Gramps and Grandougie

When some gentle soul suggested I speak at a service here at UUFA I assumed correctly that the date would be randomly assigned and the topic could be equally eclectic if not random. The liturgical roulette wheel turned up June 19. A date like any other date in the hot season, so I agreed. A week later I got an invitation to preach for American money in an Episcopal parish. Already committed I declined. Then I discovered that June 19th in 2011 is Fathers’ day. Born in Boston where even Christmas used to be illegal, Fathers’ day doesn’t register with me at all. Then I realized that if I were at Redeemer in Greensboro today I would be preaching on Trinity Sunday. Unitarians dismiss the Trinity; Episcopalians dread it. Sermons on Trinity Sunday are famous for their length and obscurity. So karma, grace, random chance, luck of the draw, here we are on Fathers’ Day, not Trinity Sunday.

Fathers’ Day is 101 today. According to the folks who keep track of these things, Fathers’ Day would very likely have become extinct if it had not been turned into a shopping exercise in pursuit of Daddydom. It is now second only to Christmas as a profit-center for male-oriented businesses. As we mentioned earlier, it is a day for ties and tools.

The original father memorialized on this day was a civil war veteran whose wife died in childbirth with her sixth child. Mr. Smart persevered in raising the family although his eldest daughter was 18 when Mrs. Smart died so he didn’t do it alone.

I am not alone in my sense of ambivalence about Fathers’ Day. This Holy Day has always been subject to parody and satire even in the advertising of ties and tools. The ads over at Sears have a kind of light-hearted quality to them. They seem to say: “Give dad something cool, something he will like on Fathers’ Day. Almost any tie or any tool will do. It’s not like Mothers’ Day where the judgments are very severe for getting it wrong or worse, forgetting it altogether. Dad can live without this stuff, but it just wouldn’t be right to leave him out?”

My mother had a great father. We called him Gramps. The only thing almost as good as arriving at his house in Lincoln, MA, was stopping at the Howard Johnsons on the New Jersey Turnpike on the way. Even I couldn’t eat a whole serving of their enormous pancakes.

My yearning for Gramps began at an early age. One Tuesday morning when I was about 5, I announced I was going to walk to Gramps’ house and go to church. My mother pointed out it was Tuesday and Gramps was at work in Boston. She made no impression on me at all. I took my 3 year old sister and we headed out towards the four-lane which would lead two toddlers the 12 miles to Gramps’ house. The State Police picked us up, after we had crossed that impossibly busy street.

We grandchildren were allowed to watch Gramps take a bath and shave. He would talk to us in the most matter of fact way and dab us with shaving cream and Mennen after-shave lotion. Two years ago my sister gave me a bottle of Mennen After Shave. She said: “If you are going to turn yourself into Gramps, you might as well smell like him.”
Gramps would let us pick out his cufflinks and tie clasp. He was proud of his Phi Beta Kappa key which he always wore with his three-piece-lawyer-suit.

We would go downstairs to help the cook by folding the breakfast napkins. When everyone had just about given up, Gramps would come bounding down the stairs in a wave of after-shave hailing us with his patented greeting: “Good morning dear teachers and scholars and tasters of fine whiskey.”

Gramps had an old bank safe in the cellar where he kept the booze. The safe had no back, so anyone could have moved it away from the wall and helped themselves. The combination was carved on the ceiling of the liquor locker and we grandchildren were often invited to open the safe. We also shoveled coal into the furnaces, walked behind the Lawn Queen mower over his two acres of lawn and spent hours in Gramps’ tool room.

It wasn’t a proper shop. It was a tool room with a place for every tool outlined in black paint on the wall. Under the monkey wrench was a hand-written sign which read: “this is not a hammer.”

Gramps would take me to the hardware store in Concord. I can still smell it. If you go to Normaltown Hardware and you can have almost the same experience. One day I was in Lowe’s early in the morning and all the people in red aprons kept asking me if I could find everything. Finally I just said to the last person: “I don’t need anything; I just came in to smell.” He looked as if he understood.

Gramps didn’t talk much, but when he did, everyone listened. He told stories he probably shouldn’t have told to his young grandchildren. He told a politically incorrect joke about a person with a hare lip which we grandchildren begged him to tell over and over again. I preached at his funeral in the church that was not open on Tuesdays. There isn’t a day goes by I don’t miss him.

I tell you these stories, because I want to stir up in you your own stories. If your stories about fathers are less than happy, then be glad for those of us who can share happy memories.

My own father was the smartest man I have ever known. He told me to tell my children to call him Grandougie. They would have if they had ever met him. When I was 7 he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. “I want to be big enough to beat you up.” I will never forget his answer. He replied in the kindest possible way: “When the time comes, I hope we will have worked it out.” As you can imagine, trying to have an argument with him was futile.

My dad taught me to shine shoes, to nail nails, to tie a tie. But those are the expected tasks for dads. One year when I was in college he picked me up in his Porsche and took me to neighboring Rochester, NY. We did all sorts of cool stuff. One afternoon we went out to the airport, to the general aviation hangar where they sell private aircraft. My dad told the salesman he was interested in the Beechcraft Baron, a two-engine model. Would we like a test fly? Absolutely. We went up and flew around Rochester and Lake Ontario for free for an hour. I get breathless when I think about that excursion.

That evening we went to the best restaurant in town, The Rio Bamba. It was as exotic as it sounds. The bar had fake tiger skin on its front and the linens and glass-ware went on forever. My dad announced that it was time for me to enjoy escargots. I wasn’t so sure, but he was. He showed me how to get the snails out of the shells with the little fork; how to put the meat on a piece of rye bread and drizzle more garlic butter on it and eat the whole thing. I still love snails. At the end of the meal it turned out my dad had no money and no credit cards. They let him charge it. He told me later he got a nice note from them when he sent a check.

One night my girlfriend’s parents made the mistake of inviting my dad over for a drink. For fear that they wouldn’t know what to serve he helped them by bringing some 150 proof rum. After a couple of jolts of this high octane potable, my girlfriend’s father began to offer some social opinions on race relations at our local swim club. My dad listened oh so politely to what was basically a racist screed. Then he said, once again in the kindest sounding voice, “You know, Dick, that’s all very interesting. I just read the other day in “Scientific American” that if you let people of African heritage into the pool, the color comes off in the water.”

I can still hear the silence after that remark uttered 51years ago. I also remember as if it were yesterday the realization that my dad was bigger, smarter, more generous than I had ever guessed. While he wasn’t around much, his influence was huge. I know most people aren’t lucky enough to have a dad like he was.

In 1988 when he was living in Monterey, CA and I in VA Beach I wrote and asked if I could come visit. Indeed I could. He put me up in a motel. Then we did what we had always done. We looked at cars; we went out to eat; we admired one another. He gave a party for me to introduce me to his friends. As you can imagine they were an interesting group of people. It was one of the best weeks of my life. Nine short months later he had a stroke and died.

My mother moved back to Massachusetts to take care of Gramps whose second wife had died. I remained in Swarthmore and moved across the street to live with the Hebbles to finish my senior year in high school. Grant was a retired naval psychiatrist. Billie was the best cook in the world. They took me in and made me a part of their family. As the years went by I always visited them when I got close to Philadelphia. One year Billie asked me: “Peter, are you a good father?” I was struck dumb. I did not know what to say. Grant interjected: “That’s an unfair question. I am sure Peter did the best with what he had at the time.”

So here’s to fathers, dads, gramps, grandougie, papa’s everywhere in every age. We all did the best with what we had at the time.