymouth was the old '39 Ford with a column stick shift and put it into "R" (as in "reverse") while driving 50 MPH down the road... but that's another story. I allude to it here only to say that Dave was right, it was best for him to take the sandwiches to Dad. Mom ate with Jim and I, and then went back to the air-conditioned room.
.
Sometime after 2:00 PM, we heard the latch of the pool gate lift. There was Dad in his filthy clothes, arms black to the elbows, but a smile shone through the grime. “Wow! You guys are brown as berries,” he laughed. [Dad always said that when we were tan.] “Well, she’s ready to go!” he announced pointing at the Country Squire, which we had driven unnoticed from the station to the motel.
“You never called for help,” I said, still feeling bad about the way this day had gone.
“I didn’t need it. Clee had some free time toward the end, and it went fast with his help.I‘m going to take a quick shower and change out of this shirt. Unfortunately I didn‘t bring another pair of pants, but we‘ll be home before you know it.” [It was no less than an eight-hour drive at 55 MPH, but he was feeling a second wind.]
Dad and Mom stopped by the motel office to make sure we were square, and then we stopped by to get gas at the station. “It’s the least I can do,” Dad explained, “He won’t take a penny for everything he did for us--not even the tow.” Mom’s jaw dropped, “What? But he did so much. What about the parts?” “I paid for the junk-yard parts, of course, but that wasn’t bad at all. I tried to leave some money on his counter, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
Clee approached the car as if we were regulars. “Fill ‘er, up, Don?”
“Yes. It ought to take us pert-near home,” Dad said.
I smiled to hear Dad say “Pert near.” I'd heard Clee say it the night before. Somehow in their long day together, Dad had picked up the phrase from a man who had shared his truck, his tools, and his time with a family in need.
****************
So went our first time ever in a motel, and so began my first “college summer.” Less than a month later, my sister Kathy got married on June 28th. It was the beginning of the kind of change all families go through. Two years later, Paul got married. The year after that it was Dave, and in 1980 it was me. Jim was twelve as he walked down the aisle as my "Junior Best Man." He and my parents still had a whole lifetime ahead of them, one that included many stays at motels, but Jim’s favorite memories were the ones with us all still under one roof. The seven of us crowded in a three-bedroom brick ranch, or the old canvas tent, or stuffed into that Country Squire station wagon.
The next fall (the beginning of my sophomore year), we again packed the station wagon to head back down to school.
The day before, Mom baked one of her famous Banana Cakes with Butter Cream Frosting, her specialty, the magnum opus of her culinary arts, but the cake was not for us. Dad planned it so we'd stop for gas at the Berea, Kentucky exit. He was glad to see Clee at the station, glad that he recognized us and the car right away. Mom got out and and gave him the cake she'd been tending by her side for nearly eight hours. He was very moved by the sweet gesture of remembered kindness and insisted that we all sit in the garage stall and have a piece with him. He and Dad joked and talked like old friends. Mom added her pleasant two cents. We boys, having never spent more than a minute with him before, just smiled and ate Mom's cake.
As the others visited, Jim and I walked outside across the asphalt parking lot to the pool where we'd spent the day just three months before.
“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley...” he said.
Surprised that he remembered, I couldn't help but finish out the poem clear through to the end...
The next fall (the beginning of my sophomore year), we again packed the station wagon to head back down to school.
The day before, Mom baked one of her famous Banana Cakes with Butter Cream Frosting, her specialty, the magnum opus of her culinary arts, but the cake was not for us. Dad planned it so we'd stop for gas at the Berea, Kentucky exit. He was glad to see Clee at the station, glad that he recognized us and the car right away. Mom got out and and gave him the cake she'd been tending by her side for nearly eight hours. He was very moved by the sweet gesture of remembered kindness and insisted that we all sit in the garage stall and have a piece with him. He and Dad joked and talked like old friends. Mom added her pleasant two cents. We boys, having never spent more than a minute with him before, just smiled and ate Mom's cake.As the others visited, Jim and I walked outside across the asphalt parking lot to the pool where we'd spent the day just three months before.
“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley...” he said.
Surprised that he remembered, I couldn't help but finish out the poem clear through to the end...
."An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou [the mouse] are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!"
For promis'd joy!
Still thou [the mouse] are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!"
I didn't explain them,the lines to Jim but they underscored the silent dread I was feeling at the thought of starting another year so far from home. We turned back toward the old Country Squire, and the others were getting in. "Wait for us," Jim laughed. My eyes blurred a little, as I tousled his summer-blond hair with my hand.
.
End note: When I first wrote this in 2008, I Google-mapped the exit at Berea, Kentucky. To my surprise, the pool (or one like it) was still there. Clee's* station has been replaced by a huge Speedway Gas Station and convenience store. There was no longer a garage for car repair. I googled-mapped it again in 2019, and there is no motel or pool. It's so developed that it hardly seems possible that we saw few other people that day we were in the pool. [*Clee was my freshman roommate's name and not the garage owner's. My brothers and I can't remember his name. Dad and Mom would remember it... if they were here.]
End note: When I first wrote this in 2008, I Google-mapped the exit at Berea, Kentucky. To my surprise, the pool (or one like it) was still there. Clee's* station has been replaced by a huge Speedway Gas Station and convenience store. There was no longer a garage for car repair. I googled-mapped it again in 2019, and there is no motel or pool. It's so developed that it hardly seems possible that we saw few other people that day we were in the pool. [*Clee was my freshman roommate's name and not the garage owner's. My brothers and I can't remember his name. Dad and Mom would remember it... if they were here.]
posted by .Tom Kapanka | 11:32 PM
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