Dadtakingphotos

Walking around the quiet house is bringing back a lot of memories.

The drive up from the city was cold and windy, but necessary to see mom, and await the arrival of my brothers, sister, and family. When I arrived, mom made a very stiff whisky and soda for me, I think my lips might have been blue from the insanity of driving a jeep in april over the mountain range, with no jacket. Yeah, I’m smart.

Mom and Dad love clocks. There are so many here, ticking and tocking, chiming at the half hour, even at two in the morning. It sounds somewhat like a clogging convention is being held at a slow pace in a recreation hall down the block, and the minutes just keep on being remembered.

Cottonwood has really changed since I left here, there are more fences, more houses, more churches. Same amount of bars though, which is sad. A good irish pub here would do wonders for the atmosphere.

Dad had a stroke yesterday, and is unresponsive at the hospital. Mom is waiting there now, I am sure the clock noises are in her ears too. I cleaned up the blood when I got here last night, then slept on the floor to the ticking away of several metronomes.

I just spent a half of a sunny hour in the back yard, looking at the towering pine trees Dad and I planted all of those years ago, and collected a few of the dropped cones because photographs don’t always hold all of the memories. The maple trees are still thriving, it seems as though my botched attempt at bonsai gardening at least worked out well for this location. I had collected the seed pods from a tree just about halfway up the mountain that is nearby my parent’s house, while in high school, and Dad showed me how to scarify them, and seed them, and grow them. When I left for college, I left the greener pasture of my trees behind, and he planted them on the south side of the house addition. Three of them have grown together to a nice shady height, and probably dropped just enough leaves in the hot tub to piss him off now and again.

I’d planted a peach tree next the house, but it died off. Dad planted a rose bush there now, it looks like a mixed red variety, I am not sure of what type. I would be willing to bet that he would, though.

I picked up some of the tools he used while doing his odds and ends craft projects. He has a plethora of tools on mounting brackets, and jars full of a variety of nuts, bolts, nails, screws, and washers all mounted neatly in rows, and labeled. Some of them are mislabeled, but since the jars are clear glass, you can see what you can see anyway. There are a lot of spider webs that hold a few of the tools together, they are joined as if by another builder, with the same patience that Dad had when he was creating something.

Why does he have two fourteen inch pipe wrenches, one stained by age, another shiny and new? Wood saws, something that you rarely see anymore unless you are visited by Hawaiian folk bands, hang from pegboard in order, from hard cut to back saw. This sort of thing puzzles me to no end. Dad is mostly ordered, mostly, and some of this confusion I still can’t quite get a grip on. Well, he does have the grip-goo in a can, perhaps I could stick my mind in it, and figure out why.

The American flag is still flying outside, on the second of the posts that Dad has installed over the years. One of them was bent over by some high school pranksters back in the 80’s. You could have probably heard Dad yelling over the mountain, in the neighboring town. Mad Dad is bad. It’s a good thing they did it when he was stacking z’s, because an irritated world war two vet is the last thing you need to have chasing after you, especially a marine who was ranked as an expert in hand to hand combat.

When I was nineteen, I pushed Dad’s buttons once to many a time, and was invited to accompany him to the backyard, near the then still-living peach tree. Luckily, I begged off, and apologized, or I am sure I would have been soundly thrashed. He was super mad that day. When someone picks you up by your collar bones, off of the ground, you tend to become apologetic. Hey, I actually look back on that with some fondness, I was being a total jerk, and needed a good attitude adjustment. Dad gave that to me, in spades.

The rock that Dan hit is still out front. With the new curved gravel driveway Dad added a whole new dimension to parking at the house, especially by adding a rather large pointed rock to one of the curbs that outline where you are supposed to keep your vehicle. I think the paint from the rental car might still be on it. Hold on,

Nope. There is a streak of pink paint on the upper tooth of the boulder, but unless Polly Purebreed has been by lately, it is more likely just one of those odd things that happen up here. Do they make pink rental cars? Maybe in Havana, but not in Arizona.

Rocks were always one of Dad’s favourite things to hate when digging. There is a certain special something that hits your nervous system when you swing a pick into a large hard object. The vibrations go from the pickhandle, up your arms to your brain, and then back down again, resulting in a state of disharmony. He didn’t like disharmony very much, so left a lot of the digging to the kids, such as yours truly. On the third hole I was excavating for our (at that time) sapling trees, I managed to really knock the hell out of our water main, creating a bit of a local phenomena for the half hour it took him to leave work (can’t imagine what he was saying) and get home to shut off the main. At first, I thought I was in a deep hole, pardon the pun, but he laughed it off, and said he shouldn’t have told me to dig a hole in that spot. No teenager has ever felt more left off the hook than I did that day.

I became exceptionally inebriated at my brother’s bachelor party, where they showed black and white stag films and had someone keep on giving me plastic cup after cup of ale. I’d never tasted it before, and thought it was a most joyous beverage, especially while surrounded by a bunch of guys smoking cigars and drinking along, watching porno. She did what with the donkey? When we finally got back to the apartment, my grandmother’s, Mom asked why I looked so ill. Dad said I ate too much cake at the party. I think she bought it, but you never know.

Several years later, I returned after a long whingding at a friend’s house who will remain nameless. Mark’s house was often left to him by his traveling parental units, and we made the most of it. At one point, I do remember being bathed naked by one of my teacher’s wives, who was trying to console me about my retching, which just would not end. She finally drove me home, and as I staggered through the front door, looking for the nearest bathroom, mom said, “Are you o.k.?” Without missing a beat, Dad said, “ He ate too much cake.”

The clocks are ticking away, and the pendulum of one is bright brass, reflecting the errant bits of light that make their way through the shades. I can see the bookcases dad made in the reflection of the swinging metal, they are over-built, as everything he did was, and sturdy as hell. Dad had a stroke once while we were pouring the foundation for the hot tub out back, the one that collects the goddamned leaves. It was a shock to me to realize that my rock solid father was capable of being harmed by anything , especially a minute vagary in the blood. He started repeating the same sentence over and over, and I ended up having to tell him to get in the fucking car, so I could take him to the hospital. I think hearing me say that word without mom around to wash my mouth out with Lava took him by surprise, and he quickly did so. See? Word power does work, but I doubt you will find this bit in Reader’s Digest. The pad is still there, and come what may, that eight inch thick, steel reinforced concrete pad will probably be there for a long time to come.

Dad rarely swore, unless provoked. The first time I remember hearing him pronounce some words was back on Western. Mom was having her coffee-klatch friends over, and I came stomping up the stairs from the garage where he was trying to adjust a carb on the Opel Manta (lime green) parroting “god-damn, god-damn” over and over. Mom said it was a hoot.

He was cutting up some Spam for a dinner one evening in the early 80’s, and managed to miss the Spam and take off the tip of his thumb. Human thumbs are incredibly spamlike in colour and texture. They tried to reattach the piece of flesh, but it wouldn’t work, perhaps because no one was sure if it was the spam or the thumb bit? We came back from the hospital, and Dad and I dug into the meal. My girlfriend wouldn’t touch it, and to this date, I think Lola has never eaten Spam. I just watched for any stray bits of thumbnail in my Spam and Potato’s . Fine by me. Dad swore like a banshee.

Tick Tock.

Mom and Dad had the house repainted a number of years ago, and also had some siding put on. Mom couldn’t figure why my old bedroom screen came off so easily, but Dad just smiled. Lola lived about a block away when I was in high school. I don’t think he was proud of my promiscuity, but just happy that I was at least somewhat normal for a sixteen year old. I do believe I disappointed him in a number of ways, becoming an artist…which is never a way to make much money, spending what money I had on silly items, and moving from place to place without any clear motive or plan. Once he said to me “If we hadn’t of had you, I could have had a bass boat”. I can respect that.

I don’t want to make it sound like he was too severe, he was just a logical realist. He liked the trains to run on time, and to know if , and, or when, dinner was being served. One thing that does strike me is that I never recall ever being struck (well, except for the backyard incident, and I did have that one coming) as a kid. Dad could just glare you into submission. He also used to let me ride the caterpillar sprinklers naked in the summer when I was a toddler. You just can’t beat that sort of growing-up.

Dad gave me an old practice rifle when I was about 8. It was a Lee-Enfield .303 mockup used by the troops for drilling, and I became the envy of the neighborhood on Natchez avenue (Dee Dee Dorfman wanted to be my girlfriend) because of my new awesome sniping toy when we played “german spotlight” during the extended hours of the Minnesota summer. Shit, sometimes the sun was still shining while Mom was flinging the cowbell about , telling us it was dinner time, or past. If I heard my middle name called in the mix, I knew it was serious.

I got into building models early on. Daddy Royce gave me a 1/48th scale King tiger tank kit, and I made a diorama of it. This was on the same day that my sister was trying to learn how to work an automotive clutch, so I built a tank, while sis chugged her way up and down Natchez to the laughter of my father and grandfather. Mom was pissed. We ended up moving to Phoenix shortly after, and Dad helped me assemble quite a few plane models, which we strung from the ceiling in my room Daddy Royce came out to stay with us for a week, so I was relegated to the couch, and he took my bed. In the middle of the night, a 1/72nd scale B-24 crashed down upon him, thereby avenging the laughs that were had at my sister. Never irritate Lynn. You could hear Royce yelling for miles away.

Dad also had helped me with a large scale B-52, I wanted to paint it in camouflage but dad insisted that the solid silver and white would be better. Can’t really blame him, that post war nuke stuff was fairly complex. It hung above my bed for quite a while, I think it disappeared at the same time I broke my left collarbone playing smear the queer football, and had to actually go to the hospital for repairs. But, we did have to wait for Dad to get back home from work (at the same hospital) so we could get the discount. I was more worried that I would be paralyzed for life and never have sex.

Mom gave me an aspirin and told be to watch a Godzilla film on the television.

Dad loaned me a super eight camera , and I made many stellar films that included my models, our dog, and myself living out quite the hyperspacial b-movie thrillers that would never be shown on Mystery Science Theatre. I still have some of them, saved from the rampant tornado in Oklahoma that wiped out most of my past. Yikes. They are truly terrible.

Dad passed away last Wednesday. I guess he did become somewhat lucid just prior to the final curtain call. It would seem to me to be the valiant effort of a brave man to just swim to the surface of conciounsness , and bid a final fare well to those around him.

I really think this is the way he would have wanted to go out, fast and in no pain. It was either that, or a gun fight with a german sniper.