Went to a Nice Funeral Today

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The son of the deceased gave a beautiful heartfelt eulogy. I recall my dad's funeral, where my comments were the turd in the punchbowl. I wasn't planning on saying anything, but my father's church friends -- in that quintessential Fundy god-loves-a-rich-man mode -- insisted on boasting about my father's business acumen.

My sister and I had just started going through dad's records. We knew the house was mortgaged at 18 percent to its last nickel of worth and that he'd been saved from bankruptcy the year before when my mother inherited money from her sister, and that he'd blown most of that money paying off old debts and making new investments, all of which were now debits instead of credits.

But we for the first time looked at his income tax returns *on which we discovered he had claimed real estate profits he had never made* and thus turned refunds into payments. He had been cooking his own books so that he seemed to be making a profit. Not to fool anyone. Not a set of books to lure in new investors. Simply a record of phony profits to fool himself.

So after this endless torrent of lies, finally I got up and said this is the great lesson of my father's life that I want to point out to his grandchildren and great grandchildren. In spite of all his failures, he persevered. (I did not add that the lesson that hatches from this particular iteration of the common virtue is: But if what you are doing is stupid, please stop.)

Did I mention Jesus? Not by name or nickname. After my contribution, the 300-pound preacher (not that there's anything wrong with that, but damn! he's going to be a four-winged angel, kind of like a dragonfly) up he jumped and talked about my father's godless offspring who broke his heart. And everyone stared at satan's emissary in the second row.

In its way, it was a very entertaining funeral, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

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Hail to the Sonny Boy (and then things get weird)

I'm not sure where to go with this, but Memorial Day starting me thinking about my dad (see below) and that started me thinking about fathers and sons and *that* suddenly -- oh the mystery of association -- led me to the following:

Obama is my first "son" president. That is, he's the right age to be my son. Bush and Clinton were my "brother" presidents, which made me dislike the former more and the latter less -- with Clinton there would always have been girls to spare. First Bush, Reagan and beyond were all "dad" presidents, and that connects up with a different set of approving and disapproving, resentment and attraction.

That is perhaps part of the reason I find it hard to criticize Obama even when I disagree with him and think he isn't doing exactly what he promised. Not having any actual kids -- and I cannot add "that I know of" -- I'm not sure if my feelings are typical. I mean, my dad refused to be as proud of me as he should have been. But I look at Obama, and I think: damn, what a fine young man.

We shall see what this goes, this thinking of him as a gawky adolescent who's finally grown into his length and the size of his feet. But it's true. Right now he's my metaphorical sonny boy.

And now *for some unfocused irony*. I had never seen the movie, nor the clip from the movie until I went searching for a nice illustration for the preceding.

But this is a blog: no turning back.

Memorial Day: Just Another Conversation My Dad and I Never Had

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I wonder how many people were born on the day their fathers died? I wasn't. My question is not that gaudy a rhetorical flourish. But I was born on June 10, 1944, and I am sure the combat that day, only four days after D-day, was fierce enough that more than one soldier died in France even as his child was coming into the world stateside.

I'm not quite sure what the logistics would have had to have been to put the soldier next to his significant other nine months previous, but I'm sure it was managed.

Nine months previous to my birth my dad was exactly where he was on the day I was born, working for the N&W railroad in the switching yards in Roanoke, Virginia. He almost never worked "the road," as they called it. He liked staying at home.

His new father-in-law had gotten him a railroad job in the late Thirties, new father-in-law being a minor railroad executive. My sister was born in 1938, and railroads were -- actually *were* -- an important part of the war effort, so it made sense that my dad stayed on the job and resisted the romance of enlisting. He had duties and responsibilities.

But all this is assumed. I was occasionally curious about his sticking around, but I suppose the self-evident charms of my own existence -- for I was for many years a man of destiny, having been (of course) before that a boy of destiny -- made it equally self-evident that he needed to be home to sire my sweet self.

That's one reason I never asked him about why he didn't go to war. Also, as a man/boy of destiny, I understood it might be an embarrassing question. What didn't you do in the war, papa?

It's just another of our unasked questions. There were many. I'm sure he had just as many in relation to me: Why *did* you quit loving your Lord Jesus? Why do you seem to prefer your wife to your mother and father? Why do you seem to prefer your *cats* to your mother and father! Why won't you come home to visit more often?

Isn't it interesting that if you pile certain questions together they almost answer themselves?

When a $ Sign is a Road Sign

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What a pleasant vacation it has been, spending hours every day working through an unusually complicated and vexing tax prep. One satisfaction is shredding some antique receipts that had no tax significance at the time and which I saved only out of paranoia and which I am now bold enough to discard.

That's faith in you, Big O.

So I'm going through some old credit card bills, and there it is: May 24, 2000, I charged -- what is it? --$1,005 for one ticket, make that two tickets at $1,005 each, SF to Roanoke, Virginia, where I was born and raised. Damn. What was that about? A bogus charge that I neglected to catch? May 2000? May 2000?

Ohhhhhhhhhh yeah. May 24, 2000. That was the day after my dad died.

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My Father Myself

Today I got my flu shot at Kaiser and because it's pretty late in the day for such preventive measures the line was short and thus I had time to banter with the woman giving the shots. When I was growing up, my father both embarrassed and delighted me. He styled himself a personable fellow who brought charm and wit to every encounter.

And he did or he didn't, depending on your taste for self-regarding bullshit. But he always put the ball in play, and as every major leaguer knows, that's about a quarter of the battle.

Oh I know it's emotional empty calories, all this small talk, and sometimes my dad's neediness was so transparent I was humiliated for him. But he seemed oblivious, and sometimes life is simpler if you take people at their affect and when it comes to others just leave the decoding of the signs and symbols of the subconscious alone.

Anyway, my dad loved to tease -- only connect! -- and I liked it and didn't like it, and I am his true blood son and I think that's why I do some of it myself: Hey, I'm here!

And today in the atrium of the third floor of the Fabiola Building in the Kaiser complex on Broadway in Oakland, California, I *bantered* with the woman who was giving shots, and giving them very well, too.

Just talking about this and that, you know. But once I was poked and bandaged, I did suggest she must dream of plump upper arms at night, and she allowed as how she did, adding, "You wouldn't believe some of the tattoos I've seen."

And I realized I'd just learned something and thought that if I was still an assignment editor, I'd have an assignment. And as a feature writing teacher, I now had a suggestion.

So thanks, Pops. You were obscure and died having fallen short, at least in your own mind. But you were not a *mute* inglorious Milton, and your son thanks you for it.