Not quite guileless

When I was a college freshman, I was fairly active in dorm life. In the spring of that year I worked with two other people to produce our dorm’s Cabaret Night. The three of us worked hard and began to call the project our baby.

Cabaret Night was a rousing success. All the acts were good and all our dorm residents were happy. My happiness ran over to Sunday morning and I just had to share it. I called home and Dad answered. Here’s a reasonable facsimile of our conversation:

“Hey dad, guess what I did last night!”
“What’d ya do?”
“I had a baby!”
After a beat, “You...what?” Can you hear the slight whistle on the “wh” and the very crisp “t”?

I relented and have him an account of what a glorious night we had. He didn’t have much else to say after that. I’m wishing I was a fly on the wall at home when he hung up the phone.

In retrospect, I knew my delivery was calculated to cause a shock; I just never knew how much of one until I had a child of my own, a girl, who is now a college student herself.

Daddy Would Have Been 99 Today

Happy Birthday Daddy

I'm grateful for your strong seed that sired all my brothers and sisters, connected them to other loves, and sired your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  I know how much you instinctively loved kids and I know you're truly and rightfully proud of all of us.

I'm grateful for your silliness, that made it more than okay for us to be goofy kids. In many ways, you were one of us: always a kid at heart who had to figure out how to be a grownup, as we all do.  

I'm grateful you understood -- and stood for -- the beautiful creature who was our mother.  Her graceful endurance, sense of humor, and total forgiveness of the foibles of others show me now what a strong and confident person she was, despite her shyness.  A timid woman could never have faced nor created what she did, as the loving anchor and GPS of our home.

And I'm grateful for your high IQ intelligence. It's a proud legacy we all honor and hopefully share to some degree, but you were the master.   

I brag it made you crazy that I couldn't do math.  I only submitted to you as my math tutor once.  Even at 8 years old, I was smart enough to avoid that at all costs forever after!  I'm still not grateful you made me go to summer school after failing freshman algebra.  I brag I passed algebra after that, barely.  Maybe I am grateful just a tiny bit, but it was mostly a waste of summer. :)

I'm grateful for your amazing stories.  You were SUCH a marvelous storyteller!  According to Chuck and his children, that gift was passed down from Percy's mother, Ella Gilbert 1853-1933.  Apparently all the hilarity in the family started with her.  It is said she was an especially masterful practical jokester, and I have heard some pretty funny stories of her from our cousins. 

I am grateful for all the stories from your boyhood in the 20s and 30s on Long Island. I don't remember most of them, but I know the places: Lynbrook. West Hempstead, Merrick High School. I love the one when you were a boy and a bird pooped on Grandpa Percy's shoulder, and he looked down at you and said, "It's a good thing cows don't fly." 

I'm grateful for your kindness to me as a little girl, always appropriate, protective, indulgent and reassuring.  I'm grateful you always tucked the blanket under my feet when you put me to bed.  One time when I was about 5 years old, after you tucked in my feet and started to leave, I had this sudden panic. I think I knew even then it would be hard to find someone like you to love.  Feeling vaguely guilty on behalf of Mom, I said Daddy?  Yes?  When I grow up, will you marry me?  I'm still grateful you broke into a wide smile and said slowly, "Suuure..."

And then, I'm grateful that though you were gone, I ended up marrying someone so very like you. I knew it when I met Val. He is funny, silly, brilliant, a bit spoiled, highly creative, had anger issues, believed deeply in duty, honor, right and wrong. They say you always marry one of your parents, and you were all those things.  

I'm grateful you modeled a sure masculine love for family with your imperfections and your often fierce and immature passions. You showed me what to watch for and what to watch out for.

I'm grateful you were not always the best father for me.  I had to accept myself even when my own daddy thought I was a bit too much.  Mom told me once I was her most difficult and demanding child. And precious Matt was her most placid baby, for which she was very grateful after 2 years of me.  Yup she said that to me.  But she said it with love and deep understanding and no rancor at all, in a way which made me feel purely accepted.  

In the end, I'm grateful for the strong base that you created with Mom for all of us.  Things were never perfect, but I'm still proud to be your daughter.   

I was sixteen

One spring evening before dinner I was sitting next to Dad at the dinner table - I was in Clare's regular seat. He and I were discussing one thing or another, having an enjoyable exchange, when he asked me something he had never asked me before. He asked me if I wanted a drink.

Quite taken aback, I blurted, "Sure!" I wanted the moment to continue. He got up - nothing would do but he would pour it himself - and returned from the kitchen drink in hand.

I raised it to my face and sniffed - I pretty much knew what it smelled like, but this was new. A glass of Cutty Sark on the rocks of my very own. Cautiously I sipped and I don't know if my faced betrayed me, but the arresting arpeggio of flavor and heat of alcohol filled my senses. In a flash. 

The difficulty for a beginning drinker is bad enough, with the it-must-be-acquired taste of the drink, and the fire in the nose, foodpipe, and belly - but it all happens so fast. It's a lot to take in.

I adjusted tolerably enough, I guess, and I looked at the rather stiff potion remaining in my glass and began to worry. Our talk continued companionably; if Dad were amused or put off or whatever, he didn't show it. Sip followed sip, talk continued, the table was set around us as dinner rapidly approached.

After a short while of this, my GI and nervous systems were telling me that I had better change course. So I did. I had worked like a yeoman on the scotch, but I told Dad, "Sorry, I can't finish this," and set it before him.

He leaned back slightly and looked at me and said, "I'm impressed!" I stared at him. He said, "That took a certain amount of courage and self-awareness. I'm very proud of you. Well done."

Truly a cocktail hour for surprises.

I remember Dad often wearing his reading glasses as he worked on a crossword puzzle.

Pingpong was dad's game. I played him often at 37 Whitford Ave. and I never beat him

Scraping

Those of you with an encyclopedic memory of the house on Main Street will recall the dull yellow outside color when we first moved in. And more specifically the large exterior wall that faced Mrs. Gubitz's house and was to the rear of the bay windows. 

Oh, and a third thing to recall: the outside surface of the house was done in slats, if that's the right word, about six to eight inches wide.

When during probably our second summer there, there was a large push to paint the place, I watched as Dad raised the dull gray steel ladder (God I can hear it to this day) to this section of the house and climbed up, in his shorts and sneakers, armed with his hand scraper. We all remember what a focused guy he was, how uncompromising he could be about the right way to do something.

He went to work on the uppermost slat, just under the roof, at the edge nearest the front of the house. It had to be at least 18 feet off the ground, and was probably something more than 20.  He scraped and scraped; he climbed down and moved the ladder and went back up. 

He spent most of a morning and all of a hot summer afternoon at this. And at length he reached the end of his 8 inch-wide section exterior wall. Plainly he'd made a big difference. The surface was roughed up to his satisfaction; the scraped and bare section contrasted vividly with the tired color of the rest of the house.

Once back on the ground he stood and reviewed his work. He stood for fully ten minutes, looking up. He'd spent some arduous hours on that narrow band, and I for one was not surprised that he wanted a break from it.

During this time I'd been busy scraping the pillars of the front porch, but would check on him now and then. 

I fully anticipated him shifting the ladder back to the left, typewriter-wise, to start on the next slat. But instead, he went inside. I thought, Okay, tomorrow's another day, for sure.

The next thing I knew (a few days later and without any further scraping from Daddy), there was a flatbed truck in front of the house and some materials were being delivered. It was exterior siding. An executive decision had been made, and it didn't involve scraping the entire outside of that imposing house. - Luke

(Note: the above picture was taken by yours truly on my honeymoon trip in 1976. That explains the new white roof.)

More Scraping

Well, Luke... I don't remember if we painted the interior before or after the siding went on... I think it was before.  Maybe that's why Dad had enough of scraping.  NOT scraping certainly did not apply to the wallpaper project.  I will always remember that steamer and the smell of melting glue and how it ran down Daddy's arm (and Paul's) as they held it up to a small patch of 7-layered wallpaper on the walls (fewer layers on the ceilings).  And how we stood waiting with our scrapers to pull off that wallpaper, and yelling at each other not to gouge that beautiful old plaster.  I don't know how one Daddy and an army of kids did all that, but we did.  And we thought that fake wood paneling on the 3rd floor was SO COOL.  Below is what 178 Main Street looked like in July of 2017.

They painted it tan... it's just nowhere near as cool

The 3 elms mom planted on the right side of the house all succumbed to elm blight.

Pretty windows on the top level though...

The Guido's house next door looks nice..

Main Street School

The main entrance

In the Parking Lot between St. Paul's Church and the old St, Paul's School, which they now use as a pre-school and/or daycare for little ones.

The Whitesboro village green

'Nuff said

Cool clock

Check out the front of the old school run by the Jesuits.  It's now combined with UCA and St. Frances de Sales, the only Catholic High School in Utica.

Val and me at his High School Reunion at Rome Free Academy

And I threw in a picture of our dog with his dog walker just because it's cute.