Father Far and Away: Part VI

[Revised Saturday, July 12th.]

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. It was the concept of “self service” (pumping your own gas) that brought foot traffic into the station, and gradually, aisle by aisle, service stations became "convenience stores." But that was still a few years off. So after Dad found a '64 Ford rear axel at the junk yard, Clee was kind enough to stop by a store on the way back to the station.

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 the garage property where Dad was working on the car, 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.

We swam for a couple hours, until the three of us paused at the deep end with our crossed arms perched on the side of the pool, chins resting on our wrists. In the distance, we could see dad through the squiggly-mirage lines that rise 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 trying to teach--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.' Like that.”

"It says Crescent on the handle?" I asked, wondering how I'd missed that simple clue all those years.

"Yep. Forged right there in big letters."

"I guess I remember that," I mumbled, trying to hide my amazement that this 7-year-old could explain a crescent-wrench and more so that his question had produced such a teachable moment with Dad. “Wow, Jim! You've got it made. I used to think Dad thought boys were born knowing the names of tools."

“You should have asked him?”

“Maybe we did in the beginning, and maybe he did explain. All I know is eventually I quit asking. But if I came back with 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 will--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" as if on equal ground.

“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. 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."

"All you did was ask him to show you. I do that all the time." Jim said.

"There's nothing wrong 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. 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 axel, 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?”
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To be continued...
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Note about revision: A day or so after writing something, I like to "read" my own writing as if I hadn't written it,,, as if I'm seeing it for the first time. Afterwards, I revise and tweak. This chapter was revised quite a bit after I visited with Jim Thursday night who added some details about that day in 1975. He reminded me that it took place at the Berea, Kentucky, exit. I google mapped it and to my surprise the motel and pool are still at that exit. The service station is gone; a big Speedway convenience mart is there. Friday night, I went back and added "Berea" in all the places I'd said "somewhere in Kentucky.". I have not been by that exit in over 25 years, and though I've been writing about it for three weeks, I'd forgotten the name of that little town.

Then this morning, a journalist and Bush Press Secretary whom I highly admired died of cancer. I was reading this article about Tony Snow, you can imagine how serendipitously strange it felt ot learn that Snow was born in... Berea, Kentucky.