Dad's Day

I was six when this happened. We lived in an old house at 918 W. 6th Street in Davenport. There's not even a house there any more and the current use of that lot is more constructive than the existence of that house would be. It had two apartments upstairs that shared a bathroom. There was one apartment downstairs. If you had the downstairs apartment you didn't have to share a bathroom and you even had a shower in the basement. Later we moved into the downstairs apartment. We were living large, indeed!

When I was six I went to Jefferson School in Davenport. I was a first-grader, and therefore mature enough to be in the throes of my first crush. It was for Miss Takano, our teacher. She was from Hawaii, and I took to all things Hawaiian. I must have looked awfully silly, using a bath towel as a substitute for a grass skirt, hula-ing my way around the house. Yeah - "cute" my a**. . .If anyone has pictures, please burn them.

On December 24, during that six-year-old first-grade year, we awoke to find that the door to one of our rooms wouldn't open. Try as we might, we couldn't budge that door. We were sure that Dad could open it, but there was a mystery too: Dad was nowhere to be found. It didn't occur to me that it might not be a coincidence that Dad was missing and there was a door jammed shut.

The next morning, Christmas morning, when we woke up Dad had magically reappeared. And, lo and behold, the door could be opened. When we did open it, we saw something new. There was a piece of plywood. It seemed monstrous to me, but I think it was really about four-by-six feet. Maybe 5x8. Most of the wood was painted grassy green. There were gray-silver streets painted onto it. There were small buildings attached; Dad had built a little village on that board. There were railroad crossing signals where railroad tracks crossed the street. Yes, railroad tracks, from the model electric train that was also on the board.

To this day I have a thing about trains, and if there's a childhood hobby I'd take up again if I could, it would be model railroading.

Another experience Dad shared with me also involved trains. Many years ago a company in the Quad Cities - I do not remember who - sold packages for Iowa Hawkeye football games. The package included a round-trip train ticket from the Rock Island depot almost to the gates of Kinnick Stadium. It also included game tickets and a box lunch. We made that trip in two consecutive years. The Hawks lost both times. I am no longer a fan of the Hawkeyes (I don't hate them; I pay no attention to them.) I am still a fan of the memory. And there's still that thing about trains.

What follows is my opinion, based on nothing more than my observation. Of the four types of parent-child relationships it seems to me that the relations that cross gender lines are the easiest to understand and maintain. Not that these are easy in any absolute sense. Relationships, no matter the nature, are complex and require hard work. But, I think that fathers and daughters, and mothers and sons, understand each other comparatively well. Mother-daughter relationships can be a bit more difficult, but the hardest to understand of all of them may be the father-son relationship. I have no idea why. I can't substantiate that by research. My feelings won't be hurt if you tell me I'm wrong, or that your experience is different. But my Dad and I were certainly no exception. Neither are my son and I. I love both my Dad and my son dearly. We do try, and most of us get to where we should be. I just think the dynamics of that are really tough to grasp. It's the stuff of The Brothers Karamazov and Field of Dreams, not to mention the greatest of all short stories, the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Dad never claimed allegiance to either political party. "Vote for the man, not the party," he'd say. But when he voted for the man it was Landon, Willkie, Dewey, Dewey, Ike. . .The one exception was in '64. He voted for LBJ because he couldn't stand Goldwater. Dad later regretted this. I voted for a Republican - Nixon - with my first vote for President. I have not since voted for any Republican. For anything. At any level. I don't think Dad put much of a stamp on me there!

There were other arenas in which Dad most definitely left his mark. Dad read the newspaper every day. He was a tool-and-die maker who could teach some civics teachers a thing or two. I skim - and sometimes more - six or seven papers a day. Dad would have done that, too, if he'd had the internet. We're both news consumers of the first order.

We both loved baseball first, with football a close second. Basketball and hockey? Something to fill time between the real sports. We both had a firm grasp of the history of the game. Ted Williams hit .406 with 37 home runs in 1941. Lefty Grove was 31-4 in 1931. Joe DiMaggio had his 56-game hitting streak the same year that Williams hit .406. The highest single-season batting average in the modern era was by Rogers Hornsby (.424). These days we would be astonished if someone hit .367 over a single season. Ty Cobb hit that over a 20-year career. These are things that Dad and I would both know off the top of our head.

We both valued concepts like work. . .duty. . .fidelity. . .honor.

We lost Dad in 1984. Our daughter Cheryl was eight; Becky was six. None of the others were old enough to have any real memory of him. I think of him frequently, and I miss him every time I do. In a very real sense I carry him with me still - with every step, in every gesture, with every glance.

This Father's Day, for those who still have your father with you, tell him you love him. Try to tell him how much you appreciate him. He may get all gruff and act like he doesn't need all that. He does. For those who have lost their father, the pain of loss never goes away. Your hurt is my hurt too. In the end the sweetness of the memories and the gratitude for their life and for what they shared with you will win out.

Thanks, Dad. I love you.

And thanks to those who've read this for hanging with me for a few. Love to know what you think.