Call me ‘Dad’

[david]

The leader of the band is tired and his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul --
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band

--- Dan Fogelberg, 1981


When I was a boy, common wisdom dictated that father knew best. And we had a clear picture of exactly who “Father” was: he was Jim Anderson; he was Dr. Alex Stone; he was Ozzie Nelson; and he was Ward Cleaver.

And I, of course, was Bud Anderson; I was Jeff Stone, I was – oh my goodness! – Ricky Nelson; but most of all, I suppose, I was the Beaver.

Like those youthful archetypes, I was expected to screw up on a regular basis. I was a boy and boys will be boys; so getting into trouble was part of the deal.

My father’s job was to take me aside and straighten me out – but always with a forgiving attitude, with my best interests in mind, with unconditional love and with a sense of certainty that I would learn from my mistakes and grow up to make him proud.

I don’t recall ever actually comparing my father to those television icons; but if I had – certainly during the ‘50s when television came into its own – I probably wouldn’t have found him lacking.

He was very good at figuring things out. He enjoyed making calculations and planning carefully before acting. He was the original “measure twice and cut once” craftsman.

He was handy with tools. His original field of studies at Ohio State University was engineering and his wartime experience was repairing bombers based in England.

I remember going with the rest of the family to an auction not long after we moved from Ohio to San Diego in 1957. We came home with a Craftsman Shopsmith, a combination machine that served as a table saw, drill press, disc sander, lathe and jigsaw. It was a magnificent piece of equipment.

My affection for that device may stem in part from the fact that sawing large sheets of plywood was just about the only task my father asked me to share with him. My company wasn’t particularly wanted and I wasn’t invited to stay with the project as it moved into the assembly and finishing stages, but safety and the laws of leverage required that he have a helper when rippling cumbersome sheets of lumber.

I would have loved to learn about auto mechanics – and I believe I would have enjoyed learning from my father.

Once he was performing a tune-up on our car and while he was away from the engine I reached in to wiggle a spark plug wire as I’d seen him do. The engine was running and a jolt of electricity from the distributor propelled my arm upward – it was the shock of a lifetime, so to speak. I didn’t say a thing about the incident when my father returned.

The reader may have noticed that though the title of this piece is “call me ‘Dad’” I have referred to my father only as “my father,” “he” and “him.” That’s because I don’t have another name for him.

It’s remarkable, I guess, that I apparently spent so little time with the man I will hereafter refer to as “Jesse Ray” that the awkwardness of his having no name wasn’t motivation enough to resolve the matter.

I did broach the subject long after I had stopped calling him “Daddy.” Noting that he had a similar problem when addressing both of my maternal grandparents, I asked his view on the subject.

After a bit of reflection, he graciously offered “Dad” as the solution. But it never took.

I was taken aback by Scout and Jem Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when they referred to their father by his given name. Of course, the fact that his name was “Atticus” made it a bit more excusable – it’s a very interesting name that dates back a couple of thousand years. But I remained rather uncomfortable with the idea. I suppose I considered it to be disrespectful or at least a bit unfriendly or unaffectionate.

My sisters were fine with “Daddy,” but using that term when in my teens and beyond just didn’t feel right to me.

But I digress. Though, the naming problem may provide clues to more significant characteristics of our relationship that distinguish us from the Andersons, et. al.

In addition to woodworking, auto mechanics and other handyman tasks, which Jesse Ray handled far better than I ever have or could have, he was an amateur photographer. He took hundreds of photographs, nearly all became transparent slides, though he once had a darkroom and experimented with black and white photography.

He was knowledgeable F-stops, ASA ratings and other aspects of photography that escaped me. He used manual cameras, requiring a light meter.

When we traveled, particularly on camping trips, Jesse Ray would often climb to vantage points – often hundreds of feet above our campsite – to take photos.

As a child and adolescent, he was an avid fisherman. He spent many boyhood days on the lake with my Grandpaw Burke.

I remember fishing with my father when I was six or seven. I’m not certain whether one or both of my sisters were always along on those expeditions, so I count that as quality time for the two of us.

But my father never invited me to go fishing with him again after I was about 8 nor after I had grown. He never invited me to join him on his photographic hikes, he never showed up unexpectedly at my school or where I worked or where I lived after I moved out of the family house except for one time when he helped me move items to my new apartment.

As a matter of fact, I don’t remember my father ever inviting me to join him one-on-one in any activity or venture – except for helping saw large sheets of plywood and one other task.

Somehow I ended up balancing the family checkbook. Jesse Ray had a neat mechanical calculator that he taught me to use for reconciling monthly statements.

The bank was located in Michigan, near the lake he and his father fished hundred of times and that he and I may have shared when I was very young.

Needless to say, I have no memories of being taken aside by Jesse Ray – as boy or man –for fatherly advice. I don’t recall ever having the sense that he was interested in what was happening in my life – unless it impacted his own. And I certainly don’t remember him displaying affection for me – though he did become quite emotional in later life about his love for a pet dog.

Despite the fact that our relationship was far from close, I do feel a sense of emptiness since his death. I regret not having attempted more forcefully to bring some things to light and to explore his perspectives.

But, at the end of the day, I’ve concluded that the emptiness I feel now that he’s gone is nearly identical to that which I felt when he was still alive.

It goes against the grain of traditions outlined by the television shows of my youth, but I really don’t miss my father.

The truth is that I hardly knew the man.