Sunday, June 18, 2006
Every guy becomes a father the first time some kid who never heard of Louis Armstrong calls you "Pops."
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.”
Mark Twain
If I were representing my dad in a picture, it would Washington's Headquarters in Morristown where, in his 50s, he was finally able to combine vocation & avocation as Supervisor of Buildings & Grounds maintenance, unfortunate that it didn't happen earlier. To be sure, dad's enthusiasm & ambition were rarely directed into his career. Or maybe a photo from Ocean City NJ, although excepting a few years in the early Sixties we had always stayed with relatives across the bay in Somers Point, & always the first week of August. Atlantic City was his parents' town, & it became one of mine after my grandmother retired there. I liked his side of the family, Bradys & Rixons; Irish-Catholics out of Philadelphia, contentious, colorful, & superstitious, you didn't have to guess what they were feeling. Dad jettisoned the Catholicism before he was out of his teens, the rebellion was total, & he never looked back with the slightest regret or nostalgia. His only compromises were marrying his protestant wife at the St. Joseph's Rectory in Roselle, & allowing Catholic baptisms for his 4 infants so if, God forbid, one of us had died early on he wouldn't be held guilty by the family matriarchy of consigning the baby to Limbo. He became a Republican in the Roosevelt era, mostly I think because he considered Democrats corrupted beyond any hope of reform, & they were also the Roman Catholic party; he was correct about that in Jersey back then. I never asked him why he let the Nucky Johnson - Frank Farley GOP machine in Atlantic City off-the-hook. By the time I was able to pose that question, dad & I never discussed politics & hardly talked about anything else. As with Mark Twain, there were about 7 years, from age 18 to 25, corresponding with Vietnam & my frequent intake of illicit substances, when I considered dad pretty ignorant. Grandchildren & a good second marriage mellowed him slowly, & I also came under better influences. I wish we could have gotten another ten years from him, he was growing into a very likable old guy.
Labels: Atlantic City, boardwalks, growing up, jersey shore, postcard
