the continuum

I've written a few stories about my dad but there are many more interesting things about him. For example, he was a TV repairman when sets had tubes and he was also a meat cutter. The TV repairman job didn't work out as well as he had hoped, so he was mostly a meat cutter. When he'd cut himself at work, which was often, he'd take himself to the Dr's office, get stitches then come home early. Then, when it was healed he removed his own stitches. Ewww. I was grossed out, but I still loved to sit at the kitchen table and watch him clip the threads and pull them out of his hand. His white shirts were always bloody from the meat market but that was just the norm for our house.

He wasn't much of a hunter but once in a while he'd go with Uncle Bill. One time he got a pheasant and brought the foot home to me. He showed me how to pull the tendon at the top, so the foot would close and grasp. I brought it in for show and tell.

I was a hit.

My classmates were amazed. I kept the foot in my desk in a Whitman's Sampler candy box with my other treasures the rest of the school year.

That's another thing. For every birthday, holiday and anniversary, Dad brought Mom a Whitman's Sampler. She loved it. We did too because she always shared with us. Of course, she always got to choose her favorite piece first.

When he left early for work before we got out of bed, he wrote poems to Mom and us with his red meat marking pen on the laundry cards that came out of his shirts. They went something like this:

Good morning to you, my beautiful wife
and my darling daughters three.
I have get out and go to work
so I'm not here, you see.
So have a good day
while the sun shines bright,
it won't be too long
and I'll see you tonite.

He was also given some pigeons which he kept in our large garage out back. He wasn't much of a keeper though--not very tidy--and the whole mess turned into a 2 1/2 car bird house. Yes, it's as bad as you imagine it was. ICK!

For each of several winters Dad spent one freezing cold night making us an ice skating rink out of most of our backyard. He'd carefully bank the snow for the rink. Then he'd fill it with a layer of water, wait a couple of hours till it froze and fill it again. In layers. He explained if it was frozen in layers, there would be no pockets of water to pit and it would be stronger and smoother this way. Layer after layer, it would take him all night to complete it. We were the only kids in our neighborhood with our own ice skating rink in our back yard.

In the nearly 18 years since my dad died I have recognized some similarities between us. Curiosity, a quick temper and a mischievous gleam in my eye have gotten me into trouble more than once, and when I feel that golden itch to understand or learn something new, or I speak too sharply or I tease my granddaughters until they laugh at me, he's there. And sometimes, when the weather cools and the holidays hover, I walk outside at night and I see my dad sitting on top of the picnic table waiting for me to return home from a date. He's smoking a cigarette, looking at the stars in the clear, black skies, listening for the panther's scream.