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06-18-2001 @ 11:23 p.m.
Daddus Completus

Ok, let me just say for the record--last night, I was *not* disappointed. ;-)

Now, on to my father. He has never been terribly comfortable with children. He just plain has no clue how to interact with them. Thing is, when I was a kid, I didn't realize that he was so clueless. He was just my Dad. I realize now, as an adult, that he was kind of uncomfortable with us. I mean, he didn't know how to relate to a kid. But that was ok. We adapted. We lived in his world. For fun, he taught us how to play poker. He used to have Sunday night poker games at the house and at the beginning, he'd let us kids play for a little while. It was all in fun and we thought it was really great. (Looking back, I'm thinking great--he taught me how to gamble at 8 years old. Just the kind of thing you want your kids doing. But I thought it was really fun. And we didn't turn out to be gambling addicts or anything.)

My father loved to handicap the horses. He saw it as a great intellectual challenge to study the racing form and track the trainer's patterns and figure out if which ones were actually running to win this time out. We had a tradition in our family--when you were 9 years old, you could go with Daddy to the race track. We'd take turns having an all-day date with Daddy to the track on a Saturday or Sunday. I loved it--I knew every inch of that racetrack. I knew the paddock where the horses paraded before the race. I knew the paddock club seating area where they had really good food and the best hot ham sandwiches ever. I knew the gazebo area where there were lovely white gazebos with tables where ladies in floppy white hats sat and cheered for their horses. I knew the "cheap" area (where admission prices were lower) with red linoleum tiles where there were no tables, no chairs, just standing room. It was where old men with rumpled clothes, pork-pie hats and chewed up stogies watched the races on the monitors and willed their horses to win. I didn't like that place very well because it was dark and smoky and generally child-free. But there was a certain allure to it and I always made a pass through there to see those hardened gamblers. I knew the grandstands, too, but found them very boring, except when my aunt and her husband were in their box.

I had 2 favorite spots. The first was along the rail exactly at the finish line. I had to get there early--before post time of each race--because it was a popular place to hang out. I'd watch the race from there and then be right at the winner's circle to see the horse's owners come down to take a few minutes in the limelight (like they had something to do with winning the race) and to watch the jockey's get weighed after the race. Then I'd hurry back to my other favorite spot--standing right next to my father, listening to him tell me who he thought would win the next race and why. He would place bets for me--I usually made 4 or 5 two-dollar bets over the course of the day. He'd help me pick my horses and then make the bets for me. I'd have to pay him back his "stake" but I got to keep my winnings. One time I won $35 on one race and thought I was all that and a bag of chips. Daddy always bought me a deli sandwich--I always had a fresh carved ham on light rye with mayo and mustard. It was wrapped halfway up in white paper and it was the most delicious sandwich anywhere. I also always had a Fudgsicle for a treat, which I called a fudgicle. Still do. On the way home, if he'd had a good day, we'd stop at the Caveman for smoked chicken and ribs.

I loved going to the track with my dad. I thought I ran the place and I loved having him all to myself for a whole day. I know it was a race track and that's not what most people would think of as a suitable place for a daddy-daughter date, but I loved those dates and remember them very fondly.

My dad also took each of his daughters out to dinner at the restaurant of her choice on her birthday. We'd get dressed up nice and go out for a great meal somewhere--anywhere. I don't remember what we talked about but I remember feeling loved and cherished.

When I'd ask my father a question about how something worked or what a word meant, he'd say, "Let's look it up." I'd get the big dictionary or the appropriate volume of encyclopedia and we'd look up the word or topic. Then we'd read other things that caught our fancy along the way. Sometimes the books wouldn't get put away promptly so we'd look up something else the next day. He never talked down to us--he talked to us like we were little adults and if we didn't know the words, we had resources at our disposal to find out what they meant. As a consequence (benefit, actually), I had a very extensive vocabulary at a very early age. I remember my 4th and 5th grade teachers asking my parents where I learned all those words that I used all the time. From my daddy.

My father is a very intelligent man but he didn't have the chance to go to college so rather than the career as an engineer he always wanted, he spent half his life as a carpet layer/tile setter/formica layer/vinyl layer/etc. The last 15+ years of his career were spent as a jig-builder at Boeing. He said he loved the work because it didn't require much of his mind so he would spend his days "scheming." That's what he liked to call thinking, day dreaming, planning, pondering. He liked to have time for scheming. He encouraged me to find time to do some scheming, too.

He taught me to avoid ruts. He didn't like to drive the same way over and over. In the summers after the 6th and 7th grades, I got free tickets to see some Mariners' games because I made the honor roll at school and he drove a different way to Seattle every time. And he always drove a different way to the race track, too. Don't get in a rut, he'd say. Find new ways to do old things so that you don't get bored. That's advice I live by all the time. And to this day, I hate to drive the same way over and over so I'm always looking for "secret back ways" to familiar places. I take the scenic route whenever I can. And it makes me think of my father.

When I was in junior high school, I got to spend a week as his assistant--his lackey. My older sister spent summers as his assistant to earn money to buy school clothes but she was going on vacation so I took over for her for a week. She trained me for 2 days and then I took over. I learned that he prided himself in doing an excellent job. You couldn't find the seams in his carpet installations. His tiles were set perfectly. He taught me to put down the caulking around the tubs and sinks and to clean it up so it was perfect--no flaws were allowed. He was an anomaly in the construction business--he was a craftsman. He was an artisan. He took pride in his work. When my husband and I were building our house, I saw lots of sloppy work and wished my father could have installed our carpet and our vinyl and our counter tops and our tile. I knew it would have been perfect.

He didn't take us to the park. He didn't take us roller skating. He didn't come to our sports activities (which was kind of a relief for me because I wasn't very good). But he did teach us to fish. I got a fishing pole for my 3rd birthday. He taught us to go camping. He taught us to love learning, just for learning's sake. He expected the best from us and we did our darnedest not to disappoint him. He expected us to go to college and we all did--some of us multiple times. ;-) He didn't read us bedtime stories. He didn't play Pacheesi with us. He didn't go skiing with us or take us on lavish vacations or play ball with us or a lot of the things that "normal" dads did. But he worked hard to provide for our family. He didn't earn a lot money for our family, but we never went hungry. During some lean years, there were times when he took his pool cue to the local tavern to win enough money to buy food for dinner. He spent a year in Alaska earning money during the 70s when the bottom fell out of the new housing market.

He wasn't conventional by any stretch of the imagination. And he isn't a conventional grandfather either. His favorite gift for children is a flashlight. (And as a former child flashlight recipient, I can tell you that it's a *great* gift.) But I love him just the same. He tells funny stories to my daughter and makes her laugh. Her favorite is the one about when he was four years old and his foot went through the rotted top of an old well head. His leg fell into the hole up to his hip and he yelled "Help, help--the devil's got me. He's trying to drag me down to hell!"

I didn't realize how unusual he was until I was out of the house and in college and comparing Dad stories with my roommates. They all had "regular" dads. Pity. He's a big old Teddy Bear of a man, loved, admired and respected by all who know him. In the years since my mother's death, he has had to learn how to care for himself--do his own laundry (though admittedly, there are times when he finds it easier to just buy new clothes than do laundry, like when he's preparing for a trip, but he does pretty well for a man who never did his own laundry until he was 60 years old), cook his own food, make his own way. My sisters and I were afraid he'd turn into a hermit after my mom's death--a lonely recluse who did nothing but surf the net and work on his investments, but it didn't happen. He reinvented himself as a widower. He found new things to do--learned to golf, started playing pool again in league (he took my mother's spot on her team and then it took off from there), made a ton of new friends, started to travel, and developed a stronger relationship with his daughters.

I love my father. Both the odd, sometimes gruff man I grew up with and the funny, busy man he has become. He's an inspiration and a deep well of love and affection. And if you want to know who won the last seven Preakness races, he's your man.

--L

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