The Glasses

Today is, or was my father's birthday. He was born on May1, 1905. I have already written about some of his many triumphs, failures and self inflicted comedies. His life is such a rich hunting ground, I am always remembering some memory passed down, or experienced firsthand. 

It is odd, but I seem to have saved more memories of my father than I did of my mom. Maybe his comedies were always of a grander scale because of the seriousness with which he approached Life. Growing up, I always felt closer to my mother. We interacted more than I did with my father. But I remember less of those times with her.

Anyway, this is commemorative piece on my dad. May 1st will always be his day in my mind.

~<>~

The Glasses

It was 1961. We were living in a brand new home on San Rafael St. in Tampa, Florida. Our house was located on a manmade canal that lead out to Tampa bay. Our house was the last one inland on the canal. We were hard into hurricane season sometime in the Fall.

Severe weather events always ramped up my father from his usual level of intensity. He liked to prepare for those events as if he had a chance to beat whatever was coming. A hurricane was forecast to brush by us or, who knows, hit us. Forecasting the paths of the hurricanes in the 1960s was more of the coin toss than anything else. While not a direct hit, the storm came closer than the forecasters predicted.

My parents pulled out the candles, the kerosene lanterns, stuffed towels at the front and back doors, and piled the throw rugs on the dining room table. They then parked their butts on comfortable chairs and began to drink alcohol.  They called it a “Hurricane Party” and were determined to live up to the reputation hurricane parties were famous for.

Our screened in porch roof disappeared in a quick instant of banging, screeching, and wrenching metal. I watched it go. The rain was horizontal. Most of the water in Tampa Bay seemed to coming right at us. I went from window to window checking out Mother Nature's awesome power. An endless number of objects flew past our house. It was awesome; I loved it.

The storm surge hit our little community hard, the surge overpowered the six feet of exposed seawall and flooded everyone's yard from the bay front homes back to our place located at the end of the canal. Water began to flood our house. The toilets and sinks backed up.

By this time both my parents had a serious buzz on. Typically, my mom was asleep, her head down. A soft snore could be heard during the infrequent breaks in the howling going on outside. She slept until the moment the screened porch roof  took off for parts unknown. Awakened suddenly, she poured herself another martini, lit a cigarette, and nervously re- settled back into her wing backed chair. She would not fall asleep again for hours. None of us would.

Since moving in the previous spring, we had had a couple septic tank backups.  My father was wide awake and very drunk. He decided the backups were the fault of the contractors who installed the septic tank. He ranted and raved while pouring himself a few more fingers of Old Grand Dad 100 proof whiskey.

Dad was not going to let this storm beat him. When the worst of the wind had died down to a dull roar, he grabbed a shovel and staggered out to the back yard.

My mom and I were dumbstruck. His last words before going was he was going to dig some ditches to drain the water in the yard back into the canal which by this time had returned to a more normal level. The rain was still coming down in buckets.

My mom finally began to panic a little. I could tell because now besides the cigarettes burning in two other ashtrays, she lit up another. She told me to go out there and bring my dad back.

My first foray out did not go so well. All the outer wear I was wearing got in my way and was totally soaked 30 seconds into that initial foray. I came back to the porch, stripped down to underwear and no shoes and tried again.

My father was nowhere to be seen. I worked myself out to the canal. There he was treading water with one hand and the shovel in the other hand. He looked up at me. Hisopen eyes lit up his face that was black from the muck. There seemed to be panic in those eyes.He screamed at me to get him the Hell out of there.

I remember well how pitiful and helpless he looked. I immediately laughed at the image. I would regret that laugh. I used the old step ladder we had to get him out. I dropped it in the sloping end of the canal and watched him struggle to get out. His first effort failed and he fell back into the turbulent water. He made it on his second attempt.

Once back up on land, Dad again reengaged with the storm and began digging another trench. I tried to convince him to come in, but he wouldn’t.  He stayed out there for some time before finally giving up and coming back in. The trenches were less than useless.

Mom and I did our best to keep straight faces. But the sad sack defeated storm warrior who stepped back into the house was too much for us to hold onto straight faces.. Mom started laughing and well, I never could hold back if she was laughing. Her laugh was infectious. Besides, Dad had become a cartoon character.

Our laughter was short lived. We had failed to appreciate just how much alcohol my father had ingested and how angry he was.

He wiped enough muck off his face to give us the glare, the look that fatherly fire and brimstone was about to rain down upon us. He screamed at both of us, sent me to my room. He and my mom, began a verbal fistfight of a magnitude  I had never seen before. I knew it was bad when he started using “Fish Wife” to describe her and she retorted by snottily calling him “The General”.  Her use of “The General” had many connotations depending on the inflection and timing of it’s use. It was comparable to the many uses I put the word “Fuck” to.

The next morning Dad and I performed a damage recon. Other than the failed ditches Dad had shoveled out, there was just some minor flotsam and jetsam to clean up and water to mop up in the house. I began picking up debris and piling it road side. The aluminum porch roof was nowhere to be found.

The canal that had been overrun by the previous night’s storm surge was almost empty of water. Various water holes could be seen running up the canal to the bay. Apparently, most of the water in the bay had been sucked out leaving huge pockets of bay water from which massive fish catches were had. It is common for a bay or inlet to lose water as storm passes by as a kind of equal reaction to the water that surged in the previous night.

I wanted to head out to the bay and slosh around looking for interesting things to take home. My dad, on the other hand, had a different idea. He had lost his glasses in his ill fated war with Mother Nature the night before. He told me he would give me twenty dollars if I could find his glasses. He suggested I first check in the canal as it was currently empty of most of its water.

I spent at least an hour sloshing in the coral infested muck looking for those damn glasses. I did not find them. Over the following several weeks I would check the yard more than a few times, snorkel dive in the canal more than a few times, but I never found those glasses. And it really pissed me off. I was sure it would be the easiest twenty bucks, or rather, the first twenty bucks I would ever make.

The story of that night became a standard go to laugher during family meals in the future. Not once did I ever see my dad laughing as hard as my mom and I did when we retold it. One night he was sharing my fall from grace when I became stuck in a chimney upside down, which was also a family favorite tale. Halway though his version of that sad story of youthful stupidity, I perked up and interrupted;

“You know what’s even funnier ........ the night of the hurricane.”

My dad was not laughing then.

( @ 1450 )

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I picked a James Brown tune from when he was in his prime. From the 1974 album, "Hell", here is "Papa don't take no mess" . This excellent tune is a wonderful example of early jazz funk. Or at least that is what I call it.

I saw James Brown and his band for Fifty Cents at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland in 1965. Besides seeing Andre Segovia a year before while out with my parents, this was my first taste of live music of the kind I was born to love. The concert was short. I think James only played for 45 minutes or so. But I was hooked when I saw his classic encore strut with the clownish coat. The man was a damn good performer.